From a garage roaster to Tanner Street
Mara Kessler started roasting in 2014 on a modified stovetop popcorn popper in her parents' garage, mostly because a proper drum roaster was well outside what a part-time barista could afford. By 2016 she was selling bags out of a folding table at the Saturday farmers market, four pounds at a time, and telling anyone who'd listen that the popcorn popper batches actually tasted better than what she was pulling shots from at work.
The storefront came in 2019, in a building that had sat mostly empty since the Tanner Feed & Seed mill closed in the early '90s. We kept the loading dock door. We kept the exposed brick and most of the old grain chute, which now holds string lights instead of sorghum. The roaster sits roughly where the old feed silos used to be, which the building inspector found funnier than we expected.
What hasn't changed: we still cup every roast before it goes on the shelf, and if a batch doesn't taste like it should, it doesn't go out. Some weeks that means we're out of the First Light by Thursday. We're okay with that.