Gathering around coffee

SUCCESS BREWING: Brian D. Dwiggins, owner of Borealis Coffee Co., which specializes in small-batch coffee roasting, will be opening a coffee shop in the Riverside section of East Providence. / PBN PHOTO/MICHAEL SALERNO
SUCCESS BREWING: Brian D. Dwiggins, owner of Borealis Coffee Co., which specializes in small-batch coffee roasting, will be opening a coffee shop in the Riverside section of East Providence. / PBN PHOTO/MICHAEL SALERNO

What started as a part-time hobby roasting coffee that allowed Brian D. Dwiggins to make a little extra money, has grown into a full-fledged company that’s opening a new shop in East Providence.

Borealis Coffee Co., owned and operated by Dwiggins and his wife, Jessie, began in Pawtucket but is moving to the Riverside section of East Providence this month. Its roots are from the unusual background of movie sets, where Dwiggins previously made his career working on movie crews.

“Film work is all freelance, and you work crazy hours for half the year and then you’re unemployed for half the year,” Dwiggins said. “I was home roasting in Pawtucket for a little over two years and then some people I worked with said that if I ever got to the point where I was roasting enough, they’d buy bags from me.”

Dwiggins jumped on the opportunity and started making some extra cash selling roasted coffee to fellow crew members and others connected to the film industry. After a while, however, Dwiggins realized he really enjoyed the coffee business and decided to do it full time.

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Borealis now sells products wholesale to a few clients, but the majority of sales come from farmers markets, movie sets and other individual customers. That’s set to change, however, as Dwiggins is diversifying the business model and opening a full-time coffee shop at the old train depot on Bullocks Point Avenue in Riverside. Encouraging this move are trends he’s identifying in consumer demand.

“Coffee is an affordable luxury and people love it,” Dwiggins said. “People are turning a little bit away from the corporate commodity coffee that people so often drink, which still drives the region. There are pockets of people that have been drinking local products, so I’m hoping I can be that here and that Riverside and Barrington will be excited about the new location.”

Dwiggins envisions the coffee shop taking up most of his time and will leave the roasting side of the business to be determined by wholesale demand. He received some tax incentives from the town to revitalize the building and believes that he can show the economically diverse neighborhood that good coffee doesn’t have to be sold at $8 a cup.

Dwiggins says the affordability of Riverside was a huge draw, but also that he sees there’s a revitalization effort being made in the neighborhood to increase commercial activity.

“I want to ride this wave up, not to wait until it’s too late, so it just makes a lot of sense. The more people I talked to, the more I feel confident that this is going to work,” he said. “Coffee shops should be about bringing people together, like a community center, and being a place where people can come and hang out. This isn’t going to be a place to come and plug in; it’s going to be a gathering spot for the community.” •

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