Blanchard’s sources beans from small farms in Ethiopia, Guatemala, Kenya, Colombia, Honduras and Mexico. (Photo by Cameron Lewis courtesy Blanchard’s Coffee)
Single Origin
After nearly 20 years of roasting, Blanchard’s Coffee has matured from a wholesaler and online retailer into a multicafe operation and a household name
Blanchard’s Coffee has cafes at 3121 W. Broad St., 26 N. Morris St. and 4930 Forest Hill Ave. (Photo by Cameron Lewis courtesy Blanchard’s Coffee)
Every person passionate about their craft remembers their first. Those beginning moments that we’re sometimes unaware of while they’re happening, when the foundation for our future is unfolding. It could be the first time an artist sells a painting, the first time a writer’s work is selected for publication or the first time a musician takes the stage.
Firsts can evoke nostalgic, “I remember when,” almost daydreamy thoughts of a time that seems so far away only because so much has happened since. For David Blanchard, that moment came 20 years ago in the form of a coffee roasting machine from Clearwater, Florida.
After initially picking up roasting as a hobby in 2002, Blanchard began researching small industrial roasting equipment. He discovered a manufacturer in Clearwater, and during a visit to Tampa, the hometown of his wife, Kelly, the duo made a daylong detour.
“That trip really set the hook,” says David, founder of Blanchard’s Coffee Roasting Co.
In a bold move, shortly after becoming new parents, the Blanchards sold Kelly’s car and bought a roasting machine. And like many success stories, this one began in less than glamorous fashion, with that inaugural roaster being delivered to David’s father’s garage after failed attempts at finding a place to store it.
“A child never really moves out,” David says jokingly.
With dreams of a brick-and-mortar business, the Richmond native launched an unofficial coffee-of-the-month club for friends and family. What began as a way to share the good stuff with a small group evolved organically into one of the region’s premier coffee businesses, with three cafes and a blend whose name has essentially been adopted into Richmonders’ everyday vocabulary.
“Dark as Dark is consistently 33% of our revenue year after year,” David says of what is easily their most popular blend.
The birth of Dark as Dark is actually a moment rooted in annoyance — and a smidge of spite.
When David first started roasting, his vision was to offer a global tour of coffee-growing regions every month and showcase their unique flavors by adopting a lighter roasting approach. Gifting samples of the first batches to his inner circle, David had one friend in particular who was never satisfied.
“The feedback was always, ‘Make it darker,’ ” David recalls. “Finally, out of frustration, I roasted a batch so dark I feared the roast would catch on fire.”
The bag was sarcastically labeled “Dark Ass Dark,” and his friend absolutely loved it.
After, its name was tweaked slightly, and Dark as Dark was born.
In 2005, Blanchard’s Coffee Roasting Co. was formed, debuting a roasting facility with a handful of employees and operating primarily as a wholesaler and online retailer. A few years later, David hired Seth Bauserman, current head roaster, and Stephen Robertson, director of sales and communications.
“Seth pushed excellence in quality and operations, while Stephen burned shoe leather growing our sales,” David says of his core team. “Hiring great people is why we are still in business.”
With a lack of cafes and roasteries in the area, Blanchard’s began to emerge not only as talented roasters but also as educators, spearheading a coffee-curious movement in the city.
“In the early days, there was a lot of excitement about coffee, but only a small group of folks talking about it to an equally small audience,” David explains. “Most Richmonders didn’t know how deep the specialty-coffee rabbit hole went.”
Those discussions would carry on into the future, with Blanchard’s eventually hosting weekly free demos where they discussed the origins of particular beans and the farmers behind them, brewing techniques, and equipment offered by manufacturers from AeroPress to Chemex.
In 2016, Blanchard’s moved into its current roasting facility at 1903 Westwood Ave., one of the company’s proudest moments. Another came when Blanchard’s helped friends at Finca San Jose — a small, family-owned coffee farm in Nicaragua where they had forged a bond with the owners during a visit years before — build a school and other infrastructure by providing funds for labor and materials.
The team behind Blanchard’s has ventured forward thoughtfully, understanding their role as honest purveyors of coffee and adopting the ethos that at the heart of roasting great coffee is good sourcing.
