A teenage entrepreneur from Newstead has used the skills he learned as a barista and trainee coffee roaster to start up his own coffee roasting business.
Seventeen-year-old Josh Rodgers trained under the guidance of Lachy and Laura Evans at Moto Bean Coffee Roasters in Malmsbury and currently works as a barista at the Social Foundry in Kyneton.
At home, however, Josh has built a 100 per cent solar-powered coffee roastery of his own.
Josh left school at 14 with the blessing of his parents and was home schooled by his mother.
“School wasn’t really right for me, I’m more of a hands-on kind of learner, and sitting in a classroom for that many years just wasn’t my thing,” he said.
“I had more of a creative outlook on life and what I wanted to do.”
While being home schooled Josh found a job at a market in Castlemaine with a pop-up coffee store and learned the basics there.
He later got a job at Moto Bean and did a lot of the production roasting for their wholesale accounts.
“I took a liking to the coffee roasting – there’s something about being in touch with that farmer on the other side of the world and trying to help them and figure out the best way to produce amazing coffee,” he said.
Josh now imports his beans from all over the world, depending on what’s in season.
His roasting is done on a vintage roaster in a warehouse he built on his family’s property and he sells the coffee to online buyers at www.joshrodgerscoffee.com
Because of his small-scale operation he buys smaller lots of coffee and can support the smaller farmers.
“I pay a really fair price for their coffee and I work closely with them to figure out new ways of processing coffee and improving technique in picking and sourcing,” he said.
“Not every coffee bean is 100 per cent right, so it takes a while to figure out what the farmer can do better to improve this and what I can do better to improve their product, because they’re putting their product in my hands, which is a huge thing.”
