Pot of Gold Coffee Roasting Co. originated with the purchase of Gertrude the Gothot brand Coffee Roaster from Germany in 1976 by Gene Beals. Gertrude was already 23 years old at the time. In 1982 she came to Thetis Island with Gene and Nan, where they settled happily and roasted coffee for boaters, tourists, and island residents. In the fall, many called to request more coffee so our mail order business blossomed. We now have about 650 customers who receive their fresh roasted coffee on a regular basis.
After 55 years of wonderful roasting Gertrude finally got to retire in 2011 after training our brand new bigger machine named Ferdinand.
Pot of Gold is located just ten big steps from our back door. Besides Gertrude and our new roaster, the building contains about twenty five varieties of the best green coffee from around the world in 150 pound burlap sacks stored in our 'Green' House, an office, and the bins, bags, scales, and all the other miscellaneous supplies needed for roasting, packaging and mailing.
We roast every two weeks from the list of standing orders given to us by all you nice folks with good taste. Your coffee is roasted to order.
The roasting list is compiled on Monday for the printing and paperwork early Tuesday morning. Then your order is readied for the roasting, bagging and packaging by happy Island elves. Among the five of them they have a total of 50 years experience working at Pot of Gold.
Your order is shipped on the Monday morning ferry to Chemainus, then by Canada Post truck to Victoria that evening. Many Vancouver Island and lower mainland customers receive their coffee the very next day!
Try us – you'll love our coffee & our service!
We have a little green delivery van we use to deliver coffee on Thetis Island. It is a 1990 Nissan S Cargo kept in good repair by our coffee roaster Pierre who is also an excellent mechanic. Our logo was handpainted by artist Chris French, pictured next to Perky.
In addition to our master roaster, Pierre, these are the folks who keep Pot of Gold running.
Owner Nan Beals lives next door to Pot of Gold and who you most likely will talk to on the phone. She keeps busy with all sorts of jobs doing her best to make Pot of Gold Customers as happy as possible with their coffee and their order.
JoAnne takes care of all our customers whose names are from A-L.
Dell takes care of all our customers whose names are from M-Z.
Before starting to pack, Lucy processes all the credit card purchases. Then, while Pierre is roasting the coffee, Lucy starts to hand pack each pound making sure it is blended to perfection and weighed accurately. She puts each assembled order in big trays ready for Sue to wrap.
Sue is our excellent quality control person who double checks everything about your order before neatly wrapping it, sorting it by postal code, and finally boxing up all the parcels into the Canada Post tubs ready to mail early Monday morning. Sue also does our Thetis Island home deliveries on Monday morning in our little van named 'Perky'.