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S&D COFFEE EXPANDING… AGAIN

While the past few years have been hard for many local industries, they have been a time of incredible growth for S&D Coffee, Inc. To accommodate this growth, S&D is now breaking ground on its biggest plant expansion since 2001.

Long regarded a viable hometown business with an admirable regional presence, S&D Coffee is currently beginning a facility expansion to accommodate today’s reality: The Concord-based coffee company is the nation’s fastest growing food service roaster, with an almost three-fold increase in production over the last ten years. As a result, they need space… and fast.

The new expansion, facilitated by R.T. Dooley Construction Company, will house a new, sophisticated green coffee unloading, handling and silo storage system. The handling system, which will open, weigh and separate coffee straight off the truck, will double the plant's green coffee capacity and dramatically streamline the unloading process. This construction will also allow for the installation of S&D's fourth commercial coffee roaster. The additional roaster and handling system will increase the plant's roasted coffee output by one-third.

And early this fall, S&D’s customer service and order entry department will move into a 3,800-square-foot space in the S&D Annex building, adjacent to the company’s main site on Highway 29, north of Lowe’s Motor Speedway. The Annex, purchased in 2001, currently houses the accounting, purchasing and equipment departments. Customer service’s vacated space will be converted into a 2,200-square-foot conference and training center, that will be used for S&D exercises and events, external sales meetings, and other functions. Ron Hinson, president and CEO of S&D Coffee, says these expansion projects were necessitated by rapidly expanding sales across the country – in almost every product line. S&D, which supplies coffee, tea and juices to dedicated franchises, independent restaurants and convenience stores, as well as major commercial accounts nationwide, saw a 17 percent jump in production in just the last year.

“This expansion has been a part of our long range plan for some time,” Hinson said. “Still, even we were surprised by how quickly demand required us to take this step. Our growth over the last decade has been phenomenal – due in equal measures to the quality of our products, new product introductions, enthusiastic sales teams and our growing reputation as one of the industry’s premiere food service providers.”

And while this growth would be notable at any period in the region’s history, S&D Coffee’s growth has come about in spite of an economic decline that has been haunting the state for more than three years. During one two-year stretch, from 2000-2002, North Carolina lost nearly 114,000 factory jobs.* Yet S&D, during that same period, has continued to expand its customer base, reach and number of employees.

In 2001, S&D added more than 60,000 square-feet of space, including a lab and packaging facilities, at a cost of $7.2 million. And while the current expansion project isn’t quite as large as that one, Jerry Collier, vice president of operations, says that the next two years will see many more additions and expansions totaling almost $12 million at S&D’s headquarters.

S&D Coffee, Inc. has coffee, tea and juice product lines that are featured in a wide variety of venues across the United States. The company employs more than 800 workers nationwide. The distinctive S&D business model has the company working primarily through customer-approved national distributors, while maintaining its traditional route business. Dedicated to intensive customer service, S&D supplies, repairs and refurbishes its own brewing equipment; trains customers in the preparation and presentation of the product and maintains a 24-hour toll-free help line that is staffed by live operators. For more inform View all News Stories