WHEN TOM PATTON’S roommate showed him how to use a hot-air popcorn popper for roasting coffee in their University of New Mexico dorm room, Patton found his passion. “I thought it was the coolest thing,” he says. So cool that he embarked on a 20-year career in the coffee industry before launching his own enterprise, Odd Box Coffee Roasters, in Santa Fe, last May. The coffee is already selling in local grocery stores, restaurants, and online. Patton fulfills his “coffee for all” motto with high-quality single-origin or blend coffees in deep-flavored dark roasts or more delicate and complex light roasts. “I’m considered a full-spectrum roastery,” says Patton. Odd Box’s best-selling Lima Cooperative bean grows high in Peru’s Andes Mountains. “It’s one of my darker-roast coffees with nice chocolate notes and a sweet nuttiness,” he says. Patton is dedicated to sourcing traceable coffee and educating his customers about its origins and the farmers, pickers, and millers who produce it. Look for Odd Box to expand with a tasting room, where visitors will be able to admire his Diedrich IR-12 roaster, a far cry from that popcorn popper.
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Order from Odd Box Coffee Roasters online, and follow @oddboxcoffee on Instagram to watch Tom Patton’s lively videos.