Hard Bean Co-Op

Hello, I’m Scott Bortz, founder of Hard Bean. Ever since I was a kid, I liked coffee. I would look forward to going to the grocery store with my mother so that I could pick out the can of beans for the family. I liked trying all the different kinds. My favorite back then was Savarin, a slightly darker coffee.

Later my job sent me to Seattle. There were two predominant roasters in Seattle; Stuart Brothers (now SBC) and you know who. I would go to one of the two every week to get something fresh and interesting.

Starbucks had a store in Pike Place Market, and Stuart Brothers was on Pier 70. In those days, neither one was selling coffee drinks at their stores, just beans.

I told my friends “back east” that they should open a coffee shop; no one did. So when my business in the NW was finished, I moved back to Pennsylvania and opened some coffee stands (we called them carts, which were popular in Seattle by then). I remember opening something like nine in six months.

People started asking me to help them open cafes of their own here and there - and that was twenty years ago. In 1992 or 1993 I opened the first Hard Bean with a friend, and the rest is as they say, history.

My wife and I start each day with a couple of espressos and cookies, looking out our front window on the day.

Thanks for taking time to visit our website, and remember “Life is too short to drink bad coffee.”