By Emily Puro

Wonderstate Coffee—Roast’s 2025 Macro Roaster of the Year—is a celebration of duality. Even the name evokes two distinct meanings. Is it a nod to a physical state, the wonderful state of Wisconsin, where the company is located? Or is it an emotional state, the feeling of wonder we feel when we sip a truly exceptional cup of coffee, or when we realize the awesome potential coffee has for effecting positive change in the world?

That duality is woven into nearly every aspect of the company’s operations. “Part of our origin story is this idea of our dual mission as a company, excellence in quality and also ethical trading,” says co-owner TJ Semanchin. “But those are also often competing interests, polarities, competing concepts that create some conflict that drives us forward.”

SERVANT LEADERSHIP: CARING FOR EMPLOYEES

Perhaps that focus on duality was the reason the management philosophy known as servant leadership resonated so deeply with the company. The term servant leadership was coined by Robert K. Greenleaf in 1970 and centers on the belief that an effective manager is a servant first, a leader second.

“A servant-leader focuses primarily on the growth and well-being of people and the communities to which they belong,” according to the Greenleaf Center for Servant Leadership website. “… The servant-leader shares power, puts the needs of others first and helps people develop and perform as highly as possible.”

Servant leadership “deeply resonated with how we were already operating, thinking of our values of honoring relationships, gratitude, and serving for the greater good,” says Amber Oppriecht, Wonderstate’s head of support services. The company’s focus on work-life balance, for example, aligned perfectly with the philosophy, and begins with a standard four-day, 36-hour workweek for all staff at the roastery headquarters.

“They give us space to actually be human,” says Director of Coffee Nick Brehany of the four-day workweek. “That’s 52 days a year more that we get to be with our families and our friends and working on something that isn’t labor.”

For roastery employees, the company contributes 80 percent toward medical insurance premiums (plus 50 percent for dependents) and 50 percent toward dental insurance premiums, and offers six weeks of paid parental leave. All employees—including staff at Wonderstate’s three cafes—are eligible for company-paid supplemental accident insurance; telehealth services; resources for mental and emotional health; a 3 percent Simple IRA match; monthly stipends for wellness and commuting; a reproductive care stipend that includes up to $250 for travel expenses; and a $15 per hour minimum wage. In addition, 10 percent of company profits are shared among all employees based on hours worked, with eligibility starting after three months of employment.

*Wonderstate owners TJ Semanchin, Caleb Nicholes and Bobbi Griffin (left to right) are committed to fostering a safe and supportive culture for staff.*

To celebrate staff longevity, Wonderstate offers cash incentives at various years-of-service milestones, and staff are recognized for demonstrating the company’s core values through its Living Our Values award. Each quarter, one employee is selected from staff nominations to win a week-long trip to visit the Triunfo Verde Cooperative, a Wonderstate producing partner in Chiapas, Mexico. This not only strengthens the company’s relationship with the co-op, it provides a valuable opportunity for staff who might not otherwise travel to origin.

“The culture at Wonderstate is fantastic,” says Paul Newcomb, head roaster. Newcomb is especially enthusiastic about the weekly staff lunches the company hosts. Every Tuesday, one department is charged with making lunch for the entire crew at the company’s roastery headquarters.

“To be with all your co-workers, turn off work for a minute, and sit down and share a meal every week is amazing,” says Brehany. “It creates relationships that go deeper than work.”

*Cupping in the lab at Wonderstate Coffee.*

LETTING EMPLOYEES LEAD

A company culture that values open communication, innovation and even risk taking has resulted in numerous employee-led initiatives. One such initiative, which began when an employee suggested donating $1 from every bag of a special coffee blend to plant trees, has grown into a major reforestation effort.

“Reforestation promotes carbon sequestration,” says Dan Soukup, Wonderstate's president. “It can provide alternative revenue sources if they’re crop trees like bananas and plantains. And it promotes responsible water usage and biodiversity. On top of all of that, it’s very good for coffee quality to have access to more shade.”

While it took some time for the company to find a meaningful way to use the funds from the blend—called Canopy—in 2023, it collaborated with export partner Pergamino to establish a shade tree nursery on the farm of one of its producing partners, Nilson Pillimue, in Colombia. More than 12,000 shade trees and 10,000 fruit trees are cultivated on the nursery to be distributed to producing partners.

