Location

When Jim and Jean Marie Quigley opened this little cafe next to venerable neighborhood classic Ken's Restaurant six years ago, they knew one thing: To build a customer base along the Western Avenue corridor they needed a niche.

Freshly roasted coffee was a good place to start, Jim says. But it still wasn't good enough for him.

"I’ve always wanted to have my own roaster, but most of the roasters I’ve seen were large drum roasters -- almost the size of grain silos," he says with a laugh. "There's not much room to put a grain silo in the middle of a bakery."

Then, last year while poling around at an auction for curved glass cases for the bakery, he spotted it. It was half the size of the other roasters, plus it roasts in a fluid motion (as opposed to typical roasters, which rotate the beans over high heat).

"That's like putting popcorn in the pan and shaking it over the stove," says Jim, whose bakery soon became the only spot south of Bridgeport to roast its own coffee on site.

"My roaster roasts with hot air at an opportune temperature at all times," he says. "When it gets to the optimal roast temperature, it automatically shuts the hot air off and introduces cool air and a little water to help cool it down quickly." That avoids over-roasting (and we all know what over-roasted coffee tastes like).

The temperature varies from bean to bean, but Jim's got it covered. And we're not just talking about the run-of-the-mill beans we've all grown accustomed to. No. Of the 21 types of beans he has on hand he may turn it up for the espresso-type roast characteristic of a Brazilian bean. He cools it down a bit (to 412 degrees) for larger beans like the Kenyan AA or Colombian Supreme. And he's careful not to burn the smaller, more exotic Ethiopian Sidamo beans by reducing the temp to a mere 406 degrees.

"The beauty of this roaster is that I can roast small batches (approximately 4 pounds of beans). With smaller batches, there's less error and I can maintain freshness," says Jim, who's also a coffee connoisseur.

He tells me about the origins of all coffee – Ethiopia - and that Africa is the only continent that consumes more coffee than it exports. We discuss the light, cherry notes of the Sidamo ("You can just chug it down," he's said on more than one occasion).

He's proud of serving the sweet, smooth Mexican Chiapas, a fair trade organic that has no bitterness because it's shade-grown in the forests instead of in fields.

It all comes back to the roaster, which in turn brings the customers back ... sometimes daily. He estimates that almost all of his business (about 95%) is repeat business, with many commuters stopping by for a coffee and sweet roll or breakfast sandwich.

"There really isn’t enough bakery business to support a bakery on the South Side. You also can’t just sell coffee and rolls and survive," he says. "Every café around here has found that out."

Not surprisingly, the Quigleys' coffee business has doubled in the last year since they installed the roaster. "On weekends we're selling bag after bag of coffee," says Jim, a Beverly native and Mount Carmel alum who tried living on the North Side for a year.

"Too congested," he recalls. "There’s no place like home. This is our roots. We’re always looking for good food, driving to Naperville, Lincoln Park, LaGrange, but no matter where we go it always feels good to go home. You’re underneath the trees, and it’s a whole different feeling. It’s a community."

Beverly Bakery is open from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. Tuesday through Friday and from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. on weekends.

* Deal note: For the rest of October every purchase of a breakfast sandwich gets you a free order of hash browns. Not bad for fresh, homemade food.