A top-five coffee producer in Virginia, Blanchard’s has grown to 43 employees and introduced additional outposts on Morris Street near VCU, in a location that formerly housed Crossroads Coffee and Lamplighter Coffee Roasters, and one on Forest Hill Avenue that is part of mixed-use project the Hill Standard.
“Subconsciously, I think we always worked toward the idea of Blanchard’s Coffee being a household name,” David says, “because we all really wanted to share coffee and conversation with our customers in a meaningful, personal way.”
Gelati Celesti’s “Just Ask” (Photo courtesy Gelati Celesti)
Batch by Batch
Gelati Celesti’s humble journey from a single shop to a 10-year plan that includes double-digit store expansion
The original Gelati Celesti opened in 1984. (Photo courtesy Gelati Celesti)
“This is built for the future,” says Gelati Celesti co-owner Steve Rosser while giving a tour of the company’s ice cream facility on Dabney Road, the place where all 85 of their flavors and seasonal specialties are crafted. The unassuming room features three ice cream machines; a wall dedicated to ingredients, such as Oreos destined for Just Ask or containers of Madagascar vanilla; a small prep station; and a walk-in freezer.
The first decision Rosser made after purchasing Gelati Celesti in 2010 with his wife, Kim, was to create one central location for making ice cream. And although the local chain consisted solely of its Gold’s Gym Plaza shop at the time, Rosser predicted a portfolio of outposts in years to come, and he was right.
“We plan to introduce two to three locations [each year] for the next five years,” says the Richmond native, “and we think this will hold us for 10 years.”
Rosser says he always wanted to be a business owner, and after working for Reynolds Metals Co., the Douglas Freeman grad returned to Richmond.
But it was a call from his friend Peter Edmonds, Gelati Celesti’s founder, that would change Rosser’s future. After 26 years, Edmonds was ready to sell the ice cream shop, and he was curious if Rosser was interested in purchasing it.
“I saw the passion his customers had for what he was doing,” Rosser says. “I felt like it was something we could grow.”
He said yes.
Over the next decade, Gelati Celesti has introduced a new location each year, and the company has grown from nine employees to almost 200. They have since hired a marketing manager who studies food trends, and they’ve gotten to know their customers, grouping them into five core groups of ice cream indulgers: traditionalists, young and playful, mainstream, adventurous, and health-conscious. Gelati Celesti has partnered with dozens of local businesses for cool collabs, its ice cream is on the dessert menu at many area restaurants, and its signature flavor Just Ask has become a Richmond staple.
“We’re doing it in a controlled way, not growth for growth’s sake,” Rosser says of the business’s evolution.
Coincidentally, he recalls watching another local chain specializing in frozen treats build momentum around the same time that he and his wife acquired Gelati Celesti.
“When I bought the company, that’s the year Sweet Frog started, and it was exploding,” he says. “And there I was with my one to two little stores, and [founder Derek Cha] had hundreds — but I still believed in what we were doing.”
Remaining concentrated, Rosser began to create a deliberate employee-centric culture guided by hospitality. Most importantly, the foundation of the business — a recipe developed by Edmonds and his father decades ago that produces a dense, handmade scoop created batch by batch — hasn’t changed.
“We may have gotten a lot bigger, but we make ice cream the same way,” Rosser says, noting proudly that one of Gelati Celesti’s four dedicated ice cream makers, Eric Robinson, has been working for the business for almost 25 years — his first and only job.
A self-described single-minded and focused guy, Rosser says the company strategy moving forward is to distribute more ice cream through its stores, and that franchising, high-speed equipment and landing in supermarkets aren’t part of the plan.
Similar to the original, unexpected call from Edmonds, Rosser received one from his daughter, Suzy, a few years ago asking to join the company. She would lead Gelati Celesti’s first dip into a market outside of Richmond with the shop’s Virginia Beach debut, and this year, Rosser’s son, Tom, joined the team as well.
“I never envisioned it as a family business, and at some point thought I would sell it,” Rosser says. “I didn’t expect my children to come into the business, and now that they have, it has spurred beyond to accelerate the growth. Having it as a family business makes it even better.”