Closer to home, Wonderstate’s cafe in Bayfield, Wisconsin, has seen another exciting employee-led project flourish. “Bayfield is a very small town on the shores of Lake Superior in northern Wisconsin, and it butts up against the town and the reservation of the Red Cliff band of the Ojibwe Nation,” says Bobbi Griffin, co-owner and Wonderstate’s head of brand. “Many of our employees are members of that band, and our lead baker, Angelica Little Hummingbird Woman Defoe, brought us the idea of offering Ojibwe translations on our bakery tags.” Defoe worked with a Red Cliff linguist to add the Ojibwe translations to the bakery tags and in-store signage, and now the linguist leads weekly community language classes at the cafe.

FARMERS NEAR AND FAR

One area where duality brings more symmetry than polarity is Wonderstate’s relationships with farmers. Being headquartered in Vernon County, Wisconsin, home to more than 200 certified organic farms, has led the company to develop strong relationships with farmers not only at origin but also in its own backyard.

“Our cafe menus are crafted seasonally based on what our local farmers have available and are able to provide fresh at that time,” says Griffin. “… We’re very blessed to have lots of really amazing local farmers around here, so we’ve developed relationships with farmers in each location.” That means the Viroqua cafe sources from farmers near Viroqua, while the Bayfield and Madison cafes source from farmers in those regions. That can make purchasing and menu planning complex—“You find out what they’re going to have and then you have a day to pull it together, or the morning of,” says Griffin—but it also supports the local economy and results in exceptional baked goods and other fresh, seasonal menu items.

Supporting the local economy is central to Wonderstate’s core values and its servant leadership philosophy. This became acutely clear during the covid-19 pandemic, when Wonderstate leadership had to decide whether to close the company’s cafes or try to find ways to remain open safely. “We chose to make it work because we knew how important it was for the local growers,” says Griffin. “Many of them were facing significant challenges.” By getting creative with take-out, delivery, and other covid-safe options, the company was able to keep its cafes open, keep its customers happy, and continue supporting its farming partners during a difficult time.

“Being part of that food system, where we have a need for high-quality, fresh ingredients, the producers we have relationships with work hard to meet those needs and supply us with quality products for which we pay a higher price. This relationship is impactful for all of us in what is a relatively poor, rural farming community,” says Griffin. The parallel between Wonderstate’s relationships with local farmers and with farmers at origin is clear. “When we purchase some of the best goods at the best prices for farmers,” Griffin says, “we share the success.”

*Director of Coffee Nick Brehany brewing.*

At origin, Wonderstate prides itself on paying competitive prices. The company has established a minimum price per pound for green coffee, which increases by 5 cents each year, although many of its contracts are set well above that. (The minimum for 2025 is $3.15.) When the C market is high, Brehany notes, the minimum may be less relevant, so Wonderstate often adds a differential to ensure its prices are competitive.

Wonderstate also prides itself on developing and nurturing partnerships with smallholder organic farmers and co-ops. “We believe in the cooperative model,” Brehany says. “Co-ops are community oriented. The farmers are members, and they have a voice, and they get to vote and choose how the organization around them functions.” Ninety-eight percent of the coffees the company purchases are sourced from certified organic farms.

“There are relationships that I source now that go back to day one of Wonderstate,” Brehany adds, “and there are relationships that I’ve brought on the past few years and people are really excited to see what those will flourish into. I think that makes Wonderstate a special company in that we have great coffees, and often our best coffees come from long-term relationships that we’ve built sometimes over decades.”

About 60 percent of the company’s sourcing is carried out in conjunction with Cooperative Coffees, an importing cooperative that connects smallholder farmers with roasters, mainly small roasters, who are committed to fair- and direct-trade practices. The model typically sees Cooperative Coffees purchasing larger quantities from its producing partners, with member roasters buying a share of the lot. As Wonderstate has grown, its relationship with Cooperative Coffees has evolved, and Brehany is now involved in sourcing all the coffees Wonderstate buys, partnering with Cooperative Coffees’ buyer on logistics and contracts for coffees from the co-op’s producing partners.

