Dave Fafara likes to rise early, around 4am. That’s a good thing, because for 18 years he hit the pool deck bright and early as UVA’s diving coach, and for the past eight years, Fafara has been roasting coffee before dawn as the owner of Shenandoah Joe. When Fafara took over the coffee roasting company, the operation was a wholesale outfit located on Allied Street.
“We roasted 11,000 pounds of coffee that first year,” says Fafara.
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Opening a second Shenandoah Joe in a new place on Ivy Road, was risky, owner Dave Fafara, conceded, “but there are always risks.” |
This year, with Shenandoah Joe’s 2-year-old new roastery and coffeehouse on Preston Avenue abuzz (no pun intended), a second coffeehouse opened last month in the old Java Java space on Ivy Road, and a growing list of wholesale customers that includes 20-some area restaurants and retailers, Fafara expects to do about 80,000 pounds. That’s major growth, but Fafara says, “I’m just a peon.” Compared to mega-production roasters like Starbucks, maybe, but around here, Fafara is the Joe Cool of coffee. Rather than an afterthought in an oversized thermos, which is what you often see at espresso bars that focus on the fancier drinks with caramel-this and vanilla-that, at Shenandoah Joe, the coffee is the main attraction. The new Ivy coffeehouse offers a changing menu of 10 different single-estate coffees from around the world that are either certified Fair Trade, or else Fafara has dealt directly with the farm and visited the operation himself on annual “trips to origin” where he again rises at some ungodly hour to sort beans with the locals. Coffee at Shenandoah Joe is brewed “a cup at a time” in a 12-ounce or 16-ounce size. You can also get a French press, and espresso drinks are available too, but only in a 12-ounce size—none of this grande or venti business at Shenandoah Joe, which Fafara explains just dilutes the good parts with a lot of milk.
The new Ivy Road coffeehouse has a much cozier design than during its Java Java days. Many crowded two-tops have been replaced with one long communal table, which Fafara says is “more homey” and “forces people to sit together.” Booth seats have been reupholstered and the walls painted with chalkboard paint, which Fafara says is to encourage coffeehouse dwellers to leave messages and quotes for each other.
Of opening a second coffeehouse in the middle of an economic recession, Fafara says, “Yes, it’s risky, but there are always risks.” It also was risky, he says, to buy a coffee roasting business back when all he knew of coffee was that he liked it. Indeed.
The Ivy location will host several coffee “cupping” events (that’s like wine tasting but with coffee) led by the coffee growers themselves. This Wednesday at 6pm will be a cupping with one of the farmers from Selva Negra Estate in Nicaragua.
New Bakery
The new Balkan Bakery Café on W. Water Street will hold an open house this Wednesday, 6-8:30pm. The bakery is owned by the Bosnian-born Cetics, who immigrated to Charlottesville from the former Yugoslavia through the International Rescue Committee. Daughter Anja says her family has been selling out of their savory and sweet Bosnian and Croatian pies and breads at the Charlottesville City Market for the past year. The bakery also brews traditional Bosnian coffee, which must be a real treat as Anja says that when her family escaped to the United States, all they brought with them was “socks, underwear, coffee, sugar and my father’s homemade grinder.”