Our Story
1000 Faces envisions more consumers being mindful about their coffee consumption and through increased demand, spurring more quality coffee production. 1000 Faces is a coffee roaster, merchant of change, and voyager of the agrarian spirit. We are a group of folks who are passionate about coffee and passionate about being nice to people. We travel to countries of origin and establish relationships with producers to ensure the integrity of our coffee.
Since we opened our doors on day one, we have been working in partnership with the two most important ends of the 1000 Faces spectrum: the grower and the customer. It is this partnership that is at the foundation for real economic sustainability for not just us, but all parties involved. We believe that respect for geographic origin, direct relationships, and ecological awareness is the basis for creating a more sustainable coffee culture. Building on these principles, from seed to cup, 1000 Faces has set out to bring forth coffees of unsurpassed integrity and quality.
“Wherever the hero may wander, whatever he may do, he is ever in the presence of his own essence - for he has the perfected eye to see. There is no separateness.” —Joseph Campbell, The Hero With a Thousand Faces.
Production
When it comes to things related to the kitchen, we have found great joy in small artisan production and much despair in the large-scale industrialized approach. From our beginning, we have made an unwavering commitment to micro- or small-batch roasting. To put it more clearly, we never roast more than 40lbs. at a time. With each coffee, we do something called profile roasting. Profile roasting is based on the understanding that each coffee has a sweet spot.
Once we find this sweet spot, we develop a special profile of time and temperature variables that offer our interpretation of perfection. This means that we don’t use traditional terms like light, medium, and dark roasts. We feel these terms are a part of a rather complex problem. As ecologists at heart, we believe that the reductionist approach to complexity is one of the primary causes of our environmental crisis. Thus all of our coffees are presented in the pastoral of place, varietals, and our own artisanal interpretation and are roasted by hand on a Proaster THCR-25 roaster.
We are firm believers in the value of open systems & want to participate in creating great coffee from seed to cup by sharing the valuable knowledge we have acquired in our eleven years of being in business.