The Lehigh Valley has a strong food and beverage manufacturing industry base, from big names like Ocean Spray in Breinigsville to Just Born Quality Confections in Bethlehem to one of the newest entries into the market, Mad Catter Coffee Roasters.
As the owner of the coffee roasting startup at the Allentown Bridgeworks Enterprise Center, Jeffrey Wetzel knows he has a long way to grow. He currently roasts about 100 pounds of coffee a week.
“That sounds like a lot, but it’s really not,” Wetzel said.
But he is eager to turn his passion for coffee into a much larger business and is already adding wholesalers and cafes to his list of in-person and online customers.
His plan is to grow the business not by just making good coffee, but by building a community of people who understand and appreciate coffee that will eventually become his customers.
Wetzel admitted that there was a time when he was just a normal run-of-the-mill coffee drinker, getting his cup o’ joe at fast food places like Dunkin’.
But he said most commercial coffee, in his opinion, is just a means of getting caffeine and sugar into your system. He wanted to build a better bean.
He bounced around various coffee shops working as a barista and even travelled to coffee growing farms in places like Costa Rica and Nicaragua to work so he could learn from the ground up what makes a good cup of coffee.
It was on those farms that he learned that sourcing is an integral part of making good coffee. The right bean is needed to brew the right cup of coffee.
He got to know the growers personally and came to understand the importance of growing coffee beans to their livelihood and community.
So now as he sources his beans, he makes sure not just to get the right flavors, but beans that are ethically sourced and will support the local economy of where they are grown.
“I want my customers to keep in mind ‘where does this coffee come from? Is it directly sourced with direct trade from farmers?’” Wetzel said.
He said once he became passionate about coffee, he knew the next step would be roasting.
In the beginning he didn’t have his own coffee roaster and contracted with a company for his production.
His first sales were through the Saucon Valley Farmers Market where he developed a loyal customer base for his craft-roasted coffee.
As his popularity grew, a friend let him know about a vacancy at the Bridgeworks and urged him to apply to become a client and tenant of the manufacturing incubator.
The facility was already home to others in the beverage industry including Hijinx Brewing.
By the time he was accepted, the space at the competitive incubator was already taken, but he persisted, getting a $50,000 loan from the Rising Tide Community Loan Fund and buying his own roaster.
We wanted the manufacturing incubator to see he was invested and wanted their support.
He said he was happy he kept pursuing the opportunity.
“I have been ultra grateful. It’s been amazing,” he said.
Now that he’s up and running as a roaster, he has plans to double his production in the next couple of months and then ultimately triple, growing exponentially.
He’s not just doing that by roasting good coffee and selling it. He has big plans for his operation.
Mad Catter doesn’t just have space for production, but for lab testing new beans, blends and roasting style. He also has a training facility that offers barista courses so that the region’s coffee shops have the best trained professionals to brew the best coffee.
In October, he plans to begin offering education programs to the general public. He said if people understand what goes into making a good cup of coffee and know the difference between a standard cup of coffee and a crafted coffee, they will become regular customers.
So, why the name Mad Catter?
“I like cats,” said Wetzel. But he also liked the pun that when he started to discover the deeper world of coffee, he “fell down the rabbit hole” getting deeper and deeper into the industry.
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