Roaster Profile :: Dan Fitzsimmons
Dan may not seem like the obvious candidate to be a coffee-roaster – coming as he did to Australia during a 20-year career in the computer industry. However, his first job was with Abacus computers in Seattle, coincidentally also the home to the nascent coffee revival beginning in America. For it was here - the home of Starbucks and a number of other high profile American coffee companies, that espresso coffee first began to take off in the US.
Dan started as a systems analyst in tech.support with Abacus, before moving on to sales with Prime Computers. But it was with Abacus in the late 70’s when one of the projects he was briefed on was an inventory job for the then almost unheard of, Starbucks Coffee.
In 1983, he and his wife moved to Canberra with Prime, but he had by then caught the bug; coffee was in his system. In the late 1980’s he and Jo backpacked around Europe, determined to understand more about coffee and the way it was roasted, marketed and consumed overseas.
After returning to Australia in the early 90’s, he went back to the computer industry, at the same time keeping an eye out for an opportunity to begin in the coffee business. In 1992 the opportunity arose, when he and Jo were offered the lease on a small shop in Arundel St, near Sydney University in Glebe.
They started out with a single-group espresso machine and a 4kg roaster of a type at that time virtually unheard of in Australia. It was called a ‘fluidized bed’ roaster (developed by an engineer in the US) and the principle was that instead of being roasted in a rotating drum, the beans were roasted on a bed of hot air, ensuring consistency of roasting on the individual beans. They called the business the ‘Glebe Coffee Roaster’.
The Glebe shop quickly moved up to a 3-group espresso machine and 1993 saw a second café opened – this time in Surry Hills. Increasing coffee sales demanded a larger roaster, so armed with a new 15 kg version of the original Sivitz roaster, Dan moved his expanding wholesale business (now simply called ‘The Coffee Roaster’ to Sydney’s up-and-coming Green Square. Convinced of the benefits of fluidized bed, or what he has come to call ‘airflow’ roasting, Dan has been working with an engineer for several years on his own design.
This has resulted in three custom-built roasters, which are in operation on locations on the Gold Coast, and at the Green Square roastery. The culmination of this experimentation sees The Coffee Roaster in the finishing stages of production of its own ‘airflow’ roaster - based on the fluidized bed principles – to be called the ‘Chinook’, the name of the warm wind that heats the Rocky Mountains after an intense cold spell. The units have a variable capacity of 10-20 kg, are made of food grade stainless steel and with the computer system developed by Dan and his engineer, support roasting in an automated batch process. This means that the operator simply has to load the green beans and set the roast cycle, while the roaster takes the batch to completion.
According to Dan, it’s all about consistency. ‘Many boutique coffee roasters find it difficult to maintain quality and consistency. Typically, as their businesses have grown, they have had to give up roasting and involve other people in the process, leading to inconsistent results’ he says. Dan already has several orders, including one from overseas.
For more information, contact Dan Fitzsimmons Tel: 1800 806 200 e-mail: Dan@coffee.com.au