Confidential to Sprudge readers: There’s no coffee city in North America we want to visit more right now than Kansas City, Missouri. Some of that is wanderlust – we’ve never been! – some of that is our well-documented love of BBQ, but most of all we want to check out some of the cafes and roasters we learned about at last year’s Big Central Regional Barista Competition, including Oddly Correct and Parisi Artisan Coffee.
Aa full-sized DC-3 aircraft was mounted on the roof of The Roasterie’s expansive new HQ restoration. As you might expect with a spectacle of this size, local media are all over it. Take it away, Kansas City Star:
โWoohoo. Isnโt she beautiful?,โ said Danny OโNeill, founder of the Roasterie, who first got the idea of using a real DC-3 on the coffee roasting plant nearly two decades ago. โIt is symbolic of how we roast our coffee โ air roasted – and it will be an icon. She looks so cute and chubby.โ
The DC-3 feature is part of a $5 million expansion for the Roasterieโs headquarters that will include a new and expanded cafรฉ, event space and cupping room, where custom blends are developed and sampled.
Not even Mr. O’Neill knows how much this stunt will end up costing, but it’s sure a signature look for The Roasterie, one of the Midwest’s oldest specialty coffee roasters. Fun trivia fact: The Roasterie hosted the very first USBC Regional event outside the West Coast, all the way back in 2003.
