Reflections from Nate Hamood, DOCR’s President + Director of Coffee, on 17 years of dreaming big and finding ourselves here
I hope that 13-year-old kid with a copy of Roast Magazine in hand, roasting batches of coffee on his Ronco rotisserie oven, is proud.
Just last week, we were named the 2027 Micro Roaster of the Year by Roast Magazine, an accolade we could have only truly dreamed of all those years ago.
The Roaster of the Year award recognizes the top roasters in the world for excellence in coffee quality, sustainability, and community impact. It’s widely considered one of the highest honors in the specialty coffee industry, and it's incredibly meaningful to us.
However, we didn’t start 17+ years ago as the company we are today. We evolved as a business, but started really as a live music and dessert shop with just my family working the counter. We pieced together furniture and funds, got equipment on a loan, and built it scrappily — but we built it together. This is where I learned so much about business and hospitality, and of course, about coffee too.
It was this humble and scrappy beginning that was the catalyst for so many bigger dreams and goals."
I started roasting coffee on a Ronco rotisserie oven that was converted to a drum coffee roaster when I was 13. I remember reading stories about Roaster of the Year back then, sitting at our original location in Rochester after school, between 1lb batches of coffee. I don’t think I could’ve called it a goal back then, or even truly a dream. Given where we were at as a business, it felt like such a pipe dream to ever think we could be amongst those names. I was so incredibly inspired by these companies, not only for the coffees they were bringing in, their philosophies, and the high level of execution, but also by their operations, missions, and ethos. Companies like Counter Culture, Intelligentsia and Stumptown, all those years ago. These businesses were pioneering specialty coffee and building inspiring organizations that I was just entirely enamored with.
I always dreamed of roasting some of the best coffees in the world, serving them in cool spaces with dedicated teams, but I was also dreaming of growing those teams, the culture, and of ways coffee could advance into being recognized as a more professional career that it should be. That meant high standards and dedication to the craft, but it also meant training and development for teams; it meant growing enough to increase compensation and add various roles that could help elevate what we were doing; it meant offering benefits to support coffee professionals and provide the stability of a professional career. Otherwise, it could never truly be that. These things are everyday pursuits, but they felt immensely distant in 2009 with only $50 in sales a day and no one but our family behind the counter.
It’s been a long journey these past 17 years in evolving into the business and company we are today. It has brought me immense pride along the way to have dedicated so much of myself and my life to building this thing because I believe it has so much more impact at large — building this thing into something bigger than any one of us.
This organization means so much to so many people, and that has continued to inspire me every day. So many people have contributed so much to this company and helped to make it what it is today."
It certainly has not always been easy. I believe that is perhaps something I’d never want to give the impression of, as I think it does anyone a disservice in their own journeys to not be aware of and know it's normal, and worthwhile, to need to continue pushing through.
It’s been and continues to be the honor of my life’s work to help continue growing DOCR for all of its people into the company we see it to be. In 2027, that company is the Roaster of the Year.
I can say, with full confidence, that 13-year-old Nate, with a copy of Roast Magazine in hand, roasting batches of coffee on his Ronco rotisserie oven, is definitely proud.
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Read more: Roast Magazine Announces 2027 Roaster of the Year Winners
Read DOCR's feature story: Roaster of the Year: Micro Category Winner 2027 — Dessert Oasis Coffee Roasters
All photos were taken by Ben Lew | Photographer + Filmmaker based in Michigan and beyond.
@thebenlew | www.thebenlew.com
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ABOUT THE WRITER: Nate Hamood is the President & Director of Coffee for Dessert Oasis Coffee Roasters. He's the one responsible for bringing the coffee you love to DOCR — putting his heart and soul into sourcing and sharing the origin stories of producers and farms. When he's not wearing his many hats at DOCR or pacing back & forth with his phone in hand responding to texts and emails, you can find Nate enjoying the simple things in life. Like a well-made cocktail, a punk-rock show, or walking his dog, Lucky, with his beloved wifey, Olivia.