At Signal Hill’s first coffee roaster, fair trade comes close to home

From a machine straight out of science fiction comes a soft crackle, much like the sound of gravel lightly crunching underfoot.

Francisco Portillo’s ears are well-tuned to the rising and falling crescendo of sound that abounds from the large chrome coffee roaster at Black Dog Coffee Roasters. 

The “first crack” means the beans are blonde, a light taste that yields the most caffeine. The “second crack” means they’re medium-roasted, the most aromatic of the roasts. A “third crack” means the beans are dark roasted, taking on charcoal notes as oils turn the pale green beans into shining brown gemstones. 

He only uses the large-batch machine when he closes for the day. If he’s distracted, the beans may come out too burned, too light, not light enough. Portillo doesn’t look at the temperature gauge on the machine. He only listens.

It’s imperative that he does justice to the beans—they come straight from El Porvenir, his family’s coffee farm in El Salvador. 

“The whole idea was to support my family, obviously, and the small farmers,” Portillo said. “The dream for everybody is to export, ‘I want to take my product out of the country.’”

Through his shop, he’s able to bridge the divide between U.S. consumers and small farmers, not only at his family farm, but from other small farms across Latin America. 

At 415 degrees, Portillo swiftly releases the steaming beans from the chrome oven and they descend into a whirring cooling mechanism. 

Throughout the day, on no regular schedule, the shop is filled with the aroma of freshly roasted coffee, the smell of warm chocolate just moments before it burns. 

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“The idea was, for any beans, we want to go to the farms, get to know the farmer, talk to them, build that close relationship with them,” Portillo said. 

The task has been difficult in the last year due to COVID-19 travel restrictions, but he worked through a grapevine of farmers to source his beans.

The fruits of his labor, and of those farmers, lie in burlap sacks in the shop: Peruvian beans with notes of tangerine and dry almonds, Colombian beans with notes of cinnamon and black tea, Mexican beans with a citric and chocolate taste, Guatemalan beans with caramel and cocoa notes.

On the wall hangs a large framed sack, identical to ones on the floor, but marked with a handwritten “#1″—his family’s first-ever bag of exported coffee beans. 

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“It’s not about me, it’s not about my name. I want people to see the hard work, how hard it is to get a cup of coffee,” Portillo said. “It’s very important to show people what is happening in the farms, and it’s a great value when you purchase something. You need to know you’re supporting somebody.”

Ethically-sourced beans are essential for Portillo, but equally important is paying farmers a fair price for their beans and making sure their hard work doesn’t go unnoticed. 

“If everybody can be in the picture, and everybody can know who’s in the picture, even the person holding the camera, that’s the perfect thing,” he said.

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A roaster turned mini-coffee shop

When Portillo immigrated to the United States five years ago, he had a dream.

“Someday, someday I’ll start my own business,” he said. 

That dream was fulfilled on Feb. 28 of last year, when he was handed the keys to a small warehouse in a Signal Hill industrial park. 

Then COVID hit. The temporary regret of his bad timing was quickly replaced by optimism. 

A few weeks of closures would allow him time to set up the machinery and flesh out a plan of action.

He hand-built wooden structures inside the warehouse, hoping to bring his roasted beans to local coffee shops in Signal Hill and Long Beach. When he finished, Portillo started knocking on doors, but no one would take them. He resorted to offering free batches of beans, just for shops to try them out.

“I just wanted to hear something. I wanted to feel that I’m doing something, that something is happening,” he said. “It was, ‘No, not even for free.’ It was so disappointing.”

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Portillo pivoted. He had bags of pistachio-green, unroasted beans ready to be used. He started small, setting up a small sign on the street advertising cold brew.

“Little by little, maybe four months later, people started to come in,” he said. 

Then, he started getting requests. 

“Do you have lattes? Do you have Americanos?” At the time, he was only doing cold brew, but he rolled with the punches. Though Black Dog Coffee Roasters is far from a full-service coffee shop, he’s increased his offerings to keep up with demand.

When resident Brittany Daugs comes into the shop, she leaves weighed down on each shoulder, toting four 2-liter growlers of cold brew. She’s the one that came up with the idea, Portillo said, and he’s happy to oblige. 

“The coffee shop idea was never part of the plan,” he said, but it gives him more opportunity to showcase his roasted beans.

“We’re offering freshly roasted coffee, we roast [coffee beans] every day and we roast by order,” he said. 

For people used to buying their coffee beans at grocery stores and coffee chains, Portillo said the experience can be a little shocking.

Ordering a fresh bag of coffee beans from Black Dog Coffee Roasters can take about seven minutes and customers can watch from afar as Portillo scoops the dried beans into his miniature roaster. As the beans swirl in a cylinder of hot air, their hue shifts from green to brown.

He gives them a few moments to cool before scooping them into a bag.

“Some people get surprised,” Portillo said. “People are like, ‘Oh my god, they’re still warm.’”

Black Dog Coffee Roasters is located at 1390 E Burnett St, Unit G, Signal Hill, CA 90755, marked by a vintage blue Volkswagen van. The shop is open from Monday through Saturday 7 a.m. to 4 p.m.

The shop offers 12-ounce bags of coffee for $14 that can be purchased as whole beans or pre-grinded (coarse, medium coarse or fine). Readers can follow them on Instagram at @blackdogcoffeeroasters.