S & D is full of beans: it's not the same old grind when you're the no. 2supplier of coffee to the U.S. food-service industry.

• Author: Maley, Frank
• Position: PICTURE THIS

Photography by Scott Stiles

Plant a raw coffee bean in the right soil in the right climate--preferably lush tropical highlands in Latin America, Africa or Asia--and you might end up with a healthy tree bearing hundreds of bright red coffee cherries ready for harvest. After the green seeds are removed, some are dried and prepared for export. Some of the exports are shipped and trucked to S&D Coffee Inc. in Concord. From Latin America, the trip takes about five business days; from. Asia, up to six weeks.

Processing begins within a few days of arrival -- as soon as space on the production line opens up. Beans to be shipped whole and ground by customers are blended, roasted and packaged in about an hour. Ground coffee takes as long as eight hours, largely to stabilize moisture content in the beans and allow carbon dioxide--created by roasting and released by grinding--to escape. Timing is everything. Wait too long, the beans can grow stale, says Brian Bradley, vice president of business development. "If you attempt to package the coffee too quickly, it will...