Q&A with Multiply Coffee
Hailing from Vernon, British Columbia is Multiply Coffee. Multiply is run by two full-time pastors who wanted to stay connected with their community amid the pandemic. We chatted with the Co-Founder and roaster, Landon Zabolotniuk, to learn more about their new roastery.
- How did you first get into roasting coffee?
I started roasting coffee as a hobby nine years ago. I was using a small 100g roaster, and then a few friends wanted to buy coffee, so I upgraded to a slightly bigger one. It just remained a hobby until 2020. During the pandemic, my friend Robin and I decided to make a business out of it.
Our real motivator was wanting to build relationships in our community and not feel so isolated. We saw coffee as a tremendous way to get involved in people’s lives and know our community.
We are both full-time pastors in our church, and we wanted to get to know who was living in our city. The driving force for us is really to build relationships and see our community thrive. And, of course, selfishly, I just love coffee and learning about coffee and getting to drink amazing coffee. I am also really excited about getting to build relationships on the other side of the world. We want to build long-term relationships with producers too.
- Has the community in Vernon been responsive to the lighter roast specialty coffees?
Our business model is diverse because we realize many people in Vernon are still warming up to the idea of lighter coffees. 80% of what we roast is what we call our more ‘grocery store’ blends, which are more medium-dark roast. Then we have our single-origin lighter roast coffees, and we are slowly trying to warm people up to single-origin coffees that are more closely connected with farmers. Once we have a cafe, which we don’t yet, we can hopefully get people more excited about that side of things.
- What is your ethos when it comes to green sourcing?
We work primarily with one coffee importer, who also work in other origins like Guatemala and Ethiopia, so it’s been beneficial for us to know there are people with boots on the ground and to know that the coffees we are buying aren’t just auctioned off to the highest bidder. We want to know that the coffees have been bought with what the farms need to live a sustainable life in mind.