The Sarugayama Coffee Roasting Place, a coffee bean mail order specialty store, opened in Hirakawa, Aomori on March 3rd.

The store introduces "small batch production", which roasts coffee beans after receiving an order. Coffee beans are sold only by mail order, and are not sold over the counter. Hitoshi Urushidate, the owner of the shop, said, "Thinking about the post-COVID-19 world, I thought about selling coffee beans non-face-to-face."

In 1995, Mr. Urushidate opened a coffee shop “TEA & CO. CAMPANY” in Dotemachi, and also opened a furniture store. From 2013 (Heisei 25), he started “Cafe Baton” in the Hirosaki Civic Center. “Since Baton was steadily stabilizing, the corona disaster began when I thought about resuming the ``TEA & CO. CAMPANY'' that had been closed,” he recalls.

He had been thinking about selling home-roasted coffee beans for a long time, but he never took the plunge as a business. “In the coffee industry, there is little evidence from data and experiments, and I have the impression that a culture based on oral tradition has continued for a long time. We are now able to control the temperature and humidity,” says Urushidate. “I was finally able to find a roasting machine that suited my fussy taste,” he said.

The name "Sarugayama" comes from the adjacent Saruga Shrine, and the whole area was a small hill, so it was called Sarugayama. According to Mr. Urushidate, roasting requires a large amount of air, so he chose the same place with a good environment.

The lineup of coffee beans includes Ethiopia and Guatemala. The degree of roasting depends on the order. The price starts from 1,140 yen. The sales method is limited to 150 grams so that not only the cost but also the packaging materials can be used without waste. Shipping fee is 300 yen nationwide for up to 3 bags.

Mr. Urushidate says, "The aim of the small badge is to allow us to stock multiple brands and to support the roasting of your choice, so we can offer even more ways to enjoy coffee beans. Considering coffee beans as a rare raw material, By producing only the necessary amount for the people who need it, we can prevent overproduction, and we can respond to the recycling-oriented society of the future," he said.