We recently connected with Teresa Sawatsky and have shared our conversation below.

Teresa, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?

Coffee is an interesting thing! One of the most drunk liquids in the world, yet one of the most complex. Most know nothing about this magical liquid, except it’s amazing! My husband and I were on a holiday down south, quite a few years ago. We stayed at this cozy little cabin, in a small western town that had every characteristic we loved!
There was a local roaster that supplied the cabins with amazing coffee! It’s something to wake up on vacation in a cozy spot, enjoying the surrounding views with each other, but…. When you wake up in a cozy cabin, with amazing views, and each other, and locally roasted coffee!! Now that’s perfect! I loved the experience so much that I thought, one day, I would love to offer someone that experience.
Time rolled on, and things in life changed for us, to a point that we knew we needed to make a life changing decision. My husband owned and operated a very successful landscape and design company for many years, with our 3 sons, but the time had come to make some life changes. Mostly because of stress and health. So we dove head first into coffee!
We sold off landscaping equipment and bought a coffee roaster. Our 2 oldest sons bought the rest, and picked up where my husband left off, in the landscaping, then the 3rd son, became our roaster! Our property we currently live on is an old dairy farm , so we did a big conversion on the milk room, and acquired our city licence. Next came the school and education part. We learned via skype, because of the pandemic. Yup, we started right at the beginning of it!
We started going to markets to sell our coffee, but that became a bit of a hassle trying to drag everything with us, and make great samples without the proper equipment. We happened to come across a coffee truck. It came with nothing but the countertops and sinks, so we began the reno of “Merle” (coffee truck’s new name). I (Teresa) worked on the truck 7 days a week, in the Downtown area of Chilliwack, for 4 months straight. We thought about a coffee shop in the newly renovated area of Downtown Chilliwack, but a roaster from out of town already had the lease. We moved the truck out when he opened his coffee shop. We now know, a coffee shop would not have been what was best for our business, not yet anyway. We used the truck for large events then, outfitted a coffee trailer, which was stationed at the river. A great spot for folks to grab a coffee and wander. The truck we used for fairs, weddings, private parties, school events, truck races, you name it, we served it!
Life became a bit busy to say the least. An old time friend and his new wife approached us, to see if we wanted to sell the trailer, and they would operate it, just like we would. We felt so thankful for this opportunity! We sold the trailer, and the 4 of us had two years of crazy busy, but fun chaos! These two years, could make a pretty awesome book, haha
What inspired our branding? We have a ranch up country in Merritt BC, and it’s all about the cowboy way! We love the whole theme around cowboys and cowgirls. It’s deep in my family’s roots. The name of the ranch is Barking Irons Ranch, so we thought we could use the same branding iron, and use Barking Irons Roastery. It seems to work great! Barking Irons, means “Pistols shooting”. It is old cowboy lingo, which is literal speaking. We love it! We love what we do, and where it has taken us, but to say it’s less stressful than the landscaping, might not be true, haha
Currently, our partners have sold the coffee trailer, because they are wanting to move east to be closer to family. It will be rebranded and will no longer have anything to do with us. Not something we were planning, but none of this really is. We just planned to roast coffee! The coffee truck just sold as well. It has become too much for us to keep up to the demand. The most important thing is our coffee, we just need to keep roasting and selling the roasted beans!
The mobile units were amazing for getting our coffee in the hands of folks from all over! We are very thankful for that, and the memories and lessons we learned. Those will last forever!
We have so many plans for our little company, especially now that we have entered the rodeo/ bull riding scene. We became sponsors of one of the roughest sports known to man and couldn’t be more proud!! Our “Cowboy Coffee” has become something we never intended, but we are loving it! We feel honoured for 2 young bull riders to be wearing our logo, along with a young retired bull rider who teaches Roughstock school, and then seeing our logo on the Bull Riders Canada website and events, kinda blows our minds! We look forward to what is to come for Barking Irons Roastery!

