Early Bird Coffee Roasters Aims for Magic in a Cup

Kate LaPoint didn’t set out to be a coffee maven. In fact, she graduated from the University of Washington in 1994 with a journalism degree. But after she landed a job as the editor of a Seattle-based coffee industry trade journal, she was hooked. And it has been all coffee ever since.

Her latest career incarnation is as president of Woodinville’s Early Bird Coffee Roasters and gourmet suppliers Sound Provisions.

“I was so fortunate to get that job right out of college,” LaPoint says of the editing position. It gave her an insider’s look at the industry and allowed her to make “numerous contacts” with growers, roasters and suppliers of coffee-related products.

LaPoint left the trade journal in 1998 to open her own business, offering writing, marketing and PR advice to companies in the supply-end of the industry. As she worked, she began to see a gap in the local coffee market – a gap, it turns out, she was ideally positioned to fill.

“Seattle is all about coffee,” she says. But, she observed, while area shops were getting great beans from roasters, the products they were adding to their drinks – syrups, chocolate, etc. – were inferior. At the same time, she knew suppliers of high-quality coffee-related products didn’t have a lot of distribution in the Puget Sound area.

LaPoint heard opportunity knocking and responded by opening Sound Provisions, a distributor of “high-end coffee-related products.” Her strategy, she says, is to “offer the best product in each category” – the best syrups, the best chocolate, the best tea, the best smoothie mixes, etc.

Her former trade journal connections are spreading the word throughout the industry, all over the country. Most of her clients are “high-end, sit-down, independent coffee shops,” says LaPoint, although she counts drive-through coffee stands, restaurants and bookshops among her customers, as well.

Early Bird Coffee Roasters came later. In fact, LaPoint never really intended to open a roasting business, she says.

“I was really happy in the beginning not roasting,” she remembers, adding that she initially worked in partnership with other roasters. But Sound Provisions’ success – it has grown 15-20 percent a year since opening in 2006 – lead to a financial crisis as her growing business demanded more cash. 

She had to look for a way to improve cash flow; roasting, she says, was the “only logical” move. And, she adds, there is always room for a better, different product.

LaPoint teamed up with Van Howell, a roaster and coffee shop owner from South Carolina who she had gotten to know at trade shows through the years. “His coffee was amazing,” she says, and he had a genuine, personable way with people that she liked.

The two began talking in late 2008; Howell moved his family to the Seattle area in early 2009 and he and LaPoint started Early Bird Coffee Roasters later that year. It was a “Hail Mary” for her business, remembers LaPoint – either it would work and provide the necessary capital, or it wouldn’t and she’d be done.

It worked. After “a lot of experimenting…a lot of tasting,” the two developed a line of coffees they feel offer something unique.

Good coffee “needs to stand on its own and be phenomenal,” says LaPoint, “but mixed with milk, it has to be magic.” The key to their magic, she and Howell believe, is their practice of roasting each type of bean separately before mixing them in their blends.

Once again, LaPoint is filling a gap in the coffee market – tiny shops, she said, don’t always getting the same level of service from roasters that the larger shops get. She is determined to treat each of her customers the same, whatever their size.

“I’m a mom, and I’m a caretaker,” she explains. In fact, she says, “sometimes the smaller guys get…a little bit more attention,” in part because they are willing to ask for help.

LaPoint’s business is primarily wholesale and has no set hours, but she invites retail customers to stop by. As an incentive, visitors can purchase coffee at a special drop-in rate. “We absolutely love it when people come in and visit,” she says.

“Check us out, get interested in the process,” she says, adding that visitors are often “dazzled” by the equipment and the experience, especially if they happen by when Howell is roasting beans. LaPoint also arranges tours for groups and provides fundraiser coffees – complete with private labels and year-round online purchasing.

Although most of LaPoint’s 200-plus customers purchase her Sound Provisions products, the roasting business is increasing. “Our real passion and our area for growth is coffee,” she says. “It’s ours…it’s our baby.”

She adds: “We’re just here to provide people with awesome coffee.

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About this column: Woodinville Works runs every Monday and spotlights local businesses and the people who work at them.