Scott Lawson started his career in tech, electronics, and software engineering and, like most people in the field, was addicted to drinking coffee. However, he only decided to become a roaster after he purchased an old coffee company.
He was trained to roast by the previous owner, Chris Innes, who started Toasted and was the treasurer for the NZ Specialty Coffee Association. He learnt to roast the old-school way with a pen and paper and a stopwatch, unlike today, when roasting is done with Cropster and computers to plot roast curves.
Toasted is a family-owned company that prides itself on its values and ethics. Its roast coffee is sourced through specialty coffee channels and is 100 percent traceable. It is also a biogrow-certified coffee roastery with fairtrade affiliations and is looking to become a B Corp-certified company.
“Our values as a family-owned business help set us apart from most of the well-known NZ coffee companies, which are now just brands owned by multinational beverage companies extracting money from NZ without contributing back to our country,” said Lawson.
As a manager and roaster of Toasted, Lawson has enjoyed tasting new origins, trying various processing techniques, and receiving customer compliments. He would love to learn and explore more about coffee processing by visiting places like Ethiopia, the birthplace of Arabica.
“I love a great filter, and it's hard to beat an Ethiopian Natural or a washed Kenyan. Recently, we roasted an amazing Honduras Pacamara natural, which had crazy notes of ripe pineapple and was truly delicious.”
A great roast is defined by its body and sweetness, and Lawson highlighted that the characteristics of its origin and processing technique are essential when roasting specialty coffee.
“We implemented Cropster for our roastery management in 2017, just after we took over the business. Our sales manager, who started the same day as us, was one of the early beta testers for the software platform and helped embed it into our daily practices. Our entire roastery runs on it, and we have done over 14,000 roasts in Cropster.”
The profiling, accuracy, repeatability, and traceability offered by Cropster have elevated Toasted’s coffees to another level and ensured that the production constantly hits the mark for customers.
Toasted has been supporting green coffee growers, and some of the recent coffee origins that it purchased last year, like the Colombia Bochica and Tumbaga, have been from Sucafina.
The Bochica and Tumbaga decaf has helped supply clean filtered drinking water to families and local schools of coffee farmers in Colombia.
“That’s pretty cool, and the transparency we get from Sucfina regarding these initiatives is fantastic.”
Lawson advised budding coffee roasters first to be baristas and drink black coffee. He also encouraged participation in cupping events at roasteries to start the coffee journey.
“Once you know how things work, odds are you will be offered a turn on the roaster under the supervision of an existing roaster. Next thing you know, you will be a junior roaster. Hard work gets you places, so roasteries reward people who front up with opportunities.”
Toasted has welcomed customers to visit the roastery café and chat with the team about coffee, usually on weekday mornings when the roasting usually occurs. The transition from green coffee to roasted coffee is quite an experience, as the transformation is remarkable.
