How a new Centre County company wants to help you ‘step into the world of specialty coffee’

The new Boalsburg-based Idou Coffee Co. all started when four friends got together over a cup of coffee.

“We bonded over specialty coffee,” said co-founder Mike Swanson, who owns the company alongside Mikala Swanson, Christine Schafer and Tim Schafer. “We love good coffee ... and we loved the idea of just sitting down with a good cup of coffee and slowing down.”

“Idou” — pronounced “ee-doo” — is a Greek word that means “to behold” or “pay attention,” and Mike said the group thought that captured the essence of the kind of company they wanted to build.

“It wasn’t ‘Wow, this is going to take your breath away as a cup of coffee,’ but we wanted to create a product that would help people slow down and appreciate a slow morning or a break in the afternoon, or bonding with a friend or family time,” he said.

While the idea for the brand came about while the four were in college, in 2015, the group of friends didn’t officially start the company until the pandemic, when four stimulus checks and a new abundance of free time made their college dream look like reality. So, with space in Mike and Christina’s home, Tim’s experience as a hobby coffee roaster and an aim at eventually growing the business to become full-time jobs for Christine and Mikala, Idou launched in December 2020 as an e-commerce business, before expanding to in-person sales. You can now find Idou at the Downtown State College Farmers Market on Tuesdays and Fridays.

So what sets Idou apart from other coffee roasters or even the coffee you could find on your local supermarket shelf? Freshness is one of the biggest factors separating Idou from the pack.

“We try to roast, at most, twice a week. We believe in the value of freshly-roasted coffee. It makes a huge difference. We don’t stock up for an entire weekend or month,” Mike said. In comparison, he said, the coffee that you purchase at the grocery store could have been roasted up to two years ago.

But beyond this, the Idou brand isn’t just selling coffee — it’s also educating consumers who may be intrigued by the specialty coffee world, but who are a little too intimidated to jump in headfirst.

“We want to straddle the fence between, maybe, your average coffee consumer and someone who is edging toward that specialty coffee world,” Mike said. “We have this experience all the time where somebody who knows us is like, ‘Oh, you guys own a coffee company. I don’t like coffee that much.’ And then we say, ‘Well, can we get you to try some of our coffee?’ And then they go, ‘Holy smokes, this is delicious.’”

He added: “We want to be the kind of company that helps them take that step into the world of specialty coffee and especially take it at home.”

To help customers take that step at home, the Idou website features a Beginner’s Best Coffee Guide that details various aspects of the coffee-making process that, done correctly, can all add up to a better cup of coffee. The guide covers everything from coffee grinders to water filtration, coffee recipes to learning how to use different types of coffee makers beyond your average Keurig, such as a pour over manual coffee brewer or a french press. Idou also offers a unique grind size guide that contains not only a guide to grind sizes to assist shoppers in finding the perfect grind size for them, but also six sample-sized bags of coffee that help you find the settings on your grinder to match the reference samples and the size of grind you need for whatever type of coffee you’re making (french press versus pour over, etc.).

“It goes well beyond just providing a good recipe for making a cup of coffee. (It’s also) helping people to understand what goes into it. What can they change? What can they tweak? What’s some of the chemistry that’s going on in the cup to get the actual mug of coffee that they really love and they want to make time and time again?” Mike said. “So it comes back to, for us, getting people to that point where they can sit down and really love the cup of coffee that they drink at home.”

And if you don’t have time to peruse the full Idou guide on making a better cup of coffee, Mike has a few quick tips: buy fresh coffee, buy whole bean if you can, use filtered water to brew your coffee and then just start exploring to learn what types of coffee and what brew methods you like best.

“We just want to make (coffee) accessible to everyone,” Christine said. “Whether it’s a big time, specialty coffee person or your typical, drink-coffee-every-day-because-you-like-caffeine person, whether you have a grinder or not, we just want it to be accessible to everyone and everyone to be able to enjoy it. That’s really what it comes down to.”

Customers can purchase Idou’s coffee from an ever-evolving list of options available online. The team changes up its offerings based on what’s seasonally available in various coffee-growing regions around the world — a part of the job that Tim said is one of his favorite aspects of the business.

“As a hobby roaster, you don’t necessarily get to try a bunch of different coffee, because you can only drink so much coffee, so my favorite thing is being able to roast coffee from all over the world and always be trying new things,” he said.

As for Mike’s favorite part of the business, he points back to the educational component of the brand.

“I’m really passionate about helping people just improve themselves and learn to grow and change, and so being in a position to do that with something as common as coffee, is really, really cool and it’s something that really keeps me going,” he said.

Learn more about Idou Coffee Co. at www.idoucoffee.co and find them at the Downtown State College Farmers Market, Tuesdays and Fridays, 11:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m.