Nov. 2—BEMIDJI — Chad Sutherland started roasting coffee as a hobby three years ago in his garage nestled among the pines just east of Bemidji. He just wanted to make fresh coffee for himself and his wife Jen.
Fast forward to today, and Sutherland has a fast-growing company on her hands.
It’s called Butler Beans Coffee Company and it still operates out of that same garage, but with a lot more equipment, a few friends to help out, and orders coming in from all over the country.
Sutherland, 44, still works full-time as a fiber optic installation manager for Shevlin-based J. Carlson Services. But in the evenings and on weekends you will find him in that garage, where the tantalizing smell of coffee fills the air.
“This was going to be a hobby,” Sutherland said with a smile. “It would just be normal for us to have freshly roasted coffee. It doesn’t matter if it’s my coffee or someone else’s, the fresher you can get it the better. Often in the store it might be six to eight hours. months old by the time you get it.”
Chad and Jen built a new home on the property in 2020, complete with a three-stall garage to make room for a boat and an all-terrain vehicle. But a year later, Chad started thinking about a new hobby that had nothing to do with coffee.
“At first I wanted to learn how to brew beer,” he said. “I started looking at it and realized it required a lot of equipment. So I thought, ‘I wonder how coffee is roasted.’ I decided to go that route.”
He started with a small machine that could fry about half a pound at a time. Then Jen urged him to earn enough to give as a Christmas present.
“After eleven hours of direct burning, I knew I needed a bigger burner if we were going to do this,” he recalls. So he bought one that could do up to three pounds at a time, all the while honing his skills by researching and watching videos online.
“After about six months it was too small,” he said, “so we upgraded to the Roasted Right roaster that can handle 14 pounds.”
That led to the official launch of Butler Beans Coffee Company in April 2022. It started as a cottage food producer and then became a certified commercial food wholesaler, which meant converting the former garage into an enclosed space with proper sinks and a handwashing area. station and passing a Minnesota Department of Health inspection.
Sutherland orders pallets of coffee beans from two main suppliers, Royal New York and Cafe Imports. Butler Beans also offers a variety of teas and chocolate candies.
Sutherland uses a fluidized bed burning method, in which air is first heated and then blown through the burner bed, eliminating the need for a heated drum.
“It works like a popcorn popper, so it blows air through the beans and chaff comes off the beans, which can make the coffee bitter and sour,” Sutherland said.
It is clear that his efforts have been successful. Butler Beans has residential customers throughout the region, including several in Minnesota’s Iron Range. And the espresso blend is now used to make Espresso Stout beer at Bemidji Brewing.
Tom Hill, co-owner and brewmaster of the brewery, was looking for a local roaster after Wollman Coffee moved its operations from Bemidji. He was happy to connect with Sutherland.
“We really connected right away,” says Hill, whose Espresso Porter is available from September through December. “Chad really takes a nerdy engineering approach to roasting coffee. That really appealed to us, just the technical nature of it. So we started exploring some of his coffees, and we liked what we tasted .”
Butler Beans Coffee is also available at Fiddlesticks Fiber Arts, a new downtown Bemidji store that opened Friday, November 1 at 509 Beltrami Ave. NW.
Sutherland graduated from high school in Pine River-Backus. After serving in the U.S. Navy, he worked in heating and air conditioning at Peterson Sheet Metal and Higgins Heating in Bemidji, then joined Team Industries before taking his current job at J. Carlson Services.
Before moving to Bemidji, Sutherland lived in Bagley, where he operated a self-storage business on his property.
The name for his coffee company goes back to Chad’s high school days, when he helped out on a farm owned by his grandmother’s brother near Middle River, Minnesota.
“One day I was sitting in the living room and some family friends came over with their kids,” he said. “The kids came into the living room and ran out because they didn’t know who I was. They asked my grandmother’s brother who I was and he said, ‘Oh, that’s my butler.’ That’s what they’ve called me ever since. So my storage units were Butler Storage, and I just passed that name on to Butler Beans.”
