An iconic element of the local coffee scene is now part of the Luna Gourmet Coffee & Tea Company, which has acquired brand, buildings, assets and land.
Luna Gourmet will continue roasting Boyer’s Coffee in the 1927 schoolhouse near East 73rd Avenue and Washington Street, where it has relocated its campus.
“It’s a slice of Americana, in terms of what coffee is,” said Jason Barrow, who co-owns Luna Gourmet with his brother, Douglass Barrow. “They were roasting coffee there in the early ’70s, and before that, Bill was roasting out of his garage.”
Bill Boyer started Boyer’s Coffee in 1965, and built the brand reputation slow-roasting small batches of 100-percent arabica coffee beans.
Boyer’s Coffee is now served on Frontier Airlines, at more than 400 Taco John’s restaurants, and sold in such Colorado stores as King Soopers, City Market, Safeway, Sam’s Club and Walmart.
Luna Gourmet has built a family of brands in recent years.
Its acquisition of Boulder Organic Coffee gave the family-owned company access to the fair trade and organic coffee space, while acquiring Boca Java got them into online retail sales, said Jason Barrow.
“Boyer filled the last big niche, getting us a brick-and-mortar retail industry,” he said.
Luna Gourmet, which
since 1996, is keeping the traditions that Boyer Coffee built over the decades.
“When you’re roasting coffee, it’s really important not to change things,” said Douglass Barrow. “We’re not going to change the recipes or the equipment.”
They’re still using the same Probat Burns roasters — one from 1915 and the other from 1944 — that Boyer’s used when it first began roasting.
Colleen O’Connor: 303-954-1083, coconnor@denverpost.com or twitter.com/coconnordp
