Two Marblehead dads have launched a craft coffee company in town that they say is built on the simple idea that coffee should bring people together. Bond Coffee Roasters was founded by Chris Buchanan and Adam Questad, next-door neighbors and longtime friends. What started as a shared passion for great coffee and meaningful connection has grown into a company aimed at strengthening community — one cup at a time.
“No matter where you are in life or what your beliefs are, you can always come together over a cup of coffee,” Buchanan said. “That was the impetus for it. We like the social aspect of it, but we also like the science behind it, too, the actual roasting part of it.”
Buchanan also runs a software company, and his Bond co-founder Adam Questad is a civil engineer.
Origin story
Buchanan and Questad and their young families have been friends for years. They would often hang out over coffee and talk about possible side gigs. They quickly landed on a common passion: coffee.
“We decided, let’s see if we can make coffee,” Buchanan remembers. “And we looked up a bunch of different ways to do it. You can roast it in your oven, you can do it on a stove top. We decided to use a popcorn popper, and it was pretty good.”
They ordered green coffee beans off the internet and started experimenting. They eventually bought a small roaster they keep at Questad’s house.
“It’s cool because it plugs into a computer so you can program what you want,” Questad explained. “If you want a light roast, a medium roast or an espresso blend, you’re going to develop a different roast profile. A profile is really just heat settings, how long you apply heat.”
After nearly a year of experimenting (and setting off their smoke detectors several times) the friends landed on their first official blend, Barnegat Breakfast. Their second blend, out in time for Halloween, is called Soleless Shakedown (a reference to Old Burial Hill and the movie “Hocus Pocus”).
Buchanan and Questad roasted about 75 batches before landing on their first winner. They use beans from Brazil, Guatemala, El Salvador, Ethiopia and other countries.
Bond plans to produce a new blend every month, which they’ll see via their website, at local shops and at restaurants. They make deliveries in a Japanese mini-truck.
They’re focusing on keeping the business “hyper-local” and focused on the community.
“We’ll ship anywhere, we’ll go anywhere, but we really want to deliver to the neighborhood as much as possible, combined with some wholesale accounts, which would be small cafes, stuff like that, and some retail, too,” Buchanan said.
The partners are planning a marketing campaign in town that includes a tasting party at Buchanan’s office at 89 Front St.
“We had this idea that, if we ever had a cafe, we would try to hold these free Find Your Fuel sessions, or something like that, where you come and you try the different blends and figure out what you want to be fueled by, what you actually really like,” Buchanan said.
To learn more about Bond Coffee Roasters, visit thebondcoffee.com.
