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Who? Jack Deiter!

My name is Jack Deiter, and I am a specialty coffee roaster in Galena, IL.  Here’s my story of how I became a roaster:  I graduated from Oak Park-River Forest High School in the spring of 2014.  From there I attended Saint Louis University in, you guessed it, Saint Louis, MO.  I have to admit that certain aspects of college were exciting, but there were many others that were not so appealing.  In the summer of 2015 I decided to help my dad, who had some unoccupied space in a commercial building, open a carry-out sandwich shop in Galena, IL.  We tried to model it after one of the best small sandwich shops in America, Gurney’s in Harbor Springs, MI (thank you for the help, Mr. Gurney!) — http://www.gurneysbottleshop.com/.

Galena is an idyllic little town with only 3500 full-time residents.  However, over 1.2 million visitors travel to Galena every year because of its “frozen in time” buildings and amazing history.  President Ulysses S. Grant also made it his home for a while.  Over time the concept evolved from a carry-out place into a sit-down sandwich shop.  With the addition of former manager Constance Chambers (shout out to Constance — thanks!), it became a full-service service restaurant, selling sandwiches, soups, salads, AND coffee.  I named it Big Bill’s in honor of my grandfather who has helped me so much over my life.

Here’s what my place looks like now:

My Mom’s blog — https://5daysago.wordpress.com/2015/10/16/big-bills-sandwich-shop-alais-the-shop/

Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/pg/bigbillssandwichshop/photos/?ref=page_internal).

Starting a new business was really exciting to me, so I decided not to go back to college!  I now live in Galena and running the businesses I own has become my more than full-time occupation.

The current love of my life is coffee!  We started out buying roasted beans from the Metropolis Coffee Company, the second largest roaster in the city of Chicago.  Over time we decided to buy our own roaster and roast our own coffee.  That meant we could buy any type of bean available, and roast it exactly as we wanted our coffee to taste!  A whole new world opened up to us.

During my short time as a roaster, I realized that small, local roasters like me don’t have any way to distribute their coffee essentially beyond our shops.  Maybe we have a Facebook page (I do), maybe we have a website (I don’t).  But to get beyond our local markets, we would need help.  And that is how I invented Coffee Center USA.

I am launching the Coffee Center USA website to expand the reach of these local roasters nationwide.  We will do it through retail sales to individuals and larger sales to companies.  We will use every resource at our disposal to market the website and deliver the best gourmet specialty roasts to coffee lovers throughout the USA (and the rest of the world soon enough!).

PLEASE sign up for our notifications — we will send you an e-mail each time we sign up a new roaster.  This website was launched today Monday, December 18, 2017.  While we have several roasters ready to go, unfortunately I am the only one who had time to upload my information after the website was completed.

I can tell you that in my experience every roaster I have met so far desires to deliver the best coffee possible to their customers.  They are all good, conscientious, hard-working people who love making great coffee.  Visit www.coffeecenterusa.com, read our stories, and PLEASE buy our coffees!

Thank you VERY much for your time and consideration.  Our saga is just beginning……