Photo courtesy The Veil Brewing Co.
The Kings of Beer
The Veil Brewing Co. continues to push boundaries
Inside The Veil’s Forest Hill Avenue location (Photo courtesy The Veil Brewing Co.)
With multiple taprooms in operation, The Veil Brewing Co.’s accomplishments over six years are a direct reflection of its team’s unparalleled energy and acumen in both beer and business. Possessing a cool-kid vibe and a cult-like following, known for super-fruited goses and hop-heavy IPAs, it’s one of Richmond’s most celebrated breweries and internationally renowned.
“We don’t take ourselves too seriously,” says Dave Michelow, co-founder of The Veil along with partners Matt Tarpey and Dustin Durrance.
While “serious” may not be a word that immediately comes to mind for the finance guru of the bunch, the phrase “it made sense” is one he uses often when speaking of their forward momentum. Each step since the brewery’s inception has been purposeful and planned, from planting taprooms in up-and-coming neighborhoods to rolling out a tasting room that showcases lambics and barrel-aged selections to regularly hosting Cantillon — an acclaimed small brewery in Belgium where Tarpey was one of the first Americans to apprentice.
In the spring of 2016, The Veil made its debut at 1301 Roseneath Road in Scott’s Addition, quickly emerging as a force in the beer scene.
“It was an overwhelming response,” says Michelow, also co-owner of Barrel Thief wine shop. “The passion and love we got from the community from day one can never be forgotten. Those lines were there on the first day.”
Spotting eager beer fans spilling out the door of the brewery and around the block on new-release Tuesdays would become commonplace, along with seeing people leaving with cardboard boxes, coolers and even hand trucks full of four-pack cans.
In 2017, The Veil’s owners, along with developers Charles Bice and Birck Turnbull, purchased what would become the Hill Standard development, an almost 2-acre parcel of land on Forest Hill Avenue, to serve as the future site of the brewery’s South Side tasting room.
During the planning period for the outpost, the partners began discussing plans for regional growth.
“We thought about wanting to replicate what we had in Richmond somewhere else,” Michelow says. “We also started thinking about being in a new community, and not just distributing to Norfolk, but being a part of Norfolk.”
With ties to the Tidewater area — Tarpey grew up there and previously worked at O’Connor Brewing Company, and Michelow attended college in Williamsburg — the duo paid a visit to Hampton Roads and took notice of the development in the region.
“It felt similar to Scott’s Addition three or four years ago,” Michelow says. In 2019, The Veil introduced its Norfolk location and attached full-service restaurant called Codex.
Simultaneously breaking ground on the development in South Side, the team was searching for tenants to fill the retail shops adjacent to the taproom. Looking for a microcommunity of retailers ready for expansion, they approached the owners of Stella’s Grocery, Blanchard’s Coffee and Charm School ice cream shop to join the new venture, in addition to asking restaurateurs and brothers Nelson and Paulo Benavides of Pepe’s and Hibachi Box about developing a permanent food concept, Y Tu Mama.
“It was kind of like first-round draft picks,” Michelow says.
In November 2020, The Veil opened its Forest Hill Avenue taproom, marking the first phase of completion for the Hill Standard.
While the team originally planned to open a food hall in Scott’s Addition at 1509 Belleville St., the project was scrapped in June of 2020 due to the pandemic. Now, the historic building and former candy factory is preparing to become the brewery’s main tasting room by the end of summer 2022, complete with a restaurant that will feature a to-be-revealed “well-known” chef. The Roseneath Road location will become the brewery’s dedicated production facility.
The Veil’s success may evoke some eye rolls for its use of ingredients such as Hi-C or fried chicken in beer or its abundance of emojis in Instagram posts, but courting approval isn’t part of the agenda. If beer has become a pillar of Richmond, then The Veil is one of its strongest components.
“There’s a flow and uniformity that we’ve always stuck to that resonates with folks,” Michelow says of their success. “I think a big part of who we are is creating that experience and that design and aesthetic and just being a part of the community.”
Up, Up and Away
Richmond’s dining scene by the numbers | Photos by Jay Paul and Eileen Mellon
