Growing up in Costa Rica, Steven Fonseca was surrounded by coffee. His mother, Ada, used to pick coffee beans with Steven and his sister, Samy, by her side. It was the family’s main source of income. Later, Steven worked for the largest coffee company in the Central American country, which is known the world over for its high quality coffee beans.

Turtle Beans coffee

Linda and Steven Fonseca outside Turtle Beans Coffee Roaster on Farnsworth Avenue in Bordentown.

As a missionary for his church, he moved to Seattle, a city known for its love affair with coffee. There he became a pastor and met his wife, Linda, and together they became habitues of Seattle’s many coffeehouses. Ada, meanwhile, had settled in New Jersey.

A few years ago, after Ada became sick, Steven and Linda and their golden doodles, Nala and Gordo, moved across the country to help her. They settled in Hamilton, and Steven became a pastor at a church in Princeton.

But he grew dissatisfied with the direction the church was going and his inability to make it a more welcoming place for all. So he quit his job and together with Linda founded Turtle Beans Coffee Roaster, first in his home and now with a storefront in Bordentown.

Turtle Beans imports and roasts its own specialty coffee beans. Fonseca selects varieties from his favorite coffee-producing countries around the world, including Kenya, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Mexico, and of course, Costa Rica.

He began roasting the beans in small batches in his home in Hamilton, which he then sold via the internet. After the online business began to take off, he and Linda decided to look for a place to open a coffeehouse. They chose the location at 225 Farnsworth Avenue and had their soft opening last month.

Now customers can stop in to purchase whole or ground beans, get cups of house-roasted coffee to go, or hang out at Turtle Beans’ “slow bar” to have a fresh cup made in front of them by one of several pour-over methods that the Fonsecas feel deliver a satisfying coffee experience — be that by Chemex, siphon, Origami dripper or cold brew methods.

“We call it the slow bar because it takes time to make it, but when you make it in front of the people in a unique way, it just makes it feel very special for the person,” Fonseca says. “From the way you smell it, to the way that you drink it in your cup, to the way it looks and obviously the way that it tastes, coffee should be a full sensorial experience.”

Turtle Beans coffee inside

The interior of Turtle Beans Coffee Roaster. Steven Fonseca says he wants Turtle Beans to be a welcoming place for all people.

Turtle Beans will also sell a variety of teas, chais, and pastries sourced from local bakeries. Fonseca’s sister, Samy, who also now lives in the area, is part of the Turtle Beans team.

As Fonseca learned earlier in life than most, good coffee starts with good beans. Turtle Beans goes by the Specialty Coffee Association of America’s grading system in selecting its coffee varieties. Coffees are only considered specialty coffee if they are rated 82 on a 0-100 scale.

The Fonsecas tend to like light to medium roasted coffees that have tropical, fruity notes, and they will look to focus on coffees in that style at their shop.

“Every coffee should taste different. Coffee is like teas, like wines. But what happened with coffee in this area is, people are used to an overroasted coffee flavor,” Fonseca says.

He says some coffee roasters overroast their beans to cover up the defects in their beans. “When we select our coffees, we want people to be able to taste their nutty or chocolatey notes, to taste coffees that are very fruity or very herbal. When you roast them the right way, people are able experience the natural flavors that coffees should taste like.”

Turtle Beans will offer many of the drinks that coffee lovers have come to expect from a coffeehouse, like lattes and espressos and Americanos. They will have chai, matcha, and a variety of teas on the menu as well.

They will also offer some other, trendier preparations, like an espresso mojito — a combination of tonic water, espresso and mojito mix that Fonseca says he and Linda have come to enjoy.

Fonseca says a lot of what he’s been doing since starting the online portion of the business is educating customers on best practices for making good coffee. For instance, while Turtle Beans sells coffee beans both ground and unground, he has a clear preference and a reason for that preference. “We always recommend you get the whole bean,” he says. “The coffee stays fresh for a longer time.”

The store remains in soft-launch mode for now. Soon, Fonseca hopes to be able to offer workshops helping coffee drinkers understand how to make better coffee at home. “Different pour-over methods, most of them are inexpensive but great ways to make coffee at home,” he says. “There are these little details you can adjust to make fantastic coffees.”

Fonseca quit his job as a pastor eight months ago, citing burnout, anxiety and depression as reasons for the career change.

“One of the things that burned me out was, I always wanted to make the church a place where everybody felt welcome. It didn’t matter their color or their status or their sexual orientation,” he says. “All those years, I tried to change the church, make the church safe place for everybody. I burned out because I was spending a lot of energy to change something that was not going to change.”

With the coffee shop, he hopes to be able to do what he could not accomplish as a pastor.

“It’s always been my dream, and my wife’s dream, to have a coffee shop, especially a place where people can sit down and relax, a place where you can read a book and have a cup of coffee,” he says. “Coffee doesn’t judge. Coffee loves everybody. By creating this space, my wife and I were able say, ‘It doesn’t matter who you are. If you come here, we are going to take care of you.’”

Fonseca chose the name Turtle Beans to further embody the notion of taking ones’ time to enjoy their brew.

“I wanted to share the idea of the importance of slowing down and making coffee a ritual of self care and self love with the people you love,” he says. “Coffee takes time to prepare, it takes a lot of process to import and produce good coffee. When you prepare it at home, it takes time too, and that’s OK. A lot of what I was experiencing was, I was always thinking what’s next, always working, and I was not present. I was not living in the moment, not enjoying the today. That’s why our slogan is, ‘Slow down and sip the journey with a cup of coffee.’”

Turtle Beans still has its online coffee shop as well. Available there are specialty coffee beans from around the world as well as coffee subscription boxes, mugs and other merchandise. Fonseca also offers specialty coffee tasting sessions and can also be hired for special events.

The Turtle Beans moniker has additional significance in that the Fonsecas are lovers of turtles. They note that of the 300 species of turtle and tortoise in the world today, some 129 are vulnerable or endangered, according to the International Union of Conservation of Nature.

Besides naming some of the company’s online subscription packages for turtle species, Steven and Linda say that through the shop, they hope to help in the effort to save endangered and vulnerable turtles.

Turtle Beans Coffee Roaster. 225 Farnsworth Ave., Bordentown NJ, 08505. Phone: (609) 853-3029. Instagram: turtle.beans.roaster. Open 6 days a week starting at 6:30 a.m. (Closed Saturday).

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