The Big Move

For the last 6 months we have been planning our Roasterie/Bakery move to a warehouse space that has double the space.  Nine years ago, we purchased this Giesen Roaster to enable the increased demand for coffee.  We had been roasting on a Diedrich in the Grapevine coffee house until that time, but with the expansion to Fort Worth and slowly growing our online and wholesale coffee business, we needed extra capacity.

The Roaster and the roasting operation took up a good part of the small warehouse, but when we opted to commence baking most of our baked goods, we moved our bakery into the remaining space.  It was always cramped, but the team made the best of it until we realised it would be so much better to increase the space.  The old space is in the extras before we moved the Roaster.

I have posted 2 photos of the Skytrac that we had to rent to move this 1,500 kilo machine and the 4th extra is a photo of the Roaster's new home, where the bakery had already moved, and is at the back of the photo.  What was amazing today was how much was accomplished between 8:30 am and 12:30 pm.  The team from my contractor, and the landlord's team between them removed the 4 meter chimney, loaded on to the Skytrac - I had been very nervous that the top heavy machine might keel over or something might be damaged in the move, but everything went smoothly.  Then they reinstalled the chimney, ran a gas line from the line they had put in for the bakery, changed the electricity supply and we had the Roaster fired up and working by 12:30 pm in the new location.  Stuart, my head roaster had roasted enough coffee to  last the rest of the week and we had hoped to be back up and running on Friday.  I don't think I have ever seen a project delivered so far ahead of our projections, and L and I went out for dinner to celebrate, as we have now finished what could be our last big project for BG.  It was a great feeling, and I thought it worth documenting on blip.