Carabello Coffee celebrates 10 years with a fundraiser event and expansion

On November 4, Carabello Coffee commemorated its tenth year of coffee roasting with The Decade of Roasting Gala celebration and fundraiser. 225 tickets were sold, with the goal of raising $10,000. (The final numbers are still being calculated.)

All of the money raised at the event will be donated to The Mercy Kids, a ministry that works with disabled children in Nicaragua. The Carabellos have supported the ministry for years.

Philanthropy has been an integral part of the Carabello Coffee business model from day one, with many of the first wholesale pounds of coffee sold as fundraisers for local groups. As the business, which is located on East Ninth Street in Newport, expanded, so did the vision for giving, with owners Justin and Emily Carabello setting a goal of, some day, being able to give away $100,000 a year.

The Carabellos have a heart, in particular, for donating to agencies like The Mercy Kids serving in coffee-producing communities around the world.

Growth year by year, pound by pound Carabello's new roasting location has space for storage and offices.

The past decade has been a fruitful one for the Carabellos. What started as a backyard hobby grew to a café six years ago and then, in 2016, Carabello Coffee expanded operations in their cafe to include an artisanal Analog Slow Bar.

Carabello Coffee’s latest growth spurt came last month when the business moved its roasting operations from their storefront space at the corner of Ninth and Monmouth streets to a rented warehouse space a few blocks away on Saratoga Street in Newport.

Emily Carabello says that it was time.

“The roasting room [at the café] was too small for the amount of production we are now doing,” she explains. “We were storing our supplies at two different places, which was wasting a lot of time and making inventory difficult.”

The new roasting location also provides room for office space, which none of the Carabellos’ supporting staff has ever had.

With the large commercial roasting and packaging equipment now housed in a different location, the Carabellos had more room to expand seating in the café. Weekends, especially, have been very crowded, but now their customers will have more room to spread out and enjoy the coffee and community.