Good As Gold Coffee celebrates 40 years in the Canal District
Good As Gold Coffee is an iconic brand flourishing amid Worcester’s rampant residential and commercial development, celebrating its 40th year in the city’s Canal District this year. The family-owned, small-batch coffee roaster and coffee service wholesaler has been in Worcester for more than 50 years, moving to 115 Green St. in 1983.
The business is run by Dan Goldman, with his wife, Patrice, and sons Michael and Jay Goldman, a Worcester family that takes pride in sourcing, roasting and offering the highest quality coffee and products to the hospitality and food service industries (restaurants, cafes, hotels, etc.) and local offices located throughout Central Massachusetts and across the country.
One of just “a handful of independent coffee companies in New England,” Good As Gold is truly about family. “There’s a lot of love and passion that is carried throughout everything that we do,” said Dan Goldman, who sometimes goes by “Dan the Coffee Man,” a nickname playing off his special connection with coffee. “When the kids were young they gave me the nickname,” said Goldman, “and people say it fits my personality.”
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The dish: Good As Gold was founded by Dan Goldman’s father, Sid Goldman. Before the Green Street address, the company had been located in the city on Grand Street, Main Street and West Boylston Street. In the early 1970s, the first retail outlet, “Old World Coffees & Teas,” opened with the goal of educating consumers on coffee and tea origins and introducing them to new brewing methods. The Goldmans in the 1980s sold at Spag’s in Shrewsbury and even opened a café in Spag’s Old Schoolhouse Building offering their first private label “Spagtacular Blend.”
The company is one of original participants in the local Taste of the Nation, a fundraiser for Share Our Strength’s No Kid Hungry program. The annual event for years was the largest fundraiser in the city, with local chefs, restaurateurs and businesses serving food and spirits to hundreds of guests. Good As Gold has strongly supported community events throughout the years.
Pat Goldman is Good As Gold president and the only family member to hold a title, according to her husband, who with his sons consider Pat to be the company’s number one taste-tester. Michael Goldman markets the business and leads the technology side of the business, while his brother, Jay, is involved in all aspects of the business.
The company, with 15 employees, is passionate about producing a great product. To ensure freshness and quality of its coffees, it had a roaster specially built and shipped from Australia. The air roaster made to fit into the production room of Good As Gold is the only roaster of its kind in the United States, according to Dan Goldman. The advanced-technology air roaster levitates beans in the roaster allowing the product to stay in uniform movement, said Goldman, who explained that everything is done through computers. “When we create a blend or recipe for a coffee, we can replicate it over and over again, and it will taste the same every time,” he said. “Perfect consistency. It works beautifully.”
The roaster measures the beans’ temperature 10 times per second resulting in a more organized way of heating and cooling beans. On the other hand, competitors use a drum roaster, which functions with an arm, almost like a dryer, according to Goldman. Visit www.goodasgold.com to learn more about Airis coffee.
Good As Gold is a Fair Trade certified coffee roaster committed to sustainably sourced coffee beans from some of the world’s greatest coffee growing regions. At any one time, the company can have 25 or more single different origins within the facility. All of them have different flavors and profiles that the company can blend, said Goldman. The production room has bags of beans bearing the name of the farm, regions, co-ops and countries of where they’re from. Brightly colored murals on a back wall depict some farm scenes and women carrying baskets of beans after harvest. Artists Maggie Tseng of Worcester and Sophia Green, both professional illustrators and graduates of Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, painted the murals. The untold heroes of coffee truly are the farmers that grow the coffee beans, according to the Goldman family.
As a wholesaler, Good As Gold has many more capabilities with Airis, including roasting to order, private label toll roasting and custom blending. Clients, often owners of restaurants and cafes, visit the company’s tasting room where the Goldmans help in the selection of a signature coffee. “In the experimenting phase, one pound of coffee can be roasted in different ways to find the perfect profile for that coffee,” said Dan Goldman, adding, “We love working with our clients in bringing to life their ideas with coffee.” While some local businesses and restaurants keep to private labeling, others will advertise Good As Gold as their preferred coffee. Goldman said, “Either way, our company is coffee without ego.”
The company’s website offers more information about custom blending and private label coffee. Also, Good As Gold’s catering services, corporate gifts and wedding favors that include customizable coffee bags. “Coffee for the office” runs the gamut from equipment to specialty beverages, teas, syrups, cold brew, etc. It’s kind of mind boggling to see how many products and services Good As Gold offers. There’s so much happening behind the scenes! Hot cocoa mix packets are among the newest items the company sells. European dark chocolate blended with milk chocolate creates a decadent hot beverage that can be enjoyed any time of the year. Take my word for it. A few days before the first day of summer I visited Good As Gold and enjoyed a cup of the cocoa. Coffee first, of course, and then cocoa.
Goldman said perseverance helped the family navigate through the pandemic when they lost almost 80 percent of their business. “You had to dig deep and find smart, creative solutions,” he said.
Social media now plