Yaggy Road Roasting Co.
Coffee fascination ignites business, community for young entrepreneur
A love of coffee began popping from Ben Montgomery’s dorm room at Valparaiso University in 2016 when Yaggy Road Roasting first took root with initial business partners, Walker Johnson and Drew McKenna.
“My business evolved from the passion of three college students at Valparaiso University. We shared a love for coffee and packed our room full of various grinders, brewers and coffee contraptions,” Ben said. “We became a regular gathering spot for students to sit around and enjoy good coffee. When we discovered that coffee could be roasted on a hot-air popcorn popper, we had to give it a shot.”
Building on his skill set as a barista, Ben’s coffee bean fascination kept brewing with an upgrade to a small coffee roaster put to work for catering campus events and selling to family and friends. After graduation, Yaggy Road Roasting was teaming with local cafés and businesses and had upgraded its equipment to a small commercial machine.
“Our specialty is direct-trade sourcing from small farms in various coffee growing regions of the world,” he said. “The coffee industry at-large is quite harmful to the communities that grow it, and we have made it our mission to develop direct relationships in coffee growing areas to ensure that everyone is fairly paid and treated well every step of the way.”
Now at 26, Ben has been in business for four years and has seven employees. He has 18 accounts across Indiana and Illinois with a café, The Coffee Press, inside The Press bookstore located in downtown Valparaiso. He is working toward launching a second location inside the Valparaiso YMCA.
“Our focus is wholesale distribution, providing coffee to other small businesses in Indiana and Illinois. We partner with coffee shops, restaurants, specialty grocers and anyone in need of locally roasted quality coffee,” he said.
Ben savors the sense of community that sprouts from the world of coffee.
“Entrepreneurship can come with a pretty full workload and people often sympathize over my long hours. In reality, those long hours consist of making people delicious coffee, building relationships with growers and producers, helping other businesses take their coffee program to another level, and broadening the horizons of coffee to our customers,” he said. “These are all things I deeply enjoy, and I wouldn’t want to spend my time any other way.
“It has been extremely gratifying to see the interests and ideas of three college friends grow into a real and tangible business with some practical impacts on our community and the communities we source our coffee from.”
Yaggy Road Roasting
1555 W. Lincolnway #104 in Valparaiso
Available at The Coffee Press, 9 Lincolnway in Valparaiso
www.yaggyroad.com