LETTER FROM THE FOUNDER
Thanks for buying Steam Shovel. You may have noticed that we don’t have every variety of coffee under the sun, nor do we have every roast level. That’s on purpose. We produce a coffee that is flavorful without the complications.
Like you, we’ve stood in the grocery store coffee aisle, staring blankly at the seemingly hundreds of various coffees, trying to decide which to bring home. These experiences inspired us to adopt a simple goal: roast good coffee and deliver it fresh.
You see, at Steam Shovel, we like people, and we want them to succeed in their God-given talent. That success starts by having the best day possible, so we try to make that as easy as possible.
Drink Steam Shovel.
Go do what you do.
OUR HISTORY
If we could use only one word to describe the founding and history of Steam Shovel Coffee, it would be providence. I was working as a painter but knew my future lie somewhere else. Then my son was born and complications compelled us to take him to Cardinal Glennon Children’s Hospital in St. Louis, Missouri. During those trips, I would stop in at the local Whole Foods to watch their coffee roaster. I told him I wanted to get begin roasting and wanted to do it with a Sivetz roaster. He gave me his number, and told me to call him. After putting it off, I finally connected with him to discover he had a Sivetz roaster he was willing to part with.
It was over a year later, while reading Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel to my son that the name for my company materialized. With the Sivetz roaster and a name, I was ready to move forward. In 2012, Steam Shovel Coffee sold its first bag of coffee, and we’ve been growing ever since.
A vital component of our culture is our international relief work efforts. With a commitment to traveling to impoverished areas of the world that have endured disaster, we have found that regardless of where we go, there seems to be one common language that brings cultures together: coffee. For us, coffee is more than a product, it is an experience that brings us together.