Who Are We?

Paravisini Coffee Company is a Rhode Island-based specialty coffee roaster and retailer led by head roaster Joe Paravisini. The motto is "The world's finest coffee, roasted to perfection, delivered fresh to our fanatical customers", and I'm sure you've seen this slogan throughout the website or on our print materials. This motto is not just a pithy statement that sounded good, but is actually a condensed version of our purpose. Let's break it down a little bit.

The world's finest coffee

This is not an empty claim that our coffee is the best in the world, but is actually referring to the level of quality we purchase. We only purchase specialty-grade and higher coffees from our sources. Specialty coffee is the highest grade coffee in the US, and refers to the level of allowable defects in a sample of the un-roasted crop (specialty coffee, for all intents and purposes, allows none). For a coffee to be graded at this level, the coffee must be meticulously cared for throughout the growth, harvesting, processing, shipping and warehousing cycles. We also only source our coffees from farmers and co-ops that we believe treat their workers fairly and pay good wages. All of our coffees are purchased well above fair-trade prices, although they are not always "fair-trade" certified (the certification process has many limitations that exclude many high quality and ethically traded crops). Even with the specialty-grading process in place, it is common for us to pick one coffee out of many samples due to our own discrepancies in regards to what we think makes an enjoyable cup of coffee. So when we say the world's finest coffees, we are referring to the level of quality. There simply is no higher grade of coffee out there.

Roasted to Perfection

Roasted to perfection refers to our process of roasting once we have sourced an excellent green coffee (green coffee refers to the un-roasted, but processed coffee crop). We have found that there is no magic "roast" for coffee. Each region, each farm, each harvest, is chemically unique in amazing ways and reacts differently to roast temperature curves, time spent in the roaster, and airflows. When we are sampling new coffees, we roast at many different levels and perform group taste tests to determine optimal roasts. After a crop has been selected, there is an additional fine-tuning process before a coffee is put up for sale to our customers. Even from year to year, the same coffees will be put through this process again. Due to the naturally vacillating environment in which coffee roasters are purchasing, it makes sense that our roasts properly adapt. The goal is to bring out the subtle characteristics in each crop and not mask them by roasting too dark (which is often times a method to mask inferior quality coffee or changing crops), or harm them by being haphazard with our roasting profiles.

Delivered Fresh

One major difference between Paravisini Coffee Company and your average coffee retailer is that we actually roast on demand. When an order comes in, it is added to a queue, and is mailed out from the shop the morning after a roast. Coffee technically loses much of it's flavor within 2-4 weeks of roasting, and with all of our other high standards for finding and roasting great coffees, it just makes sense to ensure it arrives to you with as much of it's original flavor as possible. On each bag we actually write the day that batch was roasted.

Our Fanatical Customers

Although last in this list, this is what makes us who we are. We are not some company "out there" that you order coffee from, but are in some ways a mini family of coffee fanatics enjoying life with great coffee! Paravisini Coffee is not for everyone. If you see coffee as just a lukewarm muddy fuel to get you through the day, you will probably not see the benefit in the cost difference that is associated with specialty coffee. Some people are used to truck-stop, brick, flavored or burnt coffees, and we know that ultimately it comes down to preference. But for those who treat coffee as an adventure, a glimpse into the finer and more obsessive things in life, we are here for you! And we have converted a few people who have spent their lives drinking donut-shop coffee! With that said, we do strive to attract coffee fiends who have as much or more passion about coffee then we ourselves do, because you guys help us roast better coffee! The feedback that our fans give completely shapes the current of our decisions and methods. In this regard, Paravisini Coffee Company can be seen more as a co-op than a top-down business.