For its annual Roaster of the Years competition, coffee trade publication Roast magazine announced Texas-based Greater Goods Coffee Co. as the best micro roaster of 2021.
“It feels amazing and a bit surreal,” Khanh Trang, Greater Goods co-founder and head of cafe, says. “We’re truly honored and humbled to be named alongside such great roasters we look up to.”
The awards, held annually for the last 17 years, gives recognition to the coffee roasters that not only produce exceptionally good coffee, but those that also invest in the community, its employees and the world at large.
To be considered a micro roaster, roasters must produce less than 100,000 pounds of coffee a year; Greater Goods annually roasts about 90,900 pounds of coffee a year. Roast also awarded its best macro roaster of the year award to Washington state-based Tony’s Coffee, which puts out 1.1 million pounds of roasted coffee per year.
Trang and her husband Trey Cobb, who is also head of operations, founded Greater Goods in 2015 to fulfill their dreams of starting a coffee company. The company sources its beans from producers who are aligned with Greater Goods’ mission in providing fair wages and engaging in sustainable practices.
“We love coffee, and we want it to continue to be a part of our daily lives,” Trang says. “But that can only happen if we take good care of our environment, farmers at origin, the product itself, our customers and our community at home. We try to walk the tightrope of just being all googly-eyed in love with coffee and taking our responsibility to it seriously.”
As a SCA Premier Training Campus, Greater Goods also teaches individuals on brewing, roasting and tasting. And since COVID-19 hit, things have been looking different at its cafes. It’s moved in-person learnings mostly to online and its cafe sales aren’t what they used to be. But Trang remains optimistic.
