Greg Schramm, an affable software vet who’s lived in Beaumont-Wilshire for 23 years, is turning his longtime coffee-bean roasting hobby into a bootstrapped business. He started selling his home-roasted beans this year to family and friends via his Bud’s Coffee startup — the name acknowledging his family nickname.
For now, it’s “a cottage or garage business,” he says, but with wife Jennifer Schramm, a community college plant biology professor, he ultimately plans to open a combination coffee shop and plant store. The shop “will be my retirement activity,” Greg says. But that’s likely four years or so down the road.
More immediately, Bud’s focuses on delivering high-quality, small-batch roasted beans to nearby customers. The service is subscription based, and beans are available on a weekly or biweekly schedule, or “whenever you want,” Greg says. He handles deliveries himself, by bike, one of several reasons he’s aiming to focus on a very local clientele. It also keeps costs down and helps him stay in touch with his customers and community.
A typical Bud’s order costs $14 for a 12-ounce supply, although some of his more exotic micro-lot beans are in the $16 to $19 range. Greg buys in bulk (65-kg bags of green, unroasted beans) from Genuine Origin, a wholesaler, along with micro-lot batches from another middleman, Sweet Maria’s.
He roasts the beans using a high-tech Aillio Bullet drum roaster that can handle a kilogram of beans (about 2 lbs.) at a time, and is computer-controlled to alter drum speed, heat, and fan speed as needed.
Greg’s aim is to find a niche for “a really nuanced, complex coffee that will really have an impact on people,” he says. Not a bad mantra.
For more information visit @Buds.Coffeepdx on Instagram.
Chris Rauber and his wife, Kim Williams, moved to Portland and B-W in the summer of 2022 after many years in the San Francisco Bay Area. He worked as a journalist at the S.F. Business Times and other publications. He was born in Oregon.