Bellwether Coffee
Production drums, Berkeley, California, United States.
History
Ricardo Lopez comes from wine and technology. Around 2013, he questioned café owners to understand why so few roast for themselves. The answers always came back to the same four obstacles: a gas line, a hood and its ventilation permit, floor space, starting capital. He founded Bellwether Coffee in West Berkeley to remove them all at once. Development took about six years. The first machines entered cafés in the summer of 2018, under the general management of Nathan Gilliland. Ten million dollars were raised that year, then forty million in a Series B on September 4, 2019. The round was led by DBL Partners, with Lyndon Rive and Peter Rive, the founders of SolarCity. The choice of investors states the project: Bellwether sells first of all the electrification of a trade that runs on gas. A second generation came out in February 2022. Japan opened the first foreign market in July 2023. The countertop Shop Roaster arrived in March 2024, Ricardo Lopez having taken back the general management in the meantime.
What it makes
Bellwether assembles its machines in its Berkeley workshop. The principle is an enclosed electric drum, with no flame and no duct to the outside. Resistance heaters heat the wall of the drum, and so the bean by conduction. They also heat the air that enters the chamber, hence by convection. An agitator turns continuously to stir the charge, which avoids the hot spot of a bed of still beans. This is not a hot-air roaster: the manufacturer specifies that the beans are never suspended. The smoke and the volatile organic compounds, the gases the bean gives off as it roasts, do not leave raw. They pass through an integrated afterburner, a heated stage that oxidizes them, then a catalytic filtration. Nothing goes to the roof, hence the absence of a hood and a ventilation permit. The Shop Roaster plugs into a single-phase 30-amp circuit at 200 to 240 volts and draws 5 kilowatts.
The models
First-generation Bellwether Roaster, delivered from the summer of 2018. About 3 kg per batch in ten minutes, up to 135 kg per day announced. Series 2 in February 2022, in the same capacity class. It brings a 24-inch touchscreen, new software, and a revised ventilation and cooling tray. Its power supply moves to 240 volts single-phase or 208 volts three-phase, on a 50-amp circuit. Shop Roaster in March 2024, at 14,900 dollars and 184 kg on the scale. It roasts 1.5 kg per batch, in 8 to 12 minutes plus 4 minutes of cooling. That makes 3 to 4 batches per hour, or 15 to 20 kg per eight-hour day. A continuous-loading option at 5,000 dollars adds a 20 kg hopper. It chains up to thirteen batches without intervention, about 20 kg in four hours and more than 80 kg per day. The site calls this package “20 kg Roaster,” but the batch remains 1.5 kg.
What you gain
Installation comes down to an outlet. An electrician puts in the 30-amp circuit in two to four hours. A gas machine, by contrast, demands a hood, a roof penetration and an external afterburner billed at ten thousand to thirty thousand dollars. The electric resistance does not have the inertia of a flame burner and needs no combustion air. The machine therefore holds the programmed curve by itself: charge temperature, rate of rise, end temperature and end time. The same profile is copied from one machine to another. Consistency thus ceases to depend on the operator.
What you lose
Airflow is not in the roaster's hands: the software sets it alone, and the operator touches only four values. Yet air is one of the three levers of the drum, with heat and time. The 5 kilowatts of the circuit cap the instantaneous power, where a gas burner of comparable capacity delivers far more. Nothing is corrected by ear during the roast: the machine runs through its profile. All the parts come from the manufacturer alone, which ended software support and the supply for first-generation machines on January 1, 2026.