Roaster of the Year: Micro Category Winner 2021—Greater Goods Coffee Company
By Emily Puro
For a company heading into its sixth year of operation, weathering a pandemic that has devastated many other small businesses, and whose owners had virtually no experience in the coffee industry when they decided to start a roastery, Greater Goods Coffee Company—Roast’s 2021 Micro Roaster of the Year—has a remarkably impressive story.
It all started in 2012, when co-founder Khanh Trang accompanied fellow co-founder Trey Cobb on a business trip to Portland, Oregon. A commercial photographer at the time, Trang had always been interested in coffee, so when she realized the Specialty Coffee Association of America (now SCA) was hosting its annual conference nearby, she decided to check it out. She was so inspired by what she experienced that weekend, she and Cobb decided to make coffee their new career.
Just eight years later, Trang is now a licensed Q-Grader and SCA Community Coordinator for the South Central Region, and Cobb is an Authorized SCA Trainer, a Q Processing Level 2 Professional, and a member of the Coffee Roasters Guild Membership Committee. What’s more, not only are they operating a successful roasting company, coffee bar and two cafes that continue to thrive in the midst of the currenteconomic crisis, they also opened an SCA Premier Training Campus in 2018 that offers instruction for every SCA educational pathway.
Quality and Community
The original idea was simply to open a roastery to supply wholesale accounts, but Trang and Cobb quickly realized they wanted to open a cafe as well.
“We decided to open a cafe so we could present the types of coffees that we were excited about in the manner that we felt they were best represented,” says Cobb, “and also to be able to better communicate our story.”
That story focuses on giving back to the community—which includes the local community in and around Austin, Texas, as well as the larger specialty coffee community.
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