Quick Facts
Name of Business: Down East Coffee
Owner: Caley Montague
Location: The company’s original location is their roasting facility in Notre Dame, N.B., and they now have a second location in Moncton, N.B.
Brewing Facts: Down East Coffee believes the key to brewing the best coffee is using filtered cold water and a clean coffee pot. They recommend using ⅔ of a cup of ground coffee for a 50-60 oz pot instead of guessing the measure.
Coffee History: Many of Down East’s blends honor Atlantic traditions and history; they were named with the help of the Centre d’études Acadiennes at the Université de Moncton.
With a focus on quality and affordability over quantity, Down East Coffee is committed to remaining a small business. This choice, says owner Caley Montague, isn’t due to a lack of opportunity. “We want it to be fresh all the time. So, if we entrust that freshness with another organization, who might not have that same sort of ethics or quality standards of the brand, then the flavour won’t be there,” he says. “Sacrificing growth might not be the best way to describe it, but I’d rather be a smaller business having that excellent quality and be able to keep the customers happy and ourselves happy, instead of going bigger and diluting the quality or the brand.”
Down East Coffee started creating blends of coffee for retail and wholesale in 1996. The business was founded by Montague’s parents in Notre Dame, N.B. They first sold roasted coffee at farmers markets, and now they are a coffee roaster with two roasting locations, a retail outlet and an in-house espresso bar. Montague started his entrepreneurship journey in high school by selling coffee at the Moncton market with his parents. “At the time there weren’t many craft coffee roasters in the region, and craft coffee was a category that didn’t exist at the time, so I got some training from some experts at the time,” says Montague. “It was sort of a one day a week business, so that was a really good way to get an introduction into how businesses work.”
“As an entrepreneur you’re always becoming an expert whether you like to or not. You might not have training in all fields or expertise, but you have to figure things out and problem solve on the fly.”
Down East Coffee built a second roasting house in 2010, expanding into Moncton with Cafe Codiac, so customers could sit and eat. “When I started the business, I was able to finance it separately and my parents weren’t interested in opening another café at that point in their life. So, for me it was a good opportunity,” says Montague. He officially took over ownership of Down East Coffee in 2022, in addition to the mentioned cafe. “The act of having my own business at first was very important to me,” says Montague. “Working through those years was what enabled the transition to happen. By having my own business, I was able to build it up, promote and succeed, and that’s what made me able to transition.”
While he grew up around the business, Montague says being an owner is quite different than just being an employee. Learning about the operational side of things is a challenge. Between equipment failure and mishaps with the roasting machine, he says sometimes he’s fixing things outside of his wheelhouse. “As an entrepreneur you’re always becoming an expert whether you like to or not. You might not have training in all fields or expertise, but you have to figure things out and problem solve on the fly,” says Montague. “I feel like as an entrepreneur, in every field across the board, there are those little challenges of a problem you have to deal with now, but there’s no manual and you just have to figure it out and do it.”
Montague has a few ideas for down the road, but says “moving forward we’re not going to fix what is not broken.” He is, however, looking to improve the operation side of things, like with the tools used to measure the quality of roasts. Montague likens coffee roasting to a science, as blending coffee has a lot of variables and can be prepared in different ways. Down East takes a methodological approach to create different flavour profiles. These include light coffees with notes of citrus to other fruit profiles such as blueberry, while some are earth toned. The taste depends on the regions and origins, says Montague and the same type of coffee roasted in different ways with different airflows produces considerably complete results. “Basically, it’s applying physics and chemistry to food, so it’s interesting. A lot of it has to do with taste testing as well,” says Montague.
One of the company’s main goals is ensuring consistency through constant quality checks. “There’s always a slight variance year after year, sometimes there’s a bit of a different moisture content. There’s always a bit of variability there so that’s why it’s really important for us to test and audit our product.” Another goal for the company is to deliver a product that’s as fresh as possible. “That is super important as well; our focus has always been on quality and freshness. Sometimes we roast it the same day we put it into the mail. Freshness is always something that’s near and dear to our heart,” says Montague. “It’s all really maximizing the flavours for each origin of the bean and there’s a lot of different origin of beans that we provide.”
“If you were to try our coffee 25 years ago, or 25 years down the road from now, it should have that same Down East Coffee flavour profile and feel.”
Coffee is the second-most traded commodity in the world after crude oil, cultivated in over 70 countries. It is also one of the oldest commodities in the world. Down East gets their coffee from several countries including Africa, Kenya, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Brazil, Columbia and Guatemala. “I think it’s kind of neat to be able to bring other parts of the world here. We also do Indonesian coffee. So, we have coffee from the island of Sumatra and there’s another island in Indonesia producing coffee recently called Flores, and it’s a unique and kind of special coffee,” says Montague.
Each year the coffee crops can differ slightly; to account for this Down East Coffee keeps a sample from the crops each year, comparing them to make sure it’s a similar profile. One specific thing they check for is if the coffee has more moisture content, if so it has to be roasted more. Sometimes he chances on a bag of coffee that isn’t up to their standards, so roasting plans are scrapped. Montague says it’s the art of science. “We’re crafts people too, so imagine a person that’s hammering something the same way until you get amazing at it. Getting the taste of coffee right is not something that happens overnight,” says Montague. “It’s the kind of thing that takes a number of years to experience to develop those reference points so that you’re able to discern what’s good and what’s not.”
Some of their profit margins on certain coffees are a bit low and some are higher. Montague says since the pandemic the prices to ship are “going through the roof,” but they haven’t increased prices by a lot because they want to stay affordable. They believe business isn’t completely based on the bottom line, and there is room for a little emotional decision along the way. “We want to appeal to everyone whether somebody comes in and they want a regular coffee, or if someone comes in and wants to have a discussion about where the coffee is from, or where it’s processed and roasted,” says Montague. He also believes coffee should be affordable, because it’s such a big part of many people’s lives. “We want it to be available for everybody. So, it’s not Maxwell’s price or Folgers’ price, but we also want the best quality available. It’s important to be accessible and coffee is a really important part of a lot of people’s lives in general,” he says. “We’re really lucky and feel happy to be part of people’s routines. I feel lucky people enjoy our product, and want to share it with others.”
At the end of the day, even though they are meticulous with their product, Montague says the business is less about what they sell and more about their people. “So, a lot of our success is due to people that we work with as well that represent us well.”
“You can have the best product in the world, and you can have the best location in the world, but if you don’t have the right people in place to be able to represent the brand, to be friendly, to be able to be consistent with their work habits, it won’t work.”
