MAGIC VALLEY — What started as a hobby led to the creation of Twin Beans coffee in downtown Twin Falls.
Paul Graff, owner of Twin Beans, purchased his first roaster more than ten years ago after buying it off of a friend who was moving to North Carolina.
"I was his biggest customer, and I asked him if he was interested in selling his roaster, so he didn’t have to move it. So I ended up purchasing it from him, and originally it was a hobby,” Graff said.
After making coffee for friends and seeing how much they enjoyed the coffee, Graff decided to start selling it at the Twin Falls Farmer's Market.
“So ten years ago, craft coffee wasn’t a buzzword yet. Most people didn’t know what that meant or what that was. So as we roasted and shared that coffee with customers for the first time in the farmers market, we got to see their faces light up with coffee that didn’t need cream or sugar to cover it. We just fell in love with getting to share that with the community we already love,” Samantha Buffalo, Manager of Twin Beans, said.
Since the beginning of their involvement in the coffee-making industry, Samantha and Paul researched farms around the world to purchase their beans from, which led them to learn about the darker side of coffee.
“Historically, it’s been a very poorly treated commodity in terms of how the labor goes. It’s one of the most exploited crops there is, and craft coffee has drawn attention to that and has drawn a market for us to be able to serve these coffees that care about fair trade and direct trade," Buffalo said.
This is why when searching for their coffee beans, Paul and Samantha look at how workers are treated and make sure workers are paid fairly among other factors.
“We look at, for example, if you are dealing with congo or Uganda or places like that there is a lot of women-owned farms that have started to come along because it is a primarily male dominant industry. So there’s been a lot of support for women-owned farms in Africa especially,” Graff said.
The locally owned business roasts all of their coffee in-house, and people have a variety of different options to choose from, including teas and chai.
“One of our focuses here is to provide really good coffee at a reasonable price," Graff said.
To learn more about the Twin Beans, you can visittheir website.
