New coffee shop in Fan to go green with bicycle deliveries

December 9, 2009 by Al Harris
An old brick service station on the southern edge of the Fan is being reborn as a coffee shop and roasting company.

Local owner Noelle Archibald says the Lamplighter Roasting Company should be open next week. The new business is located at 116. S. Addison St., one block south of Cary Street.

Earlier this week BizSense wrote about a new coffee shop in the Museum District that roasts coffee beans.
Lamplighter, too, is equipped with its own roaster. Archibald said the shop will roast green coffee and deliver beans by the pound by bicycle to homes and businesses throughout the city.

A one-time delivery of coffee beans will cost $12, said Archibald, but the shop is offering subscriptions where the cost drops to $10 a pound if you pay in advance for weekly deliveries. Wholesale prices are also available to businesses, and coffee beans will be delivered in reusable 5-gallon buckets. Archibald said she has already sold a few subscriptions, which has helped fund the venture.

In an increasingly common sign of the times for entrepreneurs, Archibald said she has embraced bartering as a way to keep start-up costs low.

“We are paying our accountant in beans, and some of the tradesmen are being paid partly in beans,” said Archibald.

Another sign of the times: Archibald said she received more than 75 applications after putting up an ad on Craigslist to find a couple of people to help out at the shop.

Archibald has partnered with roaster Jennifer Rawlings, who was previously the co-owner of 17.5 Ethos Café in Shockoe Bottom. That coffee shop was forced out of business by the flooding caused by tropical storm Gaston after only being open for a couple of months. Rawlings said the roaster can produce $25,000 worth of wholesale coffee a month.

Although the new shop is located off of the main street in a part of the neighborhood where there are a couple of boarded-up houses and the only other business presence is a salon, it is located one block away from the soon-to-be-vacated GRTC garage. The large tract of property in the Fan will likely see mixed-use development in the future.

Lamplighter is the latest addition to the list of local coffee roasting companies, which includes the Black Hand Coffee Company, Blanchard’s and Rostov’s.