Coffee, the small-time way

After finding himself underemployed one day, Tim Curry followed a passion for coffee and began roasting his own beans.

Five years later, Curry hasn't yet been able to jump into the business fulltime he still works nights as a cafe server but a 30 percent growth in sales in the past two years makes him optimistic that Wood-Fire Roasted Coffee Co. in Reno might provide his entire support this year.

The air in the company's location at 30 Ohm Place is thick with an aroma of campfire and fresh-roasted coffee.

The 1,200-square-foot warehouse holds a little more than oak cordwood, burlap bags of raw beans, a large red roaster and some tables for packaging.

"I am a small little guy," admits Curry, who browned his first batch of beans in a saucepan. "I have several accounts locally and some outside the area, and some folks stop in here and there and buy coffee, but I am still in a growth stage."

Some sales come from walk-ins and Internet order, but about 80 percent of Curry's production is wholesaled to regional restaurants and coffee shops such as Famous Murphy's, the Vista Grill, the Dish Cafe and Catering, Kona Gold and Nevada Joe Coffee in Minden.

"We were searching around for a locally made coffee," says Dish Cafe owner Nancy Horn, who enjoys the beans' rich, smoky flavor. "We have got a pretty loyal following. A lot of people are pretty bummed out we are not open on weekends because they can't get their coffee."

Curry says his method of roasting beans using oak instead of gas sets him apart from almost all others he knows of just five others in the United States using wood-fired roasters. He roasts about 250 pounds of coffee a week, and he doesn't keep more than a seven-day inventory on hand.

"I try to roast to order," he says.

The firebox requires a special permit and monitoring by Air Quality Management. Curry buys oak firewood from local dealers, although one client in Texas prefers mesquite.

Making Wood-Fire a full-time gig and leaving behind his part-time job as a server at Vista Grill is his goal for this year. To that end he recently purchased several short television spots on KRXI for $500 a month for three months. The expense makes him shudder.

"It's huge," he says. "It's like, "Do I eat next week, or do I buy TV ads?' Maybe it will boost sales enough to where I can do both."

Curry's first real roaster was a charcoal-fired contraption built at Michael's Sheet Metal Works in Sparks.

Curry handed the machinists a photograph in a book as his blueprint. The homemade rig could only roast two to three pounds of coffee per batch.

"If I had a 70-pound order, it was roasting, roasting, roasting, and a lot of hand cranking," he recalls.

Still, his knowledge of a better bean is extensive after sitting next to a 500-degree, charcoal-roasting firebox with smoke billowing in his face for hours a day. "I went from knowing very little about coffee to starting a business," Curry says.

The roasting process become much more simplified once Curry invested in a second-hand Italian-made roaster for $15,000. It handles about 35 pounds of coffee per batch.

"I like traditional ways of doing things," he says. "The art of coffee is being lost into the science of coffee.