Teresa, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Here is a bit about us! We are a family of 5. My husband (Keith) and I Teresa) have been blessed with 3 boys, Braiden Joshua, and Charles. We Owned and operated a landscape and design company for 20ish years in the Lower Mainland. I was a homeschool mom at the time, so as the boys grew, they would work with their dad, and sometimes it would be all of us. I was the design person on most of the residential jobs.Our boys could operate machinery at the age of 8 or younger, better than most of the folks I saw. We didn’t even bat an eye or worry, nor did we know that it should be any different, now looking back, it’s crazy to think about how young they were, but soo very capable. I would like to mention my decision to homeschool. I have a different way of learning, I say this now, but when i was in school, It was just called a disability. I always said that if I ever have children , they would never be put in school! Or prison as I called it back then , haha. I noticed it first in our oldest son, that he was so much like me, so I was happy to teach him. Probably the hardest thing I ever did! I taught them the traditional way. I just tried my best, not realizing, the curriculum was not what we understood. The teachers just kept telling me there was nothing wrong, I believe they were failing us, just like I fell through the cracks in school. The boys were registered in school, which gave us funding, but we also had teachers to be accountable to. So working with the teachers, whether it be in Christian schools, or in regular distance schools, all of my childhood issues came back! We worked our way through the best we could. A very special lady who lived down the road from us tutored the boys, she knew how to teach us, and she was with us till she passed away, and with the sadness and hole that was left in our lives, that is where we left off. We still have the challenges of certain things that come up. For instance, our oldest son and I are dyslexic, so when it came to filling orders, there was this one order, I would mess up every time! I’m not sure if it was how it was written out, or why I got it backwards everytime, but finally this customer had had enough. So when she sent the email explaining this, I layed on the couch and cried and cried, I just couldn’t get it right! My husband came home, and was very concerned, so he phoned her, and explained how hard it was to find good help nowadays, and he had to let the girl go. He didn’t mention that it was his wife and business partner who was the source of the mess ups. I did feel better, but, at the same time, I realized I had to figure out how to understand these orders. It was getting the order switched around, so I was grinding the wrong amount, compared to the whole bean. Not for a lack of trying, just not capable of understanding. So I wrote out the orders, and would double check back and for some reason, writing it helped me see it correctly.

I wanted to add this because, I believe you can do anything you put your mind to. You just can’t ever let your mind think for one second that it’s not possible!

We learned about each other, about business, but of course, this coffee world! What a strange competitive world it is! We never knew.
One cool story, was a time we were in the coffee trailer, and a gentleman came up with his wee little espresso cup, and asked for an espresso, but he asked to please not let it touch anything except his cup, so we did just what he wanted, and he wandered away about 10 ft, but Keith my husband watched him. Keith said “I’m going to talk to him”, so after a few minutes, Keith called me and our young staff girl over, and introduced us. This gentleman was in town for a funeral, he is from Toronto, but he is a world coffee taster, so we did some tweaking on the espresso machine, and then our employee made him a cappuccino. He showed us what we were doing wrong, and I asked him how long he was in town for, then we made a date for him to come over and teach us some cool stuff. So I guess you can say, we were trained well. What an honour for us! Sorry about anything made prior to that point, we were just learning, haha
Not only did we learn about coffee that day, but we learned some about the other side as well. Coffee is a snobby world! Now we have met some of the most amazing folks because of coffee, but we learned about the other side, this very competitive side we never knew existed. It’s really who you know in this coffee world, that will get your name up that ladder! You don’t normally see ice cream shops, or dessert shops, or cafes, that are this way, but with coffee it’s different. You don’t even see wine folks this way, or at least I notice that they appreciate each other’s differences.
Why are we different?
Well our answer is that we are real folks, who love to drink real coffee! Do we care where our coffee comes from? Absolutely!! We support amazing farmers, and we learn about all the processes from the soil, the region, the process, and all the important things about coffee, but we don’t put all that on our label. If I had to ask a percent of the folks that actually care whether the coffee they were drinking was a washed process or a fermented process, or that it was grown at an elevation of 1500 ft above sea ;level, I would say that percent might be quite low to be honest. What we do is roast the very best coffees we can find, and yes they are all organic. That part is our job as good stewards to use what this earth has to offer, in the most respectful way possible. We roast to perfection each and every time! We have 7 coffees, and we are very proud to say that we are very consistent in the flavour! That one main key, in keeping folks happy. We have realized that we don’t need to bring in different coffees all the time, only seasonally or for special holidays, we realize that folks want that “same great coffee they had the last time”. Maybe our customers just don’t really want what’s new, or maybe we have perfected something, and they can’t get enough of it! We like to think they can’t get enough, and that is why they come back for more! We march to the beat of our own drum I would say!
Our roasting machine is a drum roaster which is a Mill City brand. You can plug it into the computer to record your roasts, but it’s not the kind you plug in and hit start! It is manual, so everything matters when there is a roast happening. Charlie (our youngest son and roaster), must adjust the gas, temp, fan speed, all these variables, while the coffee is roasting. This is different every day, as the weather changes, and inside temperature changes, as well as moisture, all that matters hugely. We know what we have is a great thing, and could not be more proud of our son and roaster, who is now 22. I think that in itself is so cool!

