Excerpt From Article By Molly Walsh, Free Press Staff Writer • July 5, 2009
Five years ago, no one knew quite what to do with the decrepit train station in the center of this small town. Then came local employer Green Mountain Coffee Roasters with a plan to help renovate the 1875 building and lease a portion for a cafe and company visitors center.
The venture proved to be a success, like just about everything the company has done lately, and these days the restored building bustles with coffee-sipping tourists, local residents and passengers waiting for trains that still stop at the station.
At company headquarters just across the tracks, Green Mountain Coffee is brewing a much bigger success story and doing so despite a deep economic recession. Net sales for the second quarter of fiscal year 2009 were up more than 60 percent over the same quarter in 2008, and net income climbed 118 percent. Company stock spiked from $25 a share last June to $93 this June before the company delivered a three-for-two stock split to shareholders.
The specialty coffee company that was founded in a Waitsfield cafe 19 years ago now employs 1,408 people and continues to grow both in and out of Vermont. The aroma of roasted coffee beans — imported from countries including Mexico, Indonesia and Rwanda — hangs over Waterbury, and the company footprint has expanded to eight or nine buildings in town, including new space at the site of a former Chevrolet dealership.
One cup at a time
The company’s expansion into the single-cup brewing market with Keurig coffee makers and K-Cups — single portions of deluxe coffees, teas and hot chocolate — is driving a good part of the recent stock climb. Second-quarter sales of Keurig machines increased 148 percent over the previous year, and the company shipped 479,000 of the sleek brewers. In April, Green Mountain announced that Keurig machines and K-Cups coffee would be sold in 3,000 Wal-Mart stores — expanding the reach of a product that Green Mountain managers hope will become as ubiquitous as drip coffee makers.
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