Keffa Coffee, one week after graduating from the TowsonGlobal Incubator, has moved to new office space on Cromwell Bridge Road in Towson.
If it’s not a technology story exactly, it’s one of entrepreneurship and the power of using Baltimore’s geography to benefit from welcoming innovative immigration.
Inside the new space is an imported roaster from Japan with capacity for up to 200 grams of coffee beans, two tasting tables and the equipment needed to do different brewing tests (pour-over coffee, siphoned coffee and so on) on each batch of coffee beans.
Keffa’s coffee brewing apparatuses.
Founded by Samuel Demisse in 2006, Keffa Coffee imports coffee beans from Ethiopia, which it then sells to independent roasters throughout the U.S. Some of those roasters, in turn, sell Demisse’s imported, grounded coffee to several coffee shops in the Baltimore area, including:
Demisse, a 42-year-old who emigrated from Ethiopia to Baltimore in 2004, said that starting a coffee company in Baltimore made sense largely because of the city’s port. He employs four people, three of whom work at Keffa’s warehouse near the Port of Baltimore.
The tasting tables where Demisse will try espressos brewed using different techniques.
Coffee beans imported from Ethiopia.
Demisse’s specialty roaster.
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