Charlie does all of our roasting, bagging, and lots of the orders. Who knew this guy would be so amazing at coffee! Not us, but boy are we proud of him! It’s not an easy job! Especially in the summer, when it’s so hot, but he just keeps on roasting! It’s his own little world when he’s in there.

We don’t know our next step, we are not going to be doing the mobile side of the business anymore, as we felt the pull to step away, and concentrate on our roasting, and getting it into more stores, so folks can enjoy this great thing we have going on.
We love sponsorship and partnerships, so we have several avenues with this. They truly are genuine friendships! We met a young motocross rider at an event, and the boy mom in me just could not get enough of this kid! Kruz Garwasiuk is his name, and we sponsor him, which is a lot of heavy cheering and keeping his mom and dad caffeinated, haha. I think this is pretty cool, and hope we can offer more to this talented family one day!

We also have a retired bull rider on one of our coffees. The “Saddle Up” bag. With this, we give a portion of the money back to him, that goes to his roughstock school in Quesnel. The children that get to attend this school are truly blessed, because we believe Matt is a pretty gifted person. Charles has been fortunate to attend the school for two years now, and we are just so thankful!
His name is Matt O’flynn, and he has a younger brother Eric O’flynn, who is a young up and coming bull rider, along with his friend, Clay Gordon. We sponsor these guys as well, and what a pleasure to give back to help these guys live their dreams! This year we became friends and partners with Bull Riders canada. We have no idea where this will go, but boy is it exciting!
Coffee is about people. Coffee connects people, and this is what we believe that coffee should be! It might be cool to get awards, and learn all the technical details about coffee, which there is nothing wrong with. I am actually happy to be one of those who has a very sensitive palate and can taste very specifically the flavour profile of coffees. This is not something that most folks have, we have learned, and not something that most coffee roasters have either. So as special as I feel, and if I write on our coffee bag, the flavour notes that I sense are there, It’s not for me to tell you what to taste, that’s part of the mystery of coffee. A great wine sommelier once told me that when we put a flavour profile on the menu to read, then that’s what folks will taste. So it’s cool to see that everyone is different, and can experience the mystery of coffee in their own way. It’s interesting, because even during a coffee cupping (which is used to evaluate the quality and flavour profile of coffee) there is silence, and you aren’t allowed to look at each other’s sheet, so it seems to me, it’s strange why some put it on the bag for all to read. Just my thoughts anyway.
We are excited for what’s to come, although climbing the ladder isn’t easy, and can be very difficult financially, especially with our economy right now, but we just put one foot in front of the other, after our amazing morning cup of coffee, and keep going! Roast “em up!

