We get asked this question a lot. You can't work in the newspaper business without drinking a lot of coffee —and believe me, we did. Over time, we began grinding our beans. Then John read an article about roasting beans at home with a hot air popcorn popper. From there, he advanced to a tabletop roaster. He would sit on the front porch on Saturday afternoon and roast our coffee for the week.

That was when friends started asking if they could buy our coffee. It happened often enough that we decided to test the waters. We handed out some samples and asked people to fill out a survey about our coffee and their coffee-buying habits. Armed with the results, we bought a 1-pound roaster on eBay, built a website with a GoDaddy template and started Buona Caffe Artisan Roasted Coffee in our kitchen in January 2010.