Wayfarer Coffee Roasters marks of year as part of the downtown community

LACONIA — It has now been about one year since Karen Bassett and Ben Bullerwell opened Wayfarer Coffee Roasters, and Bassett said there's one thing about the experience that has stood out as most remarkable.

"Our favorite thing about being here for a year is all the connections with other business owners – there's so many collaborative events and opportunities," she said. So, when Rachel Jeffers, who plans events for Wayfarer, organized a "birthday week" for the downtown coffee shop, it turned into a week-long collaboration with some of the friends Wayfarer made during its first year on Main Street.

On Monday, Love 143 Chocolates operated a "pop-up" shop at Wayfarer. Prescott's Florist will be selling bouquets at Wayfarer today, Tuesday, from 8 to 10 a.m. On Wednesday, photographer Rob Clifford will be selling prints from 9 to 11 a.m. Thursday, from 9 to 11 a.m., Larry Frates will be drawing caricatures and raising funds for Got Lunch! Laconia. On Friday morning, Jasmyn Gray will be selling her artwork from 9 to 11 a.m.

On Friday evening, from 5 to 6 p.m., Myles Chase from MC Cycle and Sports will be leading a community bike ride that will start from and end at Wayfarer. Bassett said the ride will be leisurely enough for all bicyclists, including children.

"We're very happy with how our first year has gone," said Bassett. The year didn't go exactly as they planned it, though. The original business plan anticipated that half of their sales would come from retail business, and the other half would be wholesale sales of beans and iced coffee to other area storefronts. Wholesale business was slow, at least initially, but retail was much stronger than anticipated.

While Bassett and Bullerwell were hoping to serve 100 customers per day, they are consistently seeing more than 200 patrons walk through their doors every day. And now that it's approaching its first anniversary, Wayfarer is seeing its wholesale business start to pick up.

Wayfarer roasts single-origin coffee beans and makes liege-style waffles to accompany them. Bassett said that downtown Laconia has proven to be the best location for the business, due to its year-round, daily demand for a good cup of coffee. And, ticking off a list of new businesses nearby, she expects many more coffee drinkers to make a visit to Wayfarer part of their daily routine.

"There's so much workforce here, they need their coffee every day," said Bassett. "Laconia can support a good business. There's a lot of neat things happening downtown."

To celebrate the first anniversary of Wayfarer Coffee Roasters in downtown Laconia, Karen Bassett and Rachel Jeffers have planned a week of collaborations highlighting other Laconia businesses. (Laconia Daily Sun photo/Adam Drapcho)