One day the two grabbed a cup of coffee together. Paul began to reminisce about his artisan friends & family back home. He casually mentioned, "I used to roast my own coffee." Suddenly the cosmos opened for Adam who bemoaned, "I wish I could find a decent cup of coffee around here." Epiphany! Paul, "Let's roast our own!"

Today the coffee you're holding was hand-selected and handcrafted by the ROCC Coffee Crew. The point of all this coffee hype is to focus on roasting and serving amazing coffees that build community and provide a playground for coffee enthusiasts.

Whether you call yourself and artisan or a novice, rest assured that at ROCC nothing is compromised. We do all the hard work (meticulously selecting, roasting, testing & brewing) so that you can just sit back & enjoy incredible coffees with a big smile.

Roasters & Registrations... done! Check! What about China? My eyes turned to the East.

Paul and Louis had been keeping busy in Wuhan. Louis searched for decent rental locations. He considered a dozen before finally deciding.

Rent in Wuhan is steep! (commonly 200-300 RMB per square meter per month) This makes a 100 sq.m. shop (thats 1,000 sq.ft.) cost 20,000-30,000 RMB ($3,500-4,500 USD) per month. Typically only restaurants or big brand shops can earn a profit. As a result at half to two-thirds of small businesses lose money and close within the first year.

If I could go back to July 2012, I would do it all over. But I didn't already have the experience that tells me... it's coming.

It was a cool and sunny summer in Michigan. The dining room table held a stack of paper and plans next to my laptop. I succeeded to register ROCC, LLC (a partnership held Limited Liability Company) in the state of Washington. The reason for this was two-fold. First, my family called WA home, had drivers licenses there, voted and annually filed taxes there. Second, we had some "guanxi" relationships there (as the Chinese would say). A couple good recommendations for a CPA Firm and an attorney who we might trust were just what we needed to start with a bit more confidence.

A short list of essential items to check off included:
1. Raise a first round of capital ($70,000 USD) by sharing the vision with and recruiting additional shareholding partners.
2. Register an American Limited Liability Corporation.
3. Find a secondhand shop roaster (5-15kg batch size) to purchase and ship to China.
4. Figure out how to ship a giant roaster to China without getting stuck in customs with a giant import duty.

It only took ROCC a couple weeks before it received its own Chinese name transliteration. At first I wasn't happy. I wanted to choose a Chinese name with more meaning. However, Chinese friends naturally came up with their own version, calling us: "luo ke" which phonetically sounds like you've stretched the word "ro...ck" to make 2 syllables: "law...kuh". No need to fight something that was working, so we took our new localized Chinese name and owned it.