After a recent five-city tour, Mill City Roaster’s “Big Red Roast Rig” is hitting the road again, and this time, it’s pulling into two of the more high profile coffee events of the summer: Coffee Roasters Guild Retreat and Coffee Fest L.A. That’s right, Big Red is rolling from Minnesota to Atlanta, from Atlanta to Los Angeles, and back to Minneapolis on a long road trip, leaving better coffee in its wake.
March of 2019 saw the launch of Mill City Roaster’s “Big Red Roast Rig,” a mobile coffee roasting, extraction, and tasting lab, which made its debut as the host of the United States Roaster Championship. Some of the best roasters from all over the US performed their championship roast on board the truck!
Born from the desire to lower the barrier of entry to roasters all over the country who cannot carve out the time and finance to make the journey to Minneapolis, MN for training, Mill City Roasters wants to bring education to you!
At both Roasters Guild Retreat and Coffee Fest, Mill City’s extraordinary team of educators will be spending quality time with the attendees aboard the truck. I know, everyone boasts about their team. However, we really do have an incredible team. Our teaching style is to leave it all out on the field. We aren’t there to simply check the boxes of things we hope to or have to convey. We are there to open up our stores of knowledge and openly share what we know in a way that most helps our attendees. We are also there to learn, participate in and guide conversations. We will be offering some special bonus classes to people on board! You will find the truck parked just outside of the “Roaster Tent!” Come and hang out!
All classroom and “hands-on” instruction at Coffee Fest are free to registrants with a voluntary sliding scale payment option. Mill City will donate all proceeds to three worthwhile non-profit organizations to help with the immigration crisis at the Southern US border.
- Kids in Need of Defense https://supportkind.org/
- Innovation Law Lab https://innovationlawlab.org/
- The Florence Project https://firrp.org/
This is what Steve Green, the owner of Mill City Roasters, has to say about the charitable work we are participating in:
“In case you haven’t noticed, there are some big problems on the US border. No matter your political leanings or views and no matter what the cause, detention facilities are catastrophically overcrowded and the US government workers manning those facilities are floundering trying to cope.
People are suffering down there and worse their kids are suffering with them.
For the sake of full disclosure, you should know that my immediate family circle includes persons deeply vested in the legal rights of children and the legal rights of immigrants. I’ve participated in humanitarian aid efforts and outreach to children all over the world including China and Eastern Europe.”
Read more from Steve’s blog here.
Mill City Roasters does not believe in going it alone either. We have brought in some other big names as sponsors of this truck’s tours: Pacific Foods Barista Series, Cafe Imports, La Marzocco, and Wilbur Curtis, so you know this truck is not to be missed. Have strong sponsors who are also dedicated to bringing better education to everyone, no matter their current economic or geographic position empowers us to keep the classes low cost and our truck on the road.
You can find out all of the details on our website, www.bigredroastrig.com or follow the truck on Instagram @millcityroasters or #BigRedRoastRig.
