Meet Sharon Hepburn of Mystic Coffee Roaster in Medford

Today we’d like to introduce you to Sharon Hepburn.

Thanks for sharing your story with us Sharon. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
I’ve always been a coffee enthusiast. I’ve had many careers in my life including Photo Lab Technician and Software Engineer, both of which are infamous for heavy coffee drinking due to the long hours and the need to stay alert. Back in the ’80’s, I visited a friend in San Francisco, where they have long been far ahead of the East Coast in terms the general public’s level of coffee sophistication. And back then, my friend ground her own beans from a local roaster and the coffee was amazing! From then on I ground my own coffee at home, although there were no local roasters where I lived. Later on in the ’90’s & ’00’s, my boyfriend (now my husband) worked for an airline and we got to travel to Europe a lot. Those trips helped open my eyes to what coffee could be, especially in Italy and Austria. The rich flavor and texture were so different than what I was used to. I loved it!

Soon I was roasting my own beans at home on a little table-top roaster, choking on the smoke but loving the results! I was buying green (unroasted) coffee online from Sweet Maria’s and other places and learning a little about the various coffee growing countries and what their coffees taste like. I’d heard the term “terroir” applied to wine before but was just beginning to learn that it applies to coffee too. Terroir refers to the characteristics and flavors that you get from a food such as wine or coffee based on the soil, climate & weather of the place where it was grown. Some also believe the love and dedication to craft of the people who make the product will influence the flavor. I found all of this fascinating!

Around 2008, my employer at the time moved our office from Boston to Rhode Island and I was not willing or able to make that move or the commute. Luckily they gave us plenty of notice so I had some time to think about what I wanted to do. I figured I might as well do what I love, so coffee was it. I really wanted to be a roaster! I decided to open a cafe-roastery instead of a straight-up roastery because I knew that having no professional experience and no reputation would be a tough sell in any industry. So I figured having my own cafe would be a good way to get my coffee out there and build a reputation.

I opened Mystic Coffee Roaster in April of 2010, near the low point of the recession: a very scary time. We were a little rough around the edges, but had a great-tasting product, with about five different varieties of coffee then. We hooked a lot of regular customers from the get-go and with their encouragement, we forged on exploring more coffee regions and began experimenting with different blends. These days we have anywhere from 15 to 20 different varieties of coffee available, depending on what we’ve had time to roast. I still feel like we’re a little rough around the edges, but I like it that way. It keeps us fresh.

Soon after Mystic Coffee Roaster opened, Salvatore’s Restaurant opened across the Square on High Street and Tenoch Mexican opened two doors away from us on Riverside Ave; then Carroll’s Restaurant opened on Main Street and the wonderful Borealis Yoga studio opened on Salem Street. More recently, Sura BBQ (Korean), Real Gusto (Italian), The Chicken and Rice Guys, Nagoya (Asian) and Zam (Pakistani-Indian) restaurants have all opened with great reviews. I hope we’ve had some small part in what some people are now calling the Medford Renaissance. As you can probably tell, I’m as much a cheerleader for Medford as I am for my own business!

Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Oh it has not been a smooth road at all! Right off the bat I hired the wrong General Contractor to renovate the space I’d leased. All of the subcontractors stopped work in the middle of the job because they hadn’t been paid. I didn’t know what was going on or why nothing was getting done. Talk about stress! I was paying rent and needed the money to start rolling in but nothing was happening. More than a few of my gray hairs came from that episode.

And once I did open, of course I started off with the most common problem small businesses have: Not enough working capital. By all rights I probably should have gone out of business by our third year, but I was too stubborn and probably stupid. However, failure was not an option! I scraped by, borrowed what I could and payed dearly for it.

Also, before you start a business, you have some idea that it’s going to be a lot of work and a lot of stress and you think you’re ready for it. But you really have no idea how much time and energy it takes to run a business until you do it. It is a huge challenge not only for yourself but for your spouse or partner and your family. You are “on” 24 x 7. There is no other way. My husband has been a saint to put up with me being absent 7 days a week. Not everyone would do that.

Another huge challenge for me has been finding the right people to help. I really lucked out with the people I hired early on. They were amazingly responsible and capable and dedicated and they stayed with me for a long time. But all good things come to an end and people grow and move on. When the economy started to improve after the recession, I had a very hard time finding capable and trustworthy people. People had problems with drugs; money disappeared; tardiness and attendance became a problem. People would work a couple of weeks and then just stop coming in. Some people who were responsible and trustworthy became frustrated and left. It was hard physically and emotionally to keep up because as we got busier, I had less and less available help. I was totally spent. Then I started doing more thorough background checks and raised wages considerably and I started getting better candidates applying for positions here. Today I’m really happy with our crew! They are so great and a joy to work with! But it’s a balance. You want to pay everyone a nice wage. You have to make payroll and you can only charge so much for coffee. It’s really tough!