In addition to prioritizing origin travel to strengthen and maintain relationships, Wonderstate often hosts coffee producers at its roastery and cafes. In April 2024, for example, the company hosted three producer groups, two from Colombia and one from Guatemala. Staff were invited to meet with the farmers to learn more about their trading partners and the coffees they roast, sell and serve.

Cooperative Coffees’ Impact Fund—to which members contribute 3 cents per pound purchased through the co-op, which amounts to roughly $8,500 annually for Wonderstate—supports an array of farmer-led projects. Wonderstate also sets aside 5 percent of its net profits for projects and organizations serving communities near its cafes and at origin. It donates $1 from every bag of coffee in its $1 for Gender Equity program to promote gender equity in coffee-growing regions and, in collaboration with the nonprofit On the Ground, has donated nearly $20,000 to promote gender equity in the farming regions of the Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.

Brehany has taken an even more hands-on approach to supporting smallholder farmers. On a recent trip to Guatemala, he realized a longtime dream of bringing grinders, scales and AeroPress brewers to producing partners so they can properly prepare and enjoy the coffees they grow.

“Most coffee farmers, especially smallholder Indigenous coffee farmers, do not taste their own coffee,” he says, “and if they do, they taste the leftover stuff. My dream is to get every significant partner we work with, on the single-farmer level, to be able to taste their own coffee at home whenever they want.” In that way, he hopes to help farmers understand the value of what they produce so they can better advocate for themselves with buyers.

“One of my goals as a buyer is essentially to break down the weird power structure that makes me, the white dude, the decider of quality,” he adds. “I would love to be told by farmers, ‘The price you offered is actually not good enough because I know how good this is.’”

*Solar panels at Wonderstate's Viroqua headquarters generate 100 percent of the electrical power the company uses at its roastery and headquarters.*

MODERN ROASTING, VINTAGE MACHINES

For all its progressive values and modern design aesthetics, Wonderstate is proud to roast on two vintage Probats, a rare 30-kilo machine from the 1930s and a 90-kilo roaster from the 1950s. Both have been retrofitted with variable-speed motors and customized sensors, and both are integrated with Cropster. The roasting team also uses a Javalytics color reader to measure Agtron levels on every roast.

Roasting on the vintage Probats is “like driving old vintage cars,” says Brehany. “When they run, they’re the smoothest, best ride you can have. And when they don’t act properly, it’s like, ‘What’s going on?’”

Newcomb learned to roast on brand-new machines, where many of the variables are controlled automatically. “On the vintage machines,” he says, “one little misstep can really cause trouble, so you have to be a lot more alert, a lot more hands-on. The good thing is, having a very manual machine connected to software gives you the most honest representation of what’s going on in the roaster.”

“They will not hide your mistakes,” agrees Brehany. “They will not hide if you’re not paying attention.” But on the plus side, he says, “There’s no fancy technology involved, so when you do get dialed in, when you really get a rhythm, when the machine is tuned correctly, when the person behind it is super confident and capable, the results to me are much higher. I think the output potential is extremely high.”

Thankfully, Newcomb loves a good challenge. “I love roasting all coffees,” he says. “Even dark roasts have a specific challenge to them, which is how long can you keep the coffee in the roaster without it developing strange flavors? … I also really enjoy the hard coffees to roast. The Burundis. The ones that want to crash. Those are a specific challenge to roast … (and) can be so much fun.”

“This is what makes me happy,” Brehany exclaims, “when my head roaster says, ‘Roasting dark roasts is hard, and it’s a good challenge,’ because we are a company that wants to offer a variety of flavor expressions, from the ultra-floral citrus coffee to the deep, smooth, roasty classic coffee, and I think all of those can be done well.”

“Any time Nick says he is not completely convinced by a coffee,” adds Newcomb, “I make it my own little challenge to change that.”

NEW NAME, SAME VALUES

While the company has remained true to the values on which it was founded in 2005, Wonderstate has not always been Wonderstate. Until 2020, the company was named Kickapoo Coffee, a nod to the nearby Kickapoo River and the Kickapoo Valley it calls home. But the river and the valley were named for an Indigenous people—the Kickapoo Nation—who used to live in the area.

