Welcome! Would you like a cup of coffee?

My name is Andrew Rotondi. If you read the 'About Us' section of this website, you may recognize my last name. Richard, my father, started this business in 1983 and has been serving the best damn coffee in the state of Rhode Island for 35 years.

For that time, the company has been focused on serving wholesale clients. Hundreds of restaurants, diners, cafes, and bars proudly serve Richard Alan coffee, and their customers are happy for it.

So, why start selling online now?

My Dad tells a story about how he started roasting coffee. For the first years of his business, he outsourced the roasting portion. Twice a month on Saturday, he would drive from Rhode Island to Boston and pick up inventory for the coming weeks. Saturday was usually my day to tag along with Dad. We'd hit my uncles restaurant for breakfast before heading to the shop where I'd do my best to help with one of the thousand tasks that needed to be completed for the week ahead. Sometimes, when I was bored, I'd race the pallet jacks throughout the warehouse. I was pretty adept at killing time, which came in handy some Saturday afternoons when there were no Yankees games on the radio. For a kid, taping boxes and labeling bags was fun for a bit, but got old after a while. (Hence, the pallet jack racing.) But I'm getting off topic...

On one of the Boston Saturday's, sitting in the passenger seat of the truck, I asked my Dad why he goes to Boston twice a month to pick up coffee. He explained the reasoning and I, being the innocent child at the time, said he could make the coffee himself. Well, the rest is history.

Something similar happened to me this past spring. My now fiancé, Leanne, and I were having a discussion about the coffee business and where I saw it going. I mentioned that there is a retail market online, and that if people just tasted the coffee they’d be hooked. She looked at me and said: You could do that. Well, here we are.

This is the first blog post on the website. I'm writing it because I want to share with customers our story as a family-run coffee business in Rhode Island. The website will evolve over time, just like the business has evolved over the last three decades. I just ask that you stay for at least one cup of coffee.