History | The Roastery | Our Café

Oso Negro began in 1993, when old friends Jon Meyer and Jim May—who'd worked together in the forest sector—decided the time was right for a change in careers. They started doing research, re-mortgaged their homes, and set up shop in a 200 square foot room overlooking Nelson's small, shady IODE park. Oso Negro, black bear in Spanish, seemed the right name for a couple of reasons. For one, it's an apt local symbol. For another, Jon is known for his dedication to unadulterated black coffee. Finally, they hoped the foreign words would serve as a reminder of how far coffee travels to reach us, and to consider and honour the people who grow it.

In the years since, we've grown—gradually, gratefully, and with a healthy dose of challenges. At the beginning, we spent equal amounts of time roasting (one kilo at a time), serving customers, and repairing the roaster. We sold beans in hand-made cloth bags, invited passersby to try our freshly roasted coffee, and often sped out on rapid bicycle deliveries between roasts and customers. Eventually, the tiny room by the park grew too cramped for coffee prep, green bean storage, roasting, and more than two people at once, and we moved the café to its present location on Victoria Street. And by the year 2000, the roastery needed more space as well. We found the perfect home in Uphill Nelson's Kootenay Warehousing building, where among many other advantages, we have an office, green bean and equipment storage, room to breathe, a view, a fantastic landlord, and level access-no more hauling 150-pound bags of green beans up a narrow stair.

The roastery's latest addition (in the summer of 2002) was a new (to us) roaster, a 35-year-old rebuilt Probat UG22. For us, that's huge; after nearly a decade in business, we finally have a back-up machine in case of breakdown. Because our emphasis is on freshly roasted coffee, we keep only a day-or-two's supply on hand, and a broken roaster creates a fair amount of havoc. Having a roaster to fall back on has become a necessity, as our roasting levels have risen from a beginning of 300 pounds to nearly four tons a month. We're still growing slowly, but we are determined to remain small enough that we can still remember who we are, and to grow just enough to continue providing personalised service and maintaining our commitment to the values with which we began.