Help Farm Loop Coffee Get a Bigger Roaster!

Main Points

My name is Zoe, and I am the owner and roaster of Farm Loop Coffee, a small-batch specialty coffee roaster in Palmer, Alaska. This beginning part is for those of you who don’t want to scroll through and read this entire page. Here’s what you need to know:

That’s where you come in. I need crowdfunding support to make this happen.

It would mean the world to me to keep roasting for the Mat-Su Valley, to keep showcasing specialty coffee, and to continue to bring together the coffee community in Palmer. From the bottom of my heart, thank you all so much for the support you have already given me. Please consider contributing and let’s get Farm Loop Coffee a bigger roaster!

My Story in Detail

My name is Zoe, and I am the owner and roaster of Farm Loop Coffee, a small-batch specialty coffee roaster in Palmer, Alaska. My love for specialty coffee began largely from my sister and brother-in-law sharing what they were learning while home roasting and working at specialty coffee shops throughout their college years. I immediately fell in love with the depth of flavors and complexity coffee can have and wanted to keep learning more. Fast forward through getting my first job in Southeast Alaska in 2016 and falling in love with the state and meeting my life partner, we found ourselves moving to Palmer and making it our home in 2019. Working as a soil scientist through the pandemic, I traveled the state, dug a lot of holes, but spent a lot of my time throughout the year at a desk. I found myself desperate for more interaction and engagement with humans and more creativity with a job. So, Farm Loop Coffee was born in late 2021 and shortly after I quit my job to commit to it full time. Quickly, I realized how much I needed work like this and how much interest there was in a small-batch specialty coffee roaster in Palmer.

It began with me selling coffee to my friends. However, orders slowly began trickling in from folks I didn’t know previously. And man, I was so stoked to see those orders come through! Roasting to order and delivering them around town was the main avenue for many months. Before I knew it, I had regular customers… so I kept roasting. I roasted for orders, and I started roasting for markets around town. I participated in my first market in May of 2022, and continued on to the Friday Flings throughout the summer and you all showed up! I found myself nearly selling out most weeks, and barely being able to keep up with the brewed coffee and cold brew orders at my booth. This cemented my suspicions that Palmer was interested in a specialty coffee roaster that carried a variety of different origins, and roasted them to highlight the unique flavors each one carries.

Over the past year, we all have built something amazing together. Farm Loop Coffee has sold over 1200 bags of coffee, served over 400 cups of hot coffee and 200 cups of cold brew coffee. AND this is all simply from selling in markets around town. Farm Loop Coffee has been a hit, and because you all have shown up and supported me thus far, this has been a dream come true.

However, throughout this past year of growth, what I have enjoyed the most is not the metric of coffee sold, but meeting you all and hearing your coffee stories. From hearing how dialing in the espresso machine with FLC is going, to helping find a decaf to perfectly fit someone’s new dietary restrictions… these stories are what encourages me to keep going and keep growing FLC.

In the midst of all this success and coffee sales, I’m having a hard time roasting on a small 1kg roaster and keeping up with the orders, markets, and soon to come shop stocking and shipping. What now takes me a whole week to get ready for a one day market will take me one day with a larger roaster. This means there will be more opportunity for Farm Loop Coffee to grow, sell coffee in more places, and come up with amazing new offerings for you all to enjoy.

I’m looking to jump to a 12kg roaster… that means 12x more Farm Loop Coffee! In order to make this a reality, I’m calling on all of you for support. For this GoFundMe, I’m asking for $29,000 to help with those costs. These funds will go DIRECTLY towards the cost of the roaster and installation ($50,000). It would mean the world to me to be able to keep roasting coffee for the Mat-Su Valley, and be able to provide that for MORE people with the bigger roaster. Please consider contributing and let’s get Farm Loop Coffee a bigger roaster!

From the bottom of my heart, thank you all so much for the support you have given me. I look forward to keeping you all updated as this fundraiser progresses.

Prizes

As a culmination of this GoFundMe, Farm Loop Coffee is planning on throwing a party to celebrate how far we’ve come in April. I would love for you to join! This event will be an evening full of entertainment including music, a coffee cupping, and silent auction.

By contributing to this GoFundMe at different tiers, you can receive a gift to show how much I appreciate your support. Some of these are related to the event in April. Below you can view a list of the different donation tiers and respective gifts you can receive in exchange. Prizes are cumulative. For example, if you donate $250 you can receive a mug, sign the wall, entry to the event (or 4oz bag of coffee), and a sticker. If you have any questions, please reach out to me. For physical prizes, the goal is to deliver everything by June 2023. Exact date TBD.

**If you would like to receive a prize, please fill out this Google form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfhk5vJNalSwQlQfDrd_QHfNIgY6uhcUxwy_6Drs4h2oVC68A/viewform so I can have your contact information**