“We like to say we’re a 100-year-old company celebrating our second birthday,” said John Moore, vice president of coffee and sales for Dallis Coffee. 

Indeed, the specialty coffee roaster and wholesaler to some of New York’s finest eateries is a 96-year-old veteran of the local coffee scene that recently received a new lease on life, thanks to its being purchased two years by Brazilian coffee company Octavio Inc. that was looking to expand its operations into the United States.  

Ever since, Dallis Coffee, housed in three buildings totaling nearly 16,000 square feet in Ozone Park, Queens, has experienced a renaissance of sorts, said Moore. The company, which employs roughly 30 employees, is remaking its showroom into an education center, which will feature classes on cupping, or, in layman’s terms, coffee tastings; coffee preparation; and latte art, which entails forming artistic designs in the frothy milk that adorns lattes and cappuccinos.  

The company also has an on-site lab, where coffees are graded to ensure that no defects, which could include objects such as rocks, sticks, stones, or even bullets, made their way into a bag of coffee from the country of origin, said Moore. If there’s one defect in a 300 gram sample of coffee, the company would not consider the batch a specialty coffee. There is an identical lab at the company’s Brazilian location to allow two-way collaboration, said Moore. 

Dallis also recently purchased two 1950s German-manufactured, hand-forged and hand-cast Probat coffee roasting machines, which will be used for high-end roasting jobs and will be linked to a weather station on the roof via computer system, representing a total investment of about a quarter million dollars, said Moore. 

Needless to say, the folks at Dallis take coffee very seriously. The company lists among its two Q-graders, a rigorous testing and certification program administered by the Coffee Quality Institute than includes a written exam, cupping tests that assess one’s knowledge of coffees from various world regions, and a blind aroma test, which requires one to identify various notes that comprise coffee.  

Mark Howell, director of coffee, operations and purchasing for Dallis Coffee, spent four years working at a coffee mill in Honduras, two of which during his time in the Peace Corps, before later opening his own company, Commonwealth Coffee, in Massachusetts. Moore started a coffee shop on campus while a student at Earlham College in Indiana, before working for New World Coffee in New York, and later opening the company’s first “to-go” coffee venture in Munich, Germany in 1997. He later served as a coffee consultant for companies including Counter Culture Coffee and MilkBoy Coffee near Philadelphia, and ran an import/export business.  

The company considers itself at the forefront of the “third-wave” of the coffee movement, said Moore. The first wave encompasses what one would think of as your grandmother’s coffee—Maxwell House, Chock Full o’Nuts. In other words, home brewed, drip coffees purchased from the supermarket. The second wave of coffee includes more high-end coffee purveyors such as Starbucks and Peet’s Coffee, some of whom have lost much of their cachet through overexpansion and market saturation.  

The third wave of coffee, which Dallis Coffee is a part of, is comprised of micro-roasters. 

Moore said the company has been at forefront of this movement since the late 1980s, when a member of the Dallis family forged relationships directly with single-estate farms. Companies such as Intelligentsia and Stumptown Coffee Roasters are now synonymous with the micro-roasting movement. 

“Dallis, ironically, was not a part of the movement because they predated it,” Moore said.  

At its Queens location, the company roasts coffee for clients that range from local diners and upscale food chain Pret-a-Manger to high-end Manhattan eateries Gramercy Tavern and Union Square Café and esteemed academic institutions Columbia University and New York University. The company is also a corporate partner with Bodum, the Swiss manufacturer of premium coffee presses, makers and accessories, said Moore.  

Prior to roasting, each coffee bean is first washed and dried using one of three processes to bring out different notes and undertones: pulp natural, natural or washed. The beans are then roasted differently to further define their unique attributes. Wholesale coffee blends are roasted in advance, whereas Dallis roasts coffee once a client places an order for small batch, high-end jobs. The roasting process can take anywhere from four to five minutes or 15 minutes or longer, depending on the type of bean.  

“Every coffee’s different,” said Moore. “(You) want to roast it a different way. Just as if I was a chef, I wouldn’t cook everything the same way.” 

Dallis grows eight varietals of coffee on its 1,200-acre Nossa Senhora Aparecida farm in the Alta Mogiana region of Brazil, north of the city of Sao Paulo. The farm is certified by the Rainforest Alliance, meaning that the company must adhere to stringent guidelines that include fair treatment of employees and land stewardship. The company also purchases coffee from other major growing coffee regions around the world, such as Ethiopia, Tanzania, Peru and Guatemala, said Moore.  

Dallis packages coffee on-site using a pressurized sealing system to ensure that air doesn’t permeate the package. The company also employs its own drivers to make local deliveries. The five members of Dallis’ service team repair machines on-site and travel to various locations nationwide to install and repair coffee brewers and espresso machines for clients. 

In Brazil, Octavio Inc., the parent company of Dallis Coffee, constructed a state-of-the-art café and lounge complete with I-Pod docking stations and a walkway with illuminated facts about coffee underfoot two years ago, said Moore.  

“It’s like a temple to coffee,” he said. 

Future plans for Dallis Coffee include reinvigorating the company and growing within the Tri-State area, said Howell. 

Another mission for coffee aficionados like Moore and the rest of the Dallis team is to change people’s perceptions of the beverage most commonly associated with one’s morning commute or an afternoon jolt of caffeine.  

“The goal is to put coffee in the same realm as the culinary arts,” said Moore.  

“It just kills me when people think nothing of spending $5 or $6 for wine, $4 for Budweiser, but if you ask someone to pay $5 or $6 for coffee, they balk,” he said.  

Moore was reminded of the complexity of growing coffee when he served as a judge for the Cup of Excellence international coffee competition in El Salvador. He and the other judges toured the farm that had won the competition the previous year. A wind storm had destroyed 75 percent of the crops, instantly inflicting damage that could take years to recover from.