Please tell us about Mystic Coffee Roaster.
We make really great coffee, but we’re not coffee snobs. I’m not going to lecture you about how you should only put organic goat milk in your coffee if you’re not going to drink it black. That’s not Mystic Coffee Roaster at all. We make damn good coffee for you and you should drink it any way that you enjoy it. No judgements.

I don’t like the trendy term “Third Wave Coffee” because it connotes a certain amount of coffee snobbery. We really don’t fit that mold anyway. We don’t do pour-overs; it’s just not practical in our space or for most of our customers who don’t want to wait 10-15 minutes for a cup of coffee. We’re not big enough to be an actual Direct Trade partner with coffee farmers or co-ops. And I’m not going to call a coffee “Direct Trade” even if my source calls it that. To me that’s not honest. But I do the research. I try my best to procure coffee that is sourced ethically. I buy Fair Trade Certified (TM) coffee whenever I can and we are Fair Trade Certified (TM) as a company. I taste the coffee, and taste the coffee, and taste some more and adjust whenever necessary. If I don’t like it, I can’t sell it. It just makes me happy to sit down in the morning and sip our coffee and say to myself, “Man, that’s damn fine cup of coffee!” I know I’m doing it right then.

It’s really gratifying to see others enjoying our coffee as much as I do. When you see a smile on a customer’s face after you’ve made them a nice drink, it just makes your whole day. I like that we provide a comfortable place for people to sit with friends and have a nice time; or to sit and enjoy a quiet moment alone with a wonderful cup of coffee. We have become a part of people’s lives! And when you think about it, we help to create nice memories for people. To me, that is a great thing.

In addition to the cafe, we sell our coffee beans online at www.mysticcoffeeroaster.com and we wholesale our coffee to a few local spots. Dave’s Fresh Pasta in Davis Square was an early adopter and has been a great partner, selling our bagged coffee off the shelf. And I think Vittorio Ettore, chef and owner of Bistro 5 of West Medford and A Tavola of Winchester came over to try our coffee as soon as he heard of us. He has been a great proponent of our Mystic Espresso Blend which is served in both of his fine restaurants. Boda Borg in Malden serves our hot coffee and our cold brew to their clients.

Another facet to the business is that we roast coffee for people who want to sell their own coffee brand. They buy their own green coffee but they don’t have a machine to roast it themselves. Right now we are roasting for several clients who put their own label on the coffee we roast for them. It helps us to keep the roaster going and it helps the Boston area have access to even more great locally roasted coffee.

I decided to open my business in Medford Square because my husband and I live in Medford and I’d always thought Medford Square had so much potential, even though it was a bit of a desert at the time we opened. Where once the Square had been a social and community center, instead there were a lot of empty storefronts, some nail & hair salons, and banks, but not much else. So part of the mission of Mystic Coffee Roaster has always been to help make Medford Square vital and relevant to the community again. I understand that my business does not exist in a vacuum. We exist in a community of people and other businesses. The more we help each other, the better off we all are.

Early on, we began partnering with community-based organizations that create opportunities for people to enjoy being in Medford Square. CACHE in Medford is an arts organization with some great programming that includes festivals such as Circle the Square, which is a kind of street festival with lots of different art and music oriented events going on all around Medford Square. It draws tons of people to the Square, which is great for business. It happens on the third Thursday of each month in the summer. We also partner with the Medford Community Coalition (MCC) which began as a group of community activists who, like me, was concerned about Medford Square as a community resource. Among other things, they organized flash mobs at local shops; and the Medford Square Cleanup, scheduled around Earth Day; as well as Medford Eats, a food festival that highlights the great eateries we have in Medford. I am happy for Mystic Coffee Roaster to sponsor events by organizations like CACHE and MCC because, in end, we all benefit.

Do you look back particularly fondly on any memories from childhood?
I don’t have one particular favorite memory from childhood but a collection of them. My Mom, was a single parent in the ’70’s and had very little money. But every year she’d splurge and take us camping in the Spring, and in the Summer we’d spend a week or two at the beach in Rye, NH. At camp, sometimes a couple of families from our neighborhood would join us there too. And my Mom always let me take my best friend on family trips. We’d have the best time around the campfire with family and friends; or playing cards after dinner; or just the kids getting away having adventures on our own in a boat. I feel really lucky to have had those extended family experiences.

Pricing:

• Roasted coffee, any variety starts at $15.99 for one lb
• Drip coffee starts at $2.05 for a 12 oz cup
• Lattes & Cappuccinos start at $2.82 for a single-shot drink

Contact Info:

• Address: Mystic Coffee Roaster
  30 Riverside Ave
  Medford, MA 02155
• Website: www.mysticcoffeeroaster.com
• Phone: 781-391-0042
• Email: mysticcoffeeroaster@yahoo.com
• Instagram: @mysticcoffeeroaster
• Facebook: @MysticCoffeeRoaster
• Twitter: @MysticCoffee
• Yelp: www.yelp.com/biz/mystic-coffee-roaster-medford

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