(L-R) Emily Rankin, Von Coven and Fred Schneider III at Breyting Community Roaster in DeLand. (Photo by Jeremy Williams)
DeLand, Fla. | Fred Schneider, frontman of the iconic rock band The B-52s, and Von Coven, founder of innovative studio Breyting, have launched a coffee roaster in DeLand, Florida, whose purpose is to raise funds for Central Florida nonprofits.
Breyting Community Roaster donates a portion of every coffee purchase to a cause chosen by the purchaser from a list of participating nonprofits.
Each Breyting box comes with 1.25 pounds of coffee, chosen from one of four roasts, each from a specific region: a light roast from Africa, a medium roast from South America, a dark roast from Southeast Asia and a Swiss water-processed decaf, and is freshly roasted once the order is placed. Each box sells for $22.50 with 20% given to the nonprofit of your choosing.
Coven, who has been roasting coffee since 2007, has experience in getting coffee into grocery stores but says Breyting focuses on selling coffee online in partnership with nonprofits because they want to “work with people rather than for people.”
“I’ve always wanted to be involved in social aspects and when you go to corporations a lot of them in their operating agreements or shareholder agreements cannot do business with you if you have a social mission, so it excluded a lot of what we wanted to do,” Coven says. “Fred and I were talking about it and I said ‘Fred, if we can just get away from corporate America, cut the cord and create our own market where we work in collaboration with nonprofits, all the money we were giving to cooperation through slotting fees, advertising budgets, co-op marketing budgets, whatever it might be, if we gave that percentage to nonprofits it would be better for us, better for them, better for the world.”
Coven says they got a great deal on a space that doubles as a work and living space with enough room for a small roastery.
“Now we have very little overhead which allows us to be able to do things like this,” he says. “We just want to be a support system for nonprofits. That’s the goal. Even though we have a small space here, we can do a lot of output. We can do about 300,000 boxes of coffee per year which would allow us to give almost $2 million back a year.”
Breyting offers dozens of nonprofits that purchasers can select working on various causes including veterans care, education, disaster relief, animal conservation, human rights, equality and more.
To help raise awareness about the roastery and some critical organizations, Schneider personally selected three nonprofits to highlight at the program’s launch in December: Save the Manatees Club, So You Want Your Name in Lights and the LGBT+ Center Orlando.
“I’ve always been interested in the manatees, even as a kid. I got to swim with them a few years ago and it was a life changing experience, so I wanted to include them,” Schneider says. “And I love to help bring music to underserved communities and So You Want Your Name in Lights is a music-focused summer camp that helps get music to underserved youth. And of course I wanted to include The Center, I mean I’m gay and they do great outreach to the community.”
It isn’t just about selling coffee, says Emily Rankin, Breyting’s campaign director, it is about supporting nonprofits however you can.
“We have a good news newsletter that goes out about a lot of the organizations,” she says. “We include resources and other ways that you can help and get involved.”
“Yeah, we’re roasting coffee but that’s almost a byproduct of helping nonprofits,” Coven adds.
For more information and to purchase a box of coffee, go to CommunityRoaster.com.
