Stooker Roasting Company

For this blog we are interviewing our customers to hear about their roasting stories and view on coffee. For this blogpost we interviewed Onno van Zanten of Stooker Roasting Company in Amsterdam.

Stooker Roasting Company

It is now 6 years ago that Onno van Zanten en Florian Hessel met at a pop-up coffee bar in the city centre of Amsterdam. The bar was set-up by Onno and Florian was a loyal customer from the start.

After this they have been working together for years as barista’s and roasters and 1,5 years ago they decided to start their own coffee company. Doubting between a coffee bar or roastery they decided to fully dedicate themselves to coffee roasting. This is how Stooker Roasting Company was born at the end of 2014. Onno dedicated himself to the craft of  roasting and purchasing coffee beans, while Florian concentrates on the marketing and sales. It is only 6 months ago that they invested in an Giesen W15 Coffee Roaster and now they are able to roast their own coffee at their beautiful location in Amsterdam.

Beautiful coffee

At Stooker Roasting company they live for beautiful coffees and want to offer coffee in its purest form. They only work with specialty coffee because it’s much more aromatic than the standard coffee that people normally are familiar with and buy in the supermarket.

“Coffee has such a nice characteristic flavour by nature. We focus on developing the coffee beans optimally during the roasting process to ensure that the authentic character of the specific coffee bean comes out.”

“I find it a challenge to create the perfect cup of coffee, finding the right balance during the roasting proces so the coffee not too bitter, nor to acidic, not too sweet and above all full of flavour.” explains the owner Onno, “I will do anything to achieve this result and when this works out it makes me very happy.”

Sharing their coffee

The ultimate goal of Stooker Roasting Company is to allow the true experience of good coffee to as many people as they can.

To achieve this goal they work together with other entrepreneurs in the catering and hotel industry. They also offer their freshly roast coffee in their webshop and provide training and advice. Via the Stooker Coffee Academy they organise SCAE certified trainings for professionals and coffee lovers that want to learn more about coffee in general and master the art of brewing a delicious cup of coffee.

Vision on the future

Nowadays there is an increasing number coffee bars and roasteries that have the passion to roast and serve truly good coffee.

By working together with these companies, it is the view of Stooker Roasting Company, the market will increase so they will be able to offer more coffee. “I am really hoping that this market will grow very fast” says Onno hopefully, “that there will be even more roasteries”. He explains that it is still a niche market at the moment, mainly dominated by large companies like Illy and Lavazza. He firmly believes that by collaborating with other artisanal and small-scale roasteries they can help each other. One crucial factor is the increase of awareness what good coffee really tastes like and which important part is determined by the roasting process itself.

Why Giesen Coffee Roasters?

Onno van Zanten has experience with several different coffee roasters, but had his first experience on a Giesen W6. For Stooker Roasting Company they choose a W15A coffee roaster to be able to roast in larger batches.

“What makes it pleasant to work with a Giesen coffee roaster is that you have full control over the roast.”

“It is easy to adjust the airflow, the cooling tray can be operated separately during the roast, the beans cool fast without influencing the airflow in the drum and you can adjust the speed of the drum. It was a plus for us that it is a Dutch company and Giesen feels like one big family. They are very down-to-earth, but also think along. If you have an idea, they start working on it. Everything is possible and they are very open to innovation.”

Meer informatie

You can visit the website of Stooker Roasting Company for more information. Should you have any questions for us, feel free to contact us.