Coffee in the Mountain State: Roasting Comes Home to Morgantown

Mountaineer Roasting Company

Morgantown sits as an urban gateway into the rugged Appalachian expanse of West Virginia. Given one and a half hours, a driver could head north to Pittsburgh, a city with ten times the population, or could move southeast, to Elkins, a town at the edge of the stunning Monongahela National Forest. What’s more, Morgantown is indelibly marked by the presence of West Virginia University, an institution which infuses every aspect of the city with the hues of blue and gold. 

Morgantown is uniquely positioned to spearhead emerging trends in the state. New ideas flood in with the yearly tide of young students coming to study. New products arrive quickly from the Midwest or East Coast via Pittsburgh. Coffee, as a commodity and a culture, has approached an apogee in Morgantown, thanks to the city’s connectedness and student population. Now, coffee roasting is coming back to West Virginia, and Morgantown roasters are among those leading the charge. 

Long ago, most Appalachian folk would have made their coffee at home. It is likely West Virginians would have been purchasing green (i.e. unroasted) coffee beans for roasting, grinding, and brewing at home until the 1940s. (Dabney) In a 1975 cookbook, Pocahontas County Cooking Yesterday and Today, Betsy Jordan Edgar remembers the coffee struggles of earlier generations in the state by describing a “Hard-Times” coffee recipe made from wheat bran, cornmeal, eggs, sorghum molasses, and sweet cream. She writes, “I was told by my mother that the coffee was used when she was a girl and the folks couldn’t get to a store to replenish their supply.” 

Post World War II, coffee would have entered an industrial era where it came into households nearly ready to consume. Most older folks in Morgantown today can remember a time when coffee was strictly a homemade Folgers drink or a McDonald’s purchase. That is, until a couple of independent coffee shops opened in the mid-90s.

Blue Moose Cafe Morgantown

In quick succession, two local coffee shops debuted in the college town–The Blue Moose Café and The Grind–both still in business today. These represent the first wave of independent coffee in the city, and likely, the state. 

Gary Tannenbaum, owner of The Blue Moose Café, remembers the early days of serving coffee in Morgantown. It was the 90s, and the café served punk rock types and young students in a landscape where fast food chains were the only other option. But Tannenbaum credits Starbucks for preparing the consumer for independent coffee in the first place. The company was able to spend the money to open new markets to specialty coffee–something most independent shops can’t afford. 

While Starbucks may have been instrumental in priming the palates of the transient student population of WVU, Morgantown’s independent coffee shops opened before West Virginia’s first Starbucks! The first company-owned Starbucks to open in the state was at Merritt Creek in Barboursville on December 5th, 2003 according to that store’s Facebook page. Not only did independent coffee beat Starbucks to the punch, but West Virginia was the last state in America to have a Starbucks company-owned store. So the original independent shops from the 90s were truly blazing a new trail. 

The other long-time independent shop, The Grind, just celebrated 26 years of business this February. Once again, Starbucks figures in, but only as a connection to Washington State, where the franchise got its start. The current bar manager at The Grind, Kelsey Archer, who qualifies herself as well versed in “Grind-lore” (the history of the shop,) says, “We originally started because the owner and manager were from Washington. They were bringing a piece of their home to West Virginia.”

The Grind coffee WVU

More than anything else, the university has been a boon for The Grind. Their shop sits less than a five minute walk from WVU’s downtown library. Archer goes so far as to say, “We define ourselves as almost a seasonal business. During the summer, we have hard core regulars that come in everyday of the year, but it gets so slow because we rely on the students.” 

Nothing in Morgantown can be conceptualized without the university’s influence. Independent coffee is no exception. “There is just a great community of young people here,” Archer adds, “so it creates an opportunity to create a space to meet up, and hang out, and be creative.” 

While The Grind and The Blue Moose Café have both pioneered the independent coffee model in Morgantown for nearly three decades, they have relied on roasters from outside of West Virginia. Neither shop had the option to buy from local roasters when they opened, and both have long-standing relationships with their suppliers. 

The Blue Moose Café has sourced its beans from a roaster in Pittsburgh for well over 20 years. The Grind, on the other hand, has worked closely with Seattle roaster, Caffé D’arte, since they opened their doors in 1996. Their dark roast, a Capri blend, has been the same for the 26 years that the shop has been in business. Archer recalls, ”About 10 years ago, we tried to change it, but the regulars, who mean a lot to us, threw a fit.” The dark roast stayed, and they have since added a light roast from Olympia Roasting Company out of Olympia, Washington. 

These are the coffees that have been waking up Morgantown for the past three decades, but in the mid 2010s, another option emerged–locally roasted coffee. 

The Grind coffee shop morgantown

Across Deckers Creek from downtown Morgantown, Quantum Bean Coffee has set up a roastery and coffee bar in the residential South Park neighborhood. The roastery began as a hobby nearly 10 years ago when Samuel Bonasso returned home to West Virginia from California. 

