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 What's in your cup? If you're looking for a local brew, Franklin County has plenty of choices Pierce Bros Coffee, Greenfield As Dean's Beans owner Dean Cycon was getting started roasting beans for sale in 1993 from his new Salem home, brothers Darren and Sean Pierce were selling their coffee from a basement kiosk in the Newman Center at the University of Massachusetts campus in Amherst. That grew the following year into Pierce Brothers Gourmet Distributors and, in 1997, the Amherst natives opened JavaHut Coffee Roasters in Sunderland, selling and serving combinations of beans from countries that ranged from Ethiopia to East Timor. The brothers, who moved their operation to Hope Street in Greenfield 2 1/2 years ago after the Sunderland site burned, have sold 100 percent fair trade organic coffees since the beginning, according to Darren Pierce. Ten percent of company profits are donated to Transfair, the only third-party certifying agency for Fair Trade products in the United States. "We carry about as much Fair Trade coffee as is out there," he said. Although they import through a broker, he added, "We travel a lot and visit the counties. Once we make a really good connection with a farm, it makes it easier to get coffee through them." Their coffees -- including signature "Fogbuster" and "Connecticut River" and custom blends to help public radio station WFCR, the Food Bank of Western Massachusetts, Holy Trinity School and Friends of Wissatinnewag, among others -- sold by independant grocers throughout New York as well as in Maine, Rhode Island, and by co-operatives and cafes around the country. With sales at four Whole Foods supermarkets and by the Springfield-based Big Y chain, Pierce said he expects the 1,000 to 1,500 pounds his company now roasts will slowly increase. We're changing things, but we don't want to be the huge Wal-Mart coffee," Pierce says. "We're growing regionally right now." Its coffees are also sold online, at www.piercebroscoffee.com -- RICHIE DAVIS |