Humans of Waste-Free Dayton: Michael & Jessica Beans

This month, we are excited to feature a husband and wife duo with a passion for coffee and sustainability, both of which are passions that the team here at WFD share as well! We met Michael & Jessica Beans in the spring, and have been to a couple of Namesake Coffee’s popup events, the coffee roastery that they founded in 2016. Let’s learn more about Michael and Jessica:

Tell us a bit about yourself, Michael and Jessica. How long have you lived in the Dayton area? What are some of your favorite parts about the city? Namesake Coffee is a husband and wife founded coffee roastery in Dayton, Ohio. We moved to Dayton in 2014 for Jessica's job after living in Denver for 3 years. When previously living in Denver, we truly enjoyed the specialty coffee scene but only once we moved to Dayton did we realize that we could be a contributor to the small business and coffee community here rather than only be a consumer. In 2016 we established our LLC and started the coffee roastery and the business has been growing slowly and organically since.

Our favorite part about Dayton has definitely been the community. We have partnered with so many great businesses and have found that the city was small enough to get our business started but large enough to continue growing and sustaining itself. Our connections to other community members and business owners has been the back-bone to our growth.

Photo Credit for all photos in this post: Courtney Haas, www.courtneyhaas.com

What is your favorite food or dish? There are SO many amazing restaurants in Dayton that we love. Old Scratch pizza is next to none. Jessica is partial to pizza as a favorite for sure. Ordinaire Fare is one of our favorite small bakeries and they offer awesome dairy-free options (as well as serving in fully compostable containers). Michael's favorites include the cobbler at Saltblock Biscuit Co or the sandwiches at Grist as well.

What are some of your favorite interests? We met while living in Cairo, Egypt for a year during college, so traveling has always been near and dear to our hearts as a top hobby. Michael is obsessed with climbing and is a regular at Urban Krag and Jessica is a Purple Reign skater as a part of the Gem City Roller Derby league! Exploring local restaurants and small businesses downtown is a favorite or taking our two adorable boston terriers on hikes.

What was the specific moment that caused you to be environmentally conscious? During Michael's horticulture program at CSU, he started digging into the impact that lawn care chemicals and farming practices have on the environment. That's when he started making simple switches like getting rid of all use of herbicides and synthetic fertilizers for more environmentally friendly options such as Sunday Lawns. Once moving to Dayton, we started purchasing from regenerative farms as well and have been members of Patchwork Gardens CSA box for the last 3 years. Jessica's biggest switch was to try to shop second hand and thrifted clothing and home items as much as possible. Her mom always took her to thrift stores as a kid, but now as an adult, it's a simple way to reuse and recycle through the clothing and home items she purchases.

You own and operate your own business, Namesake Coffee. Can you share a bit more about that?
Namesake Coffee is a full-scale roastery in Dayton offering wholesale beans to restaurants, retail bags for sale, and private coffee events as well as pop-up shops (posted on our IG when we choose a new location and date). We offer an online store as well (NamesakeCoffee.com and EnneagramCoffee.com) and are proud of our coffee subscription service where we deliver fresh-roasted coffee right to your door monthly or weekly. We don’t offer a brick and mortar location at this time but instead partner with others to support their shops and stores that want to sell high-quality, fresh roasted coffee.

We also think a cup of coffee can go further than just being absolutely delicious. This is why we partner with a number of local non-profits and donate 10% of our proceeds to help build up the Dayton community. Some of these on-going partners have included Brigid’s Path and Oasis House in an attempt to support them in their own on-going efforts to bring hope and healing to some of the most vulnerable people in our city. We have also donated to Weight of Glory Orphan Care (founded by a dear friend of ours) which is dedicated to sustainable projects in an Orphanage in Uganda. We believe that everything we've received in life is a blessing and there is always more than enough to go around. You just have to be committed and intentional about how you share your abundance.

