About Us
I'm Carol Z. (Caz for short),founder and roaster for Cazbar Coffee and I welcome you!
My Mission Statement Is Simple:
Roast World Class Coffees.
Offer "Extreme" Cusomter Service.
Pay Employees What They Are Truly Worth.
Share Our Good Fortune With The Community and Those Less Fortunate.
That's Cazbar in a nutshell. Simple yet willing to share our fortunes. Not that I really have a "fortune", but hey, I have lots of hope and tons of gumption. Most of all, I absolutely love what I do.
Cazbar is a true "micro" roasterier but I have lots of help when I need it and I'm lucky enough to have dedicated people in the community to help the company grow. I use several adult handicap facilities to label the bags and one facility in Conrad, Montana is semi-automated and the clients there can package up to 200 pounds of coffee per hour if need be. I'm hoping that need will come along in the near future so that I can truly give back to the community that has supported me so well in the last 5 years. I'm proud that I can put 2-15 handicapped adults to work and see the pride they take in their work. They are a pleasure to work with and I'm looking forward to the time I can employee them all on a regular basis.
My interest in coffee began when a friend of a friend showed me the little roaster he had in a shed outside his house and told me stories of selling his coffee to friends. I immediately fell in love with the smoky smell of the shed, the noise, the look of the beans, the unique burlap bags, everything! I left there determined to learn more about roasting coffee....and so I did. I read everything I could get my hands on, did coffee seminars, coffee research, coffee tasting (cupping) and then delved into researching coffee roasters. I started with a little home air roaster that roasted 2oz. of coffee at a time. Just about enough for a pot, so was roasting every day, day in, day out. Trying new beans, different roasts, what tasted good, what was nasty. After a year of study and research I decided to give up my nest egg in search of that perfect cup of coffee.
I'd decided that air roasting wasn't for me so I put my money on a Diedrich drum roaster. A beauty....an IR-12 (12 kilo capacity) built over in Idaho by Diedrich Coffee Roasters. I packed up my truck and headed over for a coffee roasting class since I thought it might be a good idea to learn from the manufacturer! Scary but fun, I came home to Montana and about 150 lbs. of beans and began my career as a coffee roaster. I have to admit that those first roasts were not exactly the best ever...pretty bad in fact, but I continued to learn and hone my skills. Cupping the coffees, tweaking the roasts, learning something new everyday. I'm still learning new things each day and I do believe that if I stop learning, I stop doing my best.
Over the years I've visited small coffee farms and talked to the farmers whos beans I purchase. I love seeing exactly where my beans come from and the people I support by purchasing their beans. I feel confident in offering these beans to the public, knowing the care these small growers give each plant, each bean. For me it's all in the details and these small farms and co-ops live and die by detail. Most all the small farms are truly organic. The farmers have no money to spend on chemical fertilizer or pesticides so they use only manure and compost to fertilize and their pest control consists of hand picking of bugs or attracting birds to do the dirty work. They are masters at doing so much, with so little.