Whole Foods Stores for Fresh Roasted Coffee Beans
Whole Foods Market is a leading retailer of fresh, natural and organic foods, with over 265 stores in North America and the United Kingdom. And if you haven’t already discovered, Whole Foods Stores are a natural choice for premium fresh roasted coffee beans.
Whole Foods Market features Allegro Coffee, a prominent national specialty coffee importer, roaster and distributor. The Allegro Coffee Company, of Boulder Colorado, was founded by Jeffrey Cohn in 1985. Whole Foods was one of Allegro’s early customers, and in 1995, Whole Foods acquired the company.
Allegro continues to provide specialty premium coffee through wholesale distribution to many national accounts including coffeehouses, cafés and fine dining establishments. For retail to the consumer, Allegro coffee is now exclusively distributed through Whole Foods Markets, the parent company.
Allegro sources the highest quality coffee beans from around the world. As you would expect of Whole Foods, with a reputation for the best in natural and organic food products, Allegro partners with coffee growers who practice environmentally friendly and sustainable growing, harvesting and processing methods.
Allegro roasts the coffee beans in small batches to bring out the finest characteristics and flavors. At roast completion, coffees are vacuum packed in oxygen-impermeable bags. To preserve freshness, the residual oxygen is removed and replaced with nitrogen prior to heat sealing the bag.
These techniques maintain freshness for distribution to the Whole Foods Stores where the fresh roasted coffee is placed in bins for convenient display. Shoppers can easily choose from an enticing variety of single origin coffees and blends. The roasting date is clearly marked and displayed on each bin. Typically, in the stores that I visit, the roasted coffee beans in the bins are not older than one week.
Customers help themselves scooping the beans they wish to buy into the provided coffee bags, marking on the bag the PLU (product look up code), and other information such as description and roast date if desired.
Some of the Whole Foods Stores offer in-store roasted Allegro coffee. While perhaps enticing and a bit high-tech, in my experience, these smaller hot air roasting machines don’t produce a result that compares in taste and flavor to the coffees roasted by Allegro and packaged for distribution to the stores.
One of the conveniences I enjoy when buying coffee at Whole Foods is the opportunity to sample the variety. It’s easy to pickup a small quantity, say an 1/8 pound of beans. I take the sample home and if I like the coffee and favor the roast, I can pickup a full 1/2 pound or more the next time I’m in the store. We shop at Whole Foods frequently enough for other items, and it’s quick and easy to stop by the Allegro coffee section and see if there is something new to try, or pickup a recently roasted coffee that we already prefer.
For espresso, we’ve been enjoying the Organic Espresso Sierra. A medium-dark roast blend with origins from Latin America and the Pacific Rim. A nice, rich, full-bodied coffee with some chocolate and caramel tones. With the fresh beans, I get a nice and consistent crema most of the time.
For drip, the Sulawesi Toraja is a favorite Indonesian that we particularly enjoy. In my opinion, Indonesian coffees including Sulawesi and Sumatra are often over roasted. I prefer the lighter medium roast for this coffee to bring out the best inherant characteristics. A nice well-balanced acidity, rich body, and unique earthy overtones. And hints of a sweet, caramel finish lingers nicely on the pallete.
See if there are any Whole Foods Stores located in your area. Stop by and try some of the fresh roasted coffee. I think you’ll be pleased.
Posted in Coffee Beans | 5 Comments
April 15th, 2008 at 7:05 am
Freshly roasted coffee is definitely the way to go. Coffee is best about 18 to 24 hours after roasting. This waiting period gives the sugars time to crystallize and caramelize properly. Some very complex varieties may need up to 30 hours to reach optimal flavor. After one day, however, the beans will start to lose quality. The rate at which the coffee gets stale increases as time goes on, and nearly all of the desirable qualities of the coffee are lost after one week.
The secret to the best coffee is definitely home roasting. You can purchase a home roaster, green coffee beans, a conical burr grinder, a french press, and an electric tea kettle, learn how to use it, and you will have the best coffee every day, hands down. A home roaster can seem pretty expensive, but they are worth it. Trust me, if you love coffee you should get one. The nice programmable hot-air types are the best. The I-Roast 2 is the one I have, and it is the sample roaster of the pros.
April 16th, 2008 at 5:12 am
Jared,
Yes, home roasting does take the coffee experience to the next level.
Interesting discussion about the transformations in the beans after the roast. The improvement of the beans as far as the crystallizing and caramelizing sugars while at the same time, the beans progressively grow stale, rather quickly.
The waiting period immediately after the roast finishes is also necessary to to allow the beans to de-gas – emit the carbon dioxide that builds up and continues to emit from the beans after the roast.
When roasters vacuum-pack coffee beans immediately after roasting completes, it’s necessary to package the coffee beans in bags with pressure-relief valves to allow the carbon dioxide gas to continue to escape.
Where do you like to buy your green coffee beans?
Sweet Maria’s is a favorite home website that we like to recommend.
Mark
July 15th, 2008 at 6:42 am
Allegro is striving to be a socially responsible company but shys away from fair trade on their own chart. They(Whole Foods, owner operator of Allegro)tried to contract Dean’s Beans a 100% fair trade organic company to sell their beans. Conscience or marketing ploy?
July 15th, 2008 at 7:41 am
Jim,
No question, Dean’s Beans is a great coffee roaster and sets the bar when it comes to fair trade and organic coffee. Many coffee roasters try to fill this mark by offering a percentage of fair trade coffee products.
Some companies with as little as 10% of their coffee beans procured through fair trade jump on the bandwagon and promote themselves as socially and environmentally conscious coffee companies.
Dean’s Beans is most certainly 100% authentic when it comes to promoting and advancing the fair trade initiative.
So what happened with Allegro? They wanted to sell Dean’s Beans coffee, but Dean’s Beans turned Allegro down?
Mark
June 3rd, 2009 at 11:03 am
Flavored Coffee beans natural or not….
While I really can’t say that flavored coffee beans are natural or not I can say that they are sugar free and at Good Scents Gourmet Coffee we offer over 150 different flavors and the flavor does not overwhelm the taste because we only use the finest of Columbian roasted Coffee for our flavored coffee, so if you are looking for flavored coffee with boldness and the unique flavors you like so much then come and visit us at Good Scents Gourmet coffee…