Beloved Roaster Passes After Cementing Legacy Of Sustainability And Women-Led Coffee – CoffeeTalk

Deborah Di Bernardo, founder of Spokane coffee roaster Roast House Coffee and First Avenue Coffee, died at the age of 70 after a third round of cancer. She was known for her award-winning coffee blends using only organic, fair-trade coffee beans grown under the shade of a natural canopy instead of clear-cut groves. She paid a premium for coffee grown by women and provided funding for World Coffee Research, an organization that seeks to preserve coffee for future generations.

Di Bernardo feared that commercial practices of the coffee industry were driving it toward an ecological collapse and that she would not be around to know. She kept a book on her desk titled “Swearing is Good for You” by Emma Byrne and dropped “f-bombs” in nearly every conversation. Her longtime colleague Aaron Jordan said she lived by that code and used the word in a weirdly loving way.

Di Bernardo’s family moved from Queens, New York, to California, Bend, Oregon, and Alaska before moving to Lilac City in her early 20s. She later formed the F-Bomb Coffee Club and moved west. Di Bernardo married her first husband, a young attorney, who started law offices across the state and pioneered using word processors in the ’80s to expedite bankruptcy and divorce paperwork.

Di Bernardo quit her job as a deli owner after finding it too painful to work with people at the worst point in their lives. She opened a deli but lost it when she and her then-husband divorced. To stay in the food industry, she worked for a local coffee roaster and learned about the industry from bean to brew. She was horrified by what she found, as the most cost-effective, profit-driven coffees are the ones grown in a clear-cut environment with lots of chemicals.

Unable to persuade her employer to change their business practices, she set out to open her own roastery. Going all-organic and fair trade was part of the original mission. Di Bernardo said that she was terrified and wouldn’t be around to see it happen again.

In 2010, Di Bernardo opened Roast House in a small warehouse space on Cleveland Avenue in north Spokane. Two years later, a 19-year-old named Aaron Jordan began pestering her about the coffee-roasting business. Di Bernardo trained Aaron’s wife, Allison, while working as a barista. Allison introduced Aaron to Di Bernardo, who eventually took on the roasting job.

Deb, who had previously told Jordan to find 20 tenured people in his target field, took a chance on a 19-year-old punk kid, Jordan said. Eventually, Roast House won over two dozen national awards. Di Bernardo grew an appreciation and respect for him, and they would rebound together.

Di Bernardo leaves her husband James Haynes and their golden doodle, Lucy. She survived breast and bone cancer, but the disease resurfaced in her abdomen. As she battled cancer in 2023, she sold the First Avenue location to Doyle and Carri Wheeler. In 2020, Di Bernardo made Aaron and Allison Jordan managing partners of Roast House after she received a bleak diagnosis. They became owners as of Sunday.

Di Bernardo left explicit instructions not to have a memorial in her honor, and Aaron and Allison Jordan decided to throw an Irish coffee party in her honor. Details of the Irish coffee party, other than the inclusion of plentiful f-bombs, remain pending.

Read More @ The Spokesman-Review