My Story

My name is Pavel; my nickname is Pasha. The first time I heard about coffee was when I was a kid. My family lived in Ukraine back then, when someone from the United States sent us a metal can of ground coffee. I don’t even remember what kind of coffee it was, nor its brand. But I remember, it had lots of pictures and words on it. I liked that can, it was like a toy to me. I come from a big family, and out of 14 children in the family somehow I ended up with that can! Also, I remember how we didn’t know what to do with that coffee. Coffee wasn’t popular in Ukraine back then because Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union and imports were very limited.

Later on, my family emigrated to the United States. In America, I started drinking coffee and I fell in love with it. I never knew that coffee grew on trees or how it was made. Over time I started noticing differences between coffees, and I wondered how I could make each cup better. As I started becoming interested in coffee, I tried coffee from many different origins. I saw how coffee was roasted and I became more passionate.

For the first time, I decided to go to a coffee roasting seminar in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I was so impressed and I became even more interested. I bought some books there about coffee and the author of one of those books gave me advice and even signed his book for me. I left home that day with thoughts on how to become a roaster.