Boonhuis was started in 2019 by Anouk and Joost, who had spent years working in cafés and kept running into the same problem. The coffee they liked was hard to buy fresh, and the coffee that was easy to buy had been roasted a month earlier.
They found a former tinsmith's workshop on Smederijstraat, bought a used five-kilo drum roaster, and spent their first winter ruining about a tonne of green coffee. By spring they had three coffees they were happy to sell. Their mother, Marieke, handles the packing and the shipping. Their father still insists he is only there to carry boxes, and does the accounts as well.
Today there are five of us. We roast four days a week, pack on the other two and answer every email ourselves.
How we buy
We work with two importers and one direct partner, and we buy from lots that we have tasted before the sacks leave the country. Prices are agreed before harvest when we can, and we pay well above the commodity market. We do not use certification labels as a shortcut. We ask what the farm pays pickers, how it manages water and what it does with the pulp, and we read the answers.
How we roast
Every coffee has its own profile, and every profile is a draft. We cup the roast the morning after, change one variable and roast again. When two of us agree, it goes on sale.
We use a 5 kg and a 15 kg drum roaster. Both are heated by gas, and the afterburner cleans the exhaust before it leaves the building.
Packaging
Our bags are kraft paper with a thin liner and a one-way valve. They are not compostable yet, and we will not pretend they are. The box they travel in is cardboard and can go in with the paper. Send the empty bags back to us in the post if you like, and we will reuse the ones that are still in good shape.