We’re coffee roasters driven by a handful of core values: hospitality, quality, community, transparency, and a desire to improve.

In our rural town of Northfield, Vermont these values are a part of our way of life. Every week we accept a personal milk delivery from the local dairy farmer with just a small herd of Jersey cows. We buy traditional goat’s milk caramel sauce from a goat farm down the road. We pick up our pastries from the local baker on the next block. The connection to small scale agriculture and food production is thick. Our sourcing, roasting, and brewing should strive to reflect the transparent relationships found in rural agricultural areas like ours, where the inextricable links between quality production, a transparent supply chain, and personal well-being are universally understood.

What’s a Carrier?

We take our name from the humble carrier pigeon, who always finds her way home from a distant place to deliver an important message. To us the distant place may be Ethiopia or Peru, while the message is the story and taste of a coffee that was expertly grown there.

Sourcing

We have two main criteria when deciding what coffees to buy: quality and transparency of supply. We value these criteria more than we value third-party certifications that often fall short, even though it requires more work on our part. By focusing on quality we can justify decoupling our buying from the volatile commodity market and pay higher prices, on average nearly 3x more than the current Fair Trade minimum price. By focusing on transparency we can identify the individuals responsible for these amazing coffees and buy from them again and again. We value the roles played by everyone in the supply chain (even the so-called “middle men”) and strive to build long-term business relationships founded on trust and respect, starting with our importing partners and continuing up to the producer.

Roasting

We recognize that the hardest work happens at the coffee’s origin, and that a coffee bean is the seed of a sweet tropical fruit. When we roast we do our best to respect these facts. Care must be taken to properly develop the unique ripe fruit and caramel flavors of each coffee and not obscure them with over-, under-, or uneven roasting. We take a data-driven approach and employ progressive techniques to achieve what we think are the best, most consistent results, always striving to get better. To ensure the quality of your cup and the refinement of our craft we taste every single batch we roast.

Serving

Just like with our roasting we believe a methodical, recipe-driven approach will consistently yield us the best cup of brewed coffee. And like with our sourcing we believe that a coffee should be served with transparency and a focus on building relationships, whether that’s with a wholesale partner, in our own coffee bar, or with the consumer at home. Even the best cup of coffee will taste awful if it’s not served with a smile and an open heart.