Newhall Coffee Roasting Co. made its way to the retail shelves of six local Santa Clarita Valley Ralphs grocery markets and is being featured at the local Costco wholesale store through Dec. 24.

The coffee is micro-roasted at the company’s facility in Legacy Partners’ Rye Canyon Business Park. It was developed, co-owner Mitch McMullen said, because he was not satisfied with the quality of the coffee supplied by other roasters to Java N’ Jazz, his retail outlet in the Valencia Town Center.
Newhall Coffee Roasting Co. was founded by the McMullen brothers, Kyle and Mitch, in 1994, and has boosted production to 50,000 pounds of coffee a month— 25,000 pounds more than the company was roasting just two months ago.

“In the beginning my brother Kyle and I only intended to roast coffee for our own coffee house customers,” said Mitch. “However, locals whose love of fresh-roasted coffee created a demand that reached well beyond our coffee house.

“Most of our coffee was being distributed to our clients who were business-to-business customers, corporate companies that supply coffee to their employees. (The growth is) because of our fund-raising efforts for the local Muscular Dystrophy Association,” he said.

The brothers are donating 10 percent of the proceeds from coffee sold in retail outlets to the MDA.
The company micro-roasts 50 different varieties of coffees including regional, flavored and espresso blends.

The difference between the McMullens’ gourmet coffee and other brands is the micro-roasting process, Mitch said. Micro-roasting means the coffee is roasted and handcrafted in small batches and immediately packaged and delivered to the customer’s door.

“Most of our business to business customers receive their coffee the day, or at most the day after it was roasted,” McMullen said. “Our new retail customers will receive freshly roasted coffee within a two- to three-day period from the time it leaves our roasters to the retail shelves.”

Coffee sales at Ralphs and Costco appear to be going well, and if the trend continues, McMullen’s company will be offered a chance to place its products on store shelves at Costco outlets throughout Southern California, he said.

For more information about the Newhall Roasting Coffee MDA project call 295-1170.