Q&A with a coffee expert and owner of The Bean Cycle Roasters, Penelope Flashner
By Dallas Head
The quaint coffee shop that is The Bean Cycle Roasters filled with sounds of early risers and coffee enthusiasts as I sat at a table at 7 in the morning, waiting to meet with the owner. With just her and another employee behind the counter, they were running around keeping the regulars and out-of-towners happy with their coffee. I patiently waited for my interview, not wanting to rush Penelope Flashner on her art. She takes her time making the coffee and chatting up customers, becoming acquainted with the new customers and catching up with the old.
The coffee here is definitely an art form, not one done easily. Never a burnt or sour taste in the mouth of those that are lucky enough to have found a coffee shop that roasts their own beans in-house such as The Bean Cycle Roasters. Penelope, along with her co-owners and siblings Lesly and Charles, have owned and operated The Bean Cycle Roasters for over 11 years.
After finding a moment to talk, she brings over a cup of espresso and her love for reaching out to the community through a passion for coffee.
Q: How long have you been working for the Bean Cycle Roasters?
A: I’m one of the owners. It’s me, my sister and brother, Lesly Brandt and Charles Brandt. We opened up the coffee shop in 2004 so this is our 11th year here.
Q: So it’s a family owned business then?
A: Yes it is!
Q: I’ve noticed you’ve changed the name recently from The Bean Cycle to The Bean Cycle Roasters. Any particular reason?
A: We added The Bean Cycle Roasting Co. because we just want to kind of hit home that we’re in-house roasters. I don’t think a lot of people realize that and we just want to get it out there and showcase what our specialty is and that’s our beans.
Q: How is this coffee shop unique from the many others in Fort Collins, especially Old Town?
A: The main thing that makes us unique is that we do roast all of our coffee beans in-house, we don’t go out from another supplier. We make a lot of our stuff in-house; we make our chai in-house, we try to stay as local as we can, local and organic before we source out so we do a pretty good job. We also work closely with the food co-op and a lot of other local farms during the summer for their produce. We are just really community based, we have the bookstore that we house and donate our space to and they reach out to the community and do a lot of classes with younger kids and stuff like that. So I think we just have a lot going on in our little space.
Q: I know you host the slam poetry nights, which I’ve been to and they’re incredible. Do you host any other kind of events either monthly or weekly that people can attend?
A: We have events pretty sporadically actually. There is the big poetry slam the first Friday (of each month), we have like an open mic event the last Friday of each month so people can come in and play guitar or sing or do some more reading. A lot of people kind of use it as a warm up for the poetry slam. We have some author readings and things of that nature that the bookstore puts on. We also work with the local schools; we’ll do poetry readings for their English classes and stuff like that. But yeah, it’s kind of sporadic and in between. The poetry slam and the open mic are like the only two set things that happen every month. But I would say there’s usually a few other events going on every month.
Q: Well how did you originally start the business? Like how did the idea come to you guys?
A: All three of us have always worked in coffee ever since we were old enough to start working. We used to work at the coffee shop Java Plaza a long time ago. When they closed, we all three kind of dispersed to get real jobs, you might say. But we weren’t happy in our careers anyways and we would always tease that if something came open for rent in this section of Old Town that we really liked, we would open up a shop. And lo and behold it did, so we signed a two year lease and went from there and got a business loan and figured out how to open up a coffee shop (laughing).
Q: But what’s your favorite part about being here and owning a coffee shop in Fort Collins?
A: Um, my favorite part about owning a coffee shop would be just bringing everybody together in the community. It’s fun to see a lot of the different groups just sitting here, as I’m sure you’ve noticed just from this morning, we get a wide variety of people from the city managers all the way down to people just passing through or hard on their times. We get a lot of CSU students and professors. It’s kind of fun to see all the angles of the community of Fort Collins and the different little groups that live in this town.
Q: And how did the partnership with Wolverine Publishing come about? Did you approach them or did they approach you?
A: We were open for about a year or so and then Todd, the guy who owns Wolverine, approached us actually. He always had a dream of opening up a publication company. He already had one going, it was the Matter Journal that he was putting out like in his garage or something and he always had a dream to tie that with a small book store. But Fort Collins is so hard to pay rent for the small little dream of a thing so he came and approached us and we thought the relationship would be great! We have a huge space so it was kind of nice to make it feel a little homier and fill it up with books. It’s just a good combo. People love coming in and reading and relaxing. Reading makes it feel a little more welcoming, not that snotty coffee feel to it, but we definitely like to educate people about the coffee. We’ve been partners for about 10 years now, I think it’ll be 10 years in October.
That’s a great way to connect two companies, because I love coffee and books so it just makes sense.
A: Doesn’t it?! Coffee and books, the magic combination.
