Eight years ago during his senior year at Shippensburg University, Matt Ramsay was roasting coffee in an air pop popcorn maker. Since then, the SU campus minister has founded Denim, a wholesale coffee roasting company, and is on the cusp of opening a coffee shop in Carlisle this fall with his wife, Kristin. However, coffee is more than a beverage for Ramsay — each sip unites the hands that hold the mugs, and each bean represents justice for hands that work the fields.

Why coffee roasting?

I met this world barista champion, and he’s making me a latte, and I say to him “what’s the most important part of all of this?” And he stops what he’s doing and he’s like, “that’s not even the right question. Every part is the most important part. Every little piece matters.” And I heard that and [I knew] of course that’s true. Coffee is just two ingredients, but it’s the most complex beverage in the world. And since it’s so complex every little detail adds up. And that led me to roasting because if you’re going to brew it properly then you go back to roasting.

How has Christianity guided you through this journey of coffee roasting?

We’re real careful about this because we want third space to be accessible to everyone. And that means if we’re going to put a bookshelf up and have books on it, we might have some Christian literature up there, but we’re going to have Buddhist literature and Jewish literature. There’s a beauty in bringing people together and crossing cultural divides and creating spaces for that. And I think that’s a very Christian concept. I guess on the coffee side, I got into coffee largely because of a justice issue. So when I see farmers getting paid pennies for what should be much more for the work that they do, I think about why that is, and it’s because power is tied and they don’t have power. So when I roast, it takes me 15 minutes to make a batch of coffee, maybe, if that. With farm work, how long does it take for them to get a product?

Hours, days?

A year, to grow the crop. Every cup of coffee you drink is about 40 seeds. So that means somebody picked 20 cherries off a tree for you to enjoy one cup of coffee. Right? And there’s something about that — having the power on our end as consumers, the right thing to do is to move that power. And we have to pay a little bit more for the coffee, maybe we do pay two more cents, ten more cents for a cup of coffee, but we can say we’re going to take care of these folks. So part of the reason I’m in coffee is that I’m not going to change the industry, but I can put a dent in it.

When your 9-month old daughter grows up, what do you want her to know about you?

I love work, but I do want to have a balance in my life and show Eloise that hey, we’re worth more than what our hands can produce in this world. You’re worth more to God, you’re worth more to your family, you’re worth more to yourself than what you can produce. I want her to know that — that I care about her. But I also want her to see that I’m driven in this space for justice. I’m driven in this space for equality, for the ascetic beauty of coffee.

What is the image you want people to associate with Denim?

I like the look of denim. I think it’s got a nice texture. It’s rugged but it’s across the board, you know, anyone can wear denim. The person in Guatemala picking coffee off the tree and the customer who is drinking that coffee, they can both be wearing denim. We’re trying to show that this is all woven together.

Additional Information:

Denim’s website: https://www.denimcoffeecompany.com/

Matt Ramsay’s Cell Phone Number: 717-269-3593

https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/

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