What do you tend to focus on when trying to be waste-free? We have offered a robust coffee subscription service for a few years where you can receive fresh-roasted Namesake Coffee delivered right to your door. However, about a year ago Meg from Reduce, Reuse, and Refillery (one of our subscribers) asked if we could deliver her coffee subscription without using our packaging and we loved the idea! We now deliver her coffee and a few others in a re-fillable mason jar. It's a little extra work to coordinate but we now offer this to any of our Dayton local subscribers that are interested in an effort to cut down waste as well!

One other thing we are very proud of and are getting so close to announcing full details and rolling out soon (with-in the next few months) is our newly redesigned retail bags! We have been working on sourcing bags that are 100% compostable when buried and the labels we will be using will be made out of seed-paper so when planted can grow basil or wildflowers. This new bag is so exciting for us because we’ve spent two years sourcing the correct materials to get this right so it is an extension of the intentionality of our brand and business.

What do you enjoy about being environmentally friendly? What do you dislike? We, for sure, do not get it right 100% of the time but are committed to trying things when it seems feasible and will continue the discussion on ways we can be environmentally friendly. We have enjoyed getting creative with solutions when people in this community make suggestions (such as the idea sent to us about using mason jars for our coffee subscription service). We wouldn't have considered this before but when someone asked, we saw that we could brainstorm logistics and make this accomodation work. As far as frustrations - being environmentally friendly can sometimes be more expensive. When we host pop-up shops, we use all compostable or recycl-able cups and lids, but these are an increased cost that we have to choose to value to continue to purchase.

Any other advice to people starting out or thinking about going on this journey? I think sometimes, this discussion can feel like "all or nothing" which can be overwhelming and then it seems, human nature kicks in and we tend to convince ourselves not to start at all. We decided that we didn't have to get it 100% right to make a small impact or start on one small step. We started small in ways that felt attainable to incorporate into our business and plan to continue growing from there. We still use too many cardboard boxes and we want to roll out a discount process for those that bring their own mugs to our pop-up shops - but, the main thing we choose to remind ourselves is that we don't have to pursue all of these ideas all at once. We can take one small step at a time and these small steps continue to impact the bigger picture. It's better than not starting at all.

Would you like to share about other areas you strive to be environmentally conscious? We have now been composting in our backyard for the past 2-3 years and it hasn't been that hard to adopt into our routine and makes a big difference in not dumping so much produce into land-fills.

If you could pick 1 thing to help the city of Dayton be more environmentally friendly/more sustainable, what would that be? Restaurants and households choosing to purchase produce through local farms that are committed to regenerative agriculture practices as much as possible such as Fox Hole Farms, Patchwork Gardens, and so many others. They're amazing and it does so much for the environment.

Founder Bios:

Michael Beans, co-founder and head roaster, graduated with a degree in environmental horticulture from Colorado State University which uniquely equips him to understand the coffee growing process and therefore allows him to pair this knowledge with the finite details of roasting such as how the moisture and density in every bean impact the roasting speed, etc. Michael Beans degree in environmental horticulture started him on the path to working in the field of turf and landscape management for 10 years before transitioning and applying this knowledge into coffee roasting. He is plant-obsessed and studies the impact of organic farming practices in the food we eat and the coffee we source. His meticulous attention to detail and nerdy love of understanding horticulture shows in every single bag of coffee we roast. In 2020 Michael went through the certification process through La Marzocco to become an espresso machine technician and can now provide help with any problems that may arise or with necessary routine maintenance. In short, he truly wants to be a helpful resource to all of our current and potential customers and partners to make a truly amazing cup of coffee.

Jessica Beans, co-founder and business development/marketing, has an extreme love of hand-pour methods and specialty coffee and is passionate about educating others on how they can create their own specialty coffee experiences right at home. With a master’s degree in Organizational Leadership she frequently speaks to businesses about leadership, communication, and group dynamics, therefore after attending multiple coffee cupping events and training sessions, transitioning those speaking skills to educate and instruct about specialty coffee has become a passion. Also, Jessica is the main voice behind Namesake's social media content and branding initiatives.