Bonasso credits his time in California for developing his taste for good coffee, a taste he could not satisfy in West Virginia. He had to take up roasting on a Diedrich roaster at home to alleviate the craving.  The hobby slowly developed into a small business. 

Following a pattern, Bonasso gives some credit to Starbucks. He says that the company made “people willing to wait for something special.” At the beginning, Quantum Bean Coffee was sold directly to consumers at farmers markets, but after three years of sales, Bonasso opened Quantum’s current coffee bar in 2018.

He adds a different reason as to why local roasting works–a residential bloom in Morgantown. Where before there were drive-thrus and stripmalls (remember the McDonald’s coffee?,) close-knit, residential communities like South Park have emerged. “One half of all our transactions arrive on foot.” Bonasso stresses. His roastery and coffee bar are part of the fabric of the neighborhood. 

More than this, Quantum offers consumers support. Their focus has always been on science first–using exacting measurements for weight, time, heat–to create an excellent cup of coffee. Since 2015, Bonasso explains, Quantum has provided advice, instructions, and support to the folks who buy their coffee to brew at home. Thanks to this on-foot and at-home model, the majority of Quantum’s Morgantown-roasted coffee is sold directly to local consumers. 

Quantum Bean Roasting Morgantown

The other major player in Morgantown’s new roasting scene is Mountaineer Roasting Company. The roastery started from an opportunity. Rusty Isaacs worked at an Octane Coffee shop on the WVU campus. The Atlanta-based Octane Coffee had some WVU ties and had intentions of establishing a roastery in the area, and Isaacs had the opportunity to probe into the world of roasting knowledge. 

Suddenly, Revelator Coffee Company purchased Octane and pulled out of the Morgantown location. Isaacs was left on the verge of roasting for another company and decided to start his own brand. A WVU alumnus himself, he started Mountaineer Roasting Company. They began roasting beans at the end of 2017. In 2019, they opened a café at Evansdale Crossing, WVU’s center of student services, but Covid-19 abruptly closed their doors in 2020. 

Mountaineer Roasting moved to their current location, which serves as both a coffee shop and a roastery, on Maple Drive. Isaacs, finally settled in one place, is happy that it worked out this way–he was able to fully design their coffee shop rather than just occupy a university store front. Today, they have been at the location for two years. 

“As far as coffee and West Virginia goes, my interest started with Moxxee in Charleston.” Isaacs explains, referring to the boutique coffee shop that served the East End of the state capital from 2011 until it closed in 2019. “Before I worked for them, I was a customer. That was where my inspiration for specialty coffee came from.” He continues. “Traveling around, you go to these incredible specialty coffee shops. How could you bring some of that specialty stuff to West Virginia? Once I had the opportunity, I had to push for bringing high end specialty coffee to the state.”

Today, Mountaineer Roasting Company focuses on quality coffee, but hospitality is their priority. They want their café to be a highlight of every customer’s day. For Isaacs, “I want it to be a part of the community. If you pulled us out of the community, people would feel that there was a void because it serves as a place for people to gather and come together.” 

Like Quantum, most of their sales are direct to customers rather than business to business, but Isaacs has hope that local businesses will start to see the value in locally roasted coffee too. The market is evolving and the current moment is that of the local roaster. 

Espresso machine at the mountaineer roasting company

Glossing over the recent history of coffee in this college town, it seems that the independent coffee shop was a contagion from outside– West Coast trends coming to the Mountain State. These shops became centers of a local community and helped to develop Morgantown’s taste for specialty coffee from boutique stores. The student population definitely helped, and proud WVU alumni were keen to sell good coffee to students. At last, it became more feasible to spend the money on a roaster, educate the consumer on the process, and push for locally roasted coffee in the Morgantown family morning routine. 

Not convincing? Isaacs himself can trace his coffee career through The Grind, where he once worked with Mountaineer Roasting’s General Manager. They had first hand experience selling coffee to the demographic they roast for today. Back at The Grind, Archer reflects on the current coffee landscape, “Competition doesn’t necessarily exist here. We work together as a community. I see roasters from the other coffee shops coming here to get coffee. We are all serving coffee as best as we can. We just love a good cup.” 

Isaacs looks at coffee in Morgantown and considers its future throughout West Virginia, “There’s a lot of people here that care about coffee and it’s expanding every year. It used to be a niche group but now it’s bigger. I’m excited to see where it will go in the next five to 10 years. I want to see more unique shops, I want to see barista competitions, I want to see the coffee community come together outside of the coffee shop.” 

A vibrant coffee community in West Virginia–Archer adds, “It’s better than what you would expect in Appalachia as a whole. This area has a stigma and we’re stereotyped really hard. You wouldn’t expect something so great to come out of these hills, and I take a lot of pride in it. We love coffee.”

Sources Cited:

Dabney, Joseph E., The Folklore and Art of Southern Appalachian Cooking, Cumberland House, Nashville Tennessee.

Edgar, Betsy Jordan, Pocahontas County Cooking Yesterday and Today, Hillsboro,WV, 1975. 

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