What began as a wandering pup and passion for home roasted coffee has now made way for a local small custom roasting coffee company in rural Cambridge, Idaho. Ron and Lauren Warfield are the owners and operators of Warfield Coffee Roasters. Their business story began with their pup, Lucy. Lucy, like most farm dogs, holds the job of protecting the stock. But as her owners shared, she doesn’t always do her job, “She was constantly being naughty. Going to all our neighbors and going into town.” And according to her owner Lauren, even doing marathons down the Weiser River Trail. Due to Lucy’s naughty behavior the Warfields felt bad and often would apologize to their neighbors by giving them some of their home roasted coffee. Ron had been home roasting for a few years.
The Warfields began getting some great feedback on Ron’s home roasted coffee with people stating that getting the fresh coffee was life changing. Lauren shared that this is how the idea for their small business came about, “It went from a home passion to sharing with our friends and neighbors.” With the positive feedback and comments they had received the Warfields decided to take the leap and purchase a commercial roaster from an Idaho company out of Sandpoint. Since 2024 they have been providing freshly roasted single-origin, organic coffee to their community for retail and wholesale.
Ron sources the coffee from small farms with only one middle person involved to get the coffee as directly from the farm as possible. He shared that often most coffees go through several places before making its way to the roaster. With only going through one person the Warfields are able to get a fresher product. The Warfields are a small batch company and only roast about once a week to help keep their product as fresh as possible for their buyers. Ron shared that most people do not realize that coffee is a perishable item. Often retailers will not share the roasting date with their consumers and the product on the shelf is older and often stale. “Our coffee is always freshly roasted, ideally within a week or two,” stated Ron.
Currently the Warfields are trying to narrow down a few basic coffees that they will provide regularly, but also leaving room for special or custom roasts that their customers want. Due to their company being single origin they can run into availability issues, “It’s hard because you want to have a variety, but also some staple items that are always there to go to. Say someone starts buying your Guatemalan, you don’t want to only have it for a month or two because it was limited. There’s a balance of trying to keep things in stock and having an ever revolving door of flavors.” Ron shared that this can be difficult due to the nature of the coffee bean farms, “Different regions are going to have different growing conditions. There are different types of beans and a variety of beans. You find different flavors in different areas based on where they are grown and what they’re grown around.” He continued saying, “We try to have a variety of flavors within the coffee. Some people like dark, chocolate, nutty roasts that are really kind of bold and some people like coffee that tends to come from places like Ethiopia that tends to be fruity and floral. They are more bright and lively.”
In the next couple of weeks the Warfield’s plan to introduce some coffee from a few different regions and this summer plan to do some pop up tastings with local farmers markets and events to get more of an idea of what their customers want and to get the word out about their company. Locally you can try their coffee at Oh Honey Bistro in Cambridge, Idaho and as of March 20th you can get their coffee at Grit D Grange in Weiser, Idaho. Warfield Coffee Roaster also has a website where you can order their coffee at https://warfieldcoffeeroasters.com/ and you can check out their facebook page for any upcoming news about the company at https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61569280991841 .
