Coffee business perks in same spot for 121 years

What most people see as a quaint coffee shop with couches and a fireplace in the heart of downtown Wheeling is a business with a history rich as the house blend.

The Central and South American beans are roasted, raked and packaged in the building with Burns coffee roasters dating back to 1884.

Wheeling Coffee & Spice has occupied the same 14th Street location across from WesBanco Arena since 1885. But there's more to it than that.

The gourmet coffee shop front is the newest part of the business, added in 1994 by 29-year owner Mary Ann Lokmer.

"I knew it was the up-and-coming thing, and I thought, ‘If it works, fine,'" Lokmer said "I figured if it didn't go, it would work as an advertisement for what I have to offer."

The coffee business started in 1885 with glasses and jars of "Old Government"- brand coffee shipped by boat and rail to mine company stores in a five-state radius and delivered to Wheeling stores and residences by horse-drawn wagons. The Hazel-Atlas Glass Company of Wheeling supplied the jars, and Wheeling Coffee became the first vacuum-sealed coffee.

In 1931, the Paramount Coffee brand replaced the Old Government moniker and found its way into the restaurant and institutional market.

Lokmer and her late husband acquired the company in 1977, a big year for the Wheeling area with business and occupation taxes raised, the opening of the civic center and the beginning of Jamboree in the Hills, the four-day country music festival.

The Lokmers owned other businesses and were familiar with Paramount Coffee, as they had purchased it for their own businesses. Mary Ann had run a hotel and was unsure how she would do in the coffee business.

"I said, ‘About the only thing I know how to do is drink coffee,' but you become educated very quickly," she said. "I just read everything I could possibly find."

Lokmer operates her coffee shop as a model shop to area coffee businesses and is most interested in helping other businesses get a good start and easily obtain needed supplies.

The business also serves as a distributor to anyone wanting gourmet coffee, a wholesaler to hospitals, restaurants and Tamarack, and an in-house roaster.

"It's a very interesting business," Lokmer said. "You might be frustrated but you're never bored."

Lokmer suggested anyone wanting to open a coffee shop become very knowledgeable because customers will want to talk coffee. People really want to become connoisseurs, Lokmer said.

"I call Jamaican Blue Mountain my Dom Perignon; it's the ultimate," Lokmer said.

She breezed easily through descriptions of the bitter robusta bean and the differences among the four different types of roasts. American, which spends about 45 minutes in the Wheeling Coffee Company's Burns roaster, has the lightest flavor but the most caffeine. The next degree is a Viennese roast, which is 10 to 15 degrees darker and spends about an hour in the roaster.

The French roast is kept until the oils come out of the bean and has what Lokmer described as a very shiny look to it. An espresso roast is very dark and, depending on the bean, can take as much as an hour and 20 minutes. It is roasted until the oils are completely burned.

"Roasting is just the process; it doesn't matter the bean," Lokmer said.

She explained the 1884-style roasters give a slow roast, which brings out more flavor. Wheeling Coffee offers many specialty roasts including a chocolate mint and caramel.

The menu offers cookies, coffee candy, self-serve coffee and other drink flavors such as root beer, coconut, java chip and macadamia nut. Wheeling Coffee also offers many teas.

Lokmer said she deals with a broker in New York with a huge warehouse that supplies endless coffee possibilities, instead of just a Colombian or Guatemalan coffee. The flavors also are purchased from a huge company always coming out with new blends, which Lokmer keeps on rotation, keeping track of the popularity.

"Whether it's Maxwell House or Wheeling Coffee, it's all done the same way," she said.

The one man responsible for roasting, raking and packaging all the coffee is Moundsville resident Dan Francis, 39, who said the only hard part of his job is the heat in the summertime. He enjoys the uniqueness of the job and is still learning all the different roasts.

"You tell people what you do, and they always have lots of questions," Francis said.

Lokmer touts not only Francis' roasting abilities but also his showmanship as many Wheeling residents and visitors happen upon the shop and want to see first-hand how gourmet coffee is roasted 1880s-style.

"People are just amazed, so they hang out while we do a 20-minute roast," Francis said.

The business roasts just one day a week during the summer, with a batch being 120 pounds of coffee beans at a time and seven batches usually completed.

Lokmer said a big validation of her business came soon after the coffee shop opened in 1994 when Sen. Robert Byrd came to speak at the civic center. The national press came to town and were delighted to see a true coffee shop operating in West Virginia, Lokmer said.