“We didn’t know that Kickapoo was an Indigenous nation,” says Semanchin. “That was the ground-level lack of knowledge, awareness, straight ignorance. As we grew out of our region more, we had people asking if we were Kickapoo, and we were like, ‘What does that mean?’”

The misalignment with both the company’s values and their personal values became undeniable when a staff member asked Semanchin and co-owner Caleb Nicholes point-blank how comfortable they felt continuing to use the name, given their newfound understanding of its origin and the harm their use of the name was causing. “That’s when we really let that question in,” says Semanchin. “Fortunately for us, we created a space where a staff member could ask those challenging questions, and we allowed ourselves to delve deep into those issues.”

After spending a decade and a half building a successful brand, the idea of changing the company’s name was daunting, but there was no denying it had to be done. “In our 15 years as Kickapoo Coffee, many people might have first encountered the word Kickapoo as a coffee brand, effectively erasing the Kickapoo people from our collective narrative,” the company explains on its website. “And this erasure perpetuates all the other acts of genocide against Indigenous people [in the U.S.] over the past five centuries.”

Externally, feelings were mixed. “For the old-school people who know Kickapoo as this regional river that’s defined the area and that a lot of the local businesses were named after, that decision was met with a lot of push-back and skepticism, people raising issues around virtue signaling,” says Nicholes. “We saw the whole gamut of emotional responses, and I’m sure many people stopped buying our coffee as a result.”

Along with that, however, came affirmation and gratitude. Semanchin recalls an email from a woman who belongs to the Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin who lived near one of the company’s cafes. She shared how she had always felt uncomfortable walking into the cafe with the Kickapoo name, even though she knew the company shared her values around fair-trade practices, organic farming and supporting local businesses.

“We’re aware that any storytelling by companies is branding and marketing,” says Semanchin, “so those are tricky waters. But at the same time, this was a personal journey in terms of acknowledging our ignorance, and these personal stories of how this impacted somebody who is Indigenous, for me that has been the affirmation that what we’ve done is the right thing to do.”

As part of the company’s journey to a new identity, the owners reached out to the Kickapoo Nation, now living in Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas. They offered an apology to each of the three federally recognized tribes, along with assurances that they were changing the company name. After some initial skepticism, tribal leaders received their apology with generosity.

After meeting with tribal leadership, Wonderstate hosted a fireside chat with Lester Randall, tribal chairman of the Kickapoo Tribe in Kansas. “Kickapoo is the name of a lot of things in this region, and a lot of people do not know the history,” Semanchin says. “It was the first time a lot of people had met a member of the Kickapoo Nation.” Wonderstate continues to fund a tribal program promoting the Kickapoo language, he adds, “to compensate for any harm we had done and any benefit we gained from the use of their name.”

As part of its rebranding effort, Wonderstate embraced elements of the Japanese art form of kintsugi, which involves repairing broken pottery with gold to create a stronger, more beautiful piece. “That resonated with us because we knew we needed to make a change, and it was a change that could potentially make or break us as an organization,” says Griffin. “But we knew what we needed to do … and were committed to rebuilding and repairing the brand. The copper kintsugi is a symbol of us owning and embracing some of those imperfections and flaws.”

In 2010, after only five years in operation, Kickapoo was named Roast’s Micro Roaster of the Year. Now, with a new name and significant growth, it’s clear the company has retained its commitment to the values that earned it the title. As Wonderstate celebrates its 20th anniversary in 2025, it’s looking ahead to new products, new packaging, and the goal of achieving B Corp certification within the year.

“Like a piece of kintsugi art, we acknowledge that we are all works in progress, including our business,” says Nicholes. “We are committed to continuously evolving into a better, more thoughtful company.”

* * *

Emily Puro is a freelance writer and editor living in Portland, Oregon. In addition to Roast, her articles and essays have appeared in Writer’s Digest, Better Homes and Gardens, Portland Monthly, The Oregonian and numerous other publications. She enjoys learning about the art and science of coffee, as well as the social and environmental impacts of the industry, and she continues to be amazed by those devoting their lives to this work.

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