Royal Mile Coffee Roasters
Jamie started this company from the ashes of his career at Comcast where he worked for several of their .com teams in the early 00's just past the financial crash. While on a trip to Austin to do whatever freelance digital work was available (as we all had to do) he had a cup of coffee that changed the direction of everything for him. Jamie didn't understand why coffee was so much better there than back home so he dove head-first into why that was and quickly learned there was an opportunity in South Jersey for craft coffee and has worked hard since 2013 at advancing coffee around him. Being in business is taking advantage of the opportunities given to you one of the, if not the, biggest was being friends with a larger coffee roaster out of New York really early on that took him under their wing. They invited him on a buying trip to help fill a container from a family they worked with in Nicaragua named Fincas Miersch. Since then he's transitioned 1/4 of his lineup to come from their farms. Next year he's aiming at making 7 of the 10 coffees sold to come from the Miersch's! He's been fortunate to visit the farms he buys from, become friends with the family, and of course, pay extremely fair prices - more than double fair trade minimums. Royal Mile's operation seems larger than it is and though there have been previous employees over the years it's still largely a one person company. The goal for this year and next is adding a few more wholesale accounts to grow along with and then maybe look towards opening a cafe. Though, he tells us he's not too keen on cleaning bathrooms so we'll see.