Courtesy / Rock City Employee Cooperative
The cooperative outgrew the Rockland location for its roasting operation.
Updated: February 12, 2024
Rock City Coffee plans to move roasting operations from Rockland to Rockport
Courtesy / Rock City Employee Cooperative
Rock City Employee Cooperative is moving its roastery to a larger space in Rockport that can more easily be configured for operations.
Rock City Employee Cooperative, an employee-owned cooperative that owns a café and coffee roastery in Rockland, is planning to move the roastery from a leased space at 252 Main St. in Rockland to its own building in the neighboring Knox County town of Rockport.
“It’s a slightly larger space but, more importantly, it’s more of a warehouse-industrial situation,” said Jessie Northgraves, the cooperative’s general manager.
The Rock City Café, at 316 Main St. in Rockland, will stay put. It is 5.2 miles from the new Rockport roasting facility.
Rock City Employee Cooperative bought 16 Rockport Park Center in Rockport from 86 Chestnut Street LLC for $500,000 in an off-market deal.
Jessica Estes and Roy Donnelly of the Boulos Co. represented the buyer and Brian Wickenden of Legacy Properties Sotheby’s International Realty represented the seller.
The Rockport property is a 2,250-square-foot warehouse building built in 1995 as part of a light industrial park, primarily for boat users, Donnelly told Mainebiz. The seller had been using the building for personal storage.
Rock City Employee Cooperative runs a 25-worker café and roastery in Rockland.
Rock City Coffee was founded in 1992 at 316 Main St. in downtown Rockland and offers specialty coffee, fresh pastries, a full service espresso bar, a selection of roasted coffee beans and quick-service breakfast and lunch.
Rock City Coffee Roasters opened in 1999, a block away at 252 Main St., to roast small batch coffee daily, using fair-trade, organic and small-lot conventional beans.
In 2018, Susanne Ward, owner of the café and roastery, sold the business to her employees, who formed a cooperative corporation. Ward remains a part-owner but is not involved in day-to-day operations, Northgraves said.
Courtesy / Rock City Employee Cooperative
The roastery produces about 400 pounds per day during the winter and almost double that in the summer.
Since then, the plan has always been to expand the roastery side of the business and to build equity for the company, according to a post on Rock City’s Facebook page.
The post continued, “It’s bittersweet to be leaving what has been the roastery’s home for the past 25-plus years, but we are excited to be growing and have a garage door for receiving our bean deliveries! No more pushing one bag at a time up a gravel driveway!”
Ordering and operations will remain the same, although the new location will no longer have the customer-facing storefront that the roastery’s Rockland location did.
The café’s operations will remain the same.
Courtesy / Rock City Employee Cooperative
The roastery supplies the café, wholesale clients and online retail sales.
The cooperative has nine employee-owners now, plus about 25 employees split between the café and the roastery.
The roastery produces about 400 pounds per day during the winter and almost double that in the summer. The operation supplies the café and about 120 wholesale clients that range from Belfast to Portland, plus online retail sales.
The Rockland location has about 1,200 square feet downstairs for roasting operations plus upstairs office space.
The Rockport location has 2,250 square feet, which provides enough room to expand operations if the time comes.
Financing for the purchase came from a loan through the Watertown, Mass.,-based Cooperative Fund of the Northeast, a community development financial institution that makes loans to cooperatives, employee owned businesses and community based nonprofits.
Courtesy / Rock City Employee Cooperative
The Rock City Coffee café was founded in 1992 at 316 Main St. in downtown Rockland.
Rock City used Cooperative Fund of the Northeast to finance its purchase of the business in 2018 as well.
The roastery’s long-time location in Rockland was in a building dating back to the 19th century. The spaces were chopped up and not optimized for production, Northgraves said.
“We’ve outgrown it to the point where it doesn’t really fit our needs anymore,” she said.
Criteria for the property search included staying near Rockland and finding a medium-size warehouse. It took a couple of months to find the right spot. The cooperative looked at about five locations, some that were lease options. But ownership was the goal.
“We really wanted to build equity,” said Northgraves.
At the Rockport spot, system upgrades are underway and an exhaust stack is being built for the roaster. The machinery includes a large bean hopper, drum, cooling tray, controls and vents. Asked whether the planned February move was still on target, Northgraves wryly responded in an email, “Yes! We are moving the roaster on 2/20, which should be…interesting.”
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