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

I can think of several things that illustrate just how stubborn we are, and our desire to make a go of this! Right off the bat, not knowing anything about the serving end of coffee, we bought the coffee truck. I had experience in waitressing and serving, but zero barista skills! A friend who was a manager for a local Starbucks, trained me for 5 days. Bingo! Homeschool mama made into a barista! Haha My new phrase since starting this business is “Sink or Swim !” We aim to succeed, and that’s the only thing that keeps us going! It has been a tough go at times. Some days when nobody knew we were even there, and we make about $53 a day, and the supplies cost $20, we were thinking, boy, we need to step up our game! You kinda think, as you spend quite a few thousand dollars on advertising, that in the morning the floodgates will open, and you’ll have so many customers that you’ll have to beat them off with a stick, but morning rolls around and you fling open the serving window, and there isn’t a soul in line. hmmm, is the question.
Hanging in there, and showing up everyday, was the key.
Then on to the other mobile unit. Dragging around a trailer full of supplies, and loaded down with baking, coffee, water, milk, cream, jugs of this and that, and when you arrive to the event location and open the door, to find that the stand up freezer fell face first onto everything, and all the ice and ice cream, and frozen cookies fell all over, you have folks waiting, so there is no time to cry, you just clean it up, and keep on going!
One time we traveled to my old home town for a rodeo. This was what we have all waited for! We love rodeos! We arrive, and set up, then head to town to buy all the supplies, like milk and cream , and that sort of thing. When we come back and unload, we open the fridge to find all 12 bottles of homemade cold brew exploded because they froze! What do you think the biggest selling item is, on a long hot weekend? Yup, its cold brew! Sorry folks, none available. Time to clean up glass, and coffee.
When you are building a business and a name, consistency is key. We have learned that you just have to keep going. Even now, as I type this, I have to continue to tell myself that very same thing! You feel like you just continue to feed an animal that never gives back!
Our youngest son, and our coffee roaster is 22 years old, and we have had so many conversations with him, to keep going. “We can’t stop now,” we tell him. We are very fortunate that he can work with his brother’s landscaping when he isn’t roasting, because we aren’t at that place in our business where we can pay ourselves much. We pay the bills, and put back into the company to grow and sustain it. Patience sometimes doesn’t come easy when you’re tired, and you just continue to try new things, and work harder.
We never realized how competitive coffee is, and really, it’s more about who you know in the industry. We have now seen how rewards are handed out, and praise given, but behind the scene, it’s all who knows who.
We aim to make amazing coffee, and we are so proud of our son, who has done just that! this young 20 year old (his age when we started) homeschooled kid who works his buns off to grow a family business, giving it literally all he’s got!

We believe we have something very special as a family, We also have faith in our Creator, who gives us all we need, and ultimately, we want to Glorify Him with this business.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

The biggest lesson we have learned is that sales are dang hard!! With our landscaping business, we almost had to cover up the phone number on the side of the truck because we had more than we could handle, hence my husband’s stress, haha The demands were huge, but he made it work! He worked harder than anyone I knew. Our boys now have that same mentality, and being raised into it, they took over the landscaping so perfectly. It was the best thing for us all!
We just never expected sales to be as hard as they are. We had to ulearn, that sales aren’t easy, and instead of covering up the phone number, we are trying to plaster our name all over everywhere!
Like I said before “We can’t stop now!” It’s “Sink or Swim!’
Did I say it’s fun? Just in case I didn’t…. It truly is fun!
Not without a ton of struggles and tears (mostly mine, haha), but fun!

Contact Info:

• Website: www.barkingironsroastery.com
• Instagram: @barking_irons_roastery
• Facebook: Barking Irons Coffee Roaster
• Youtube: @barkingironsroastery4072

Image Credits
Trent Schlamp,  Earth and Eve Photography