February 11, 2014
Speaker: BILL SWOOPE, JR., Co-Founder and Co-Owner of “Coffee Tree Roasters”
The family-run enterprise started with one coffee shop in Squirrel Hill in 1993 and has grown to include five shops with another set to open in Pleasant Hills next month. The shops plus the wholesale operation and a service company called Espresso Solutions now employ between 80 and 100 people, a mix of part-time and full-time.
The staff roasts about 500,000 pounds of coffee beans every year, or about 4,000 of those 132-pound burlap bags, rather more than the 10 bags ordered to supply that first store in 1993. Deliveries of the roasted beans are made as far away as State College, Erie and Washington, Pa.
Squirrel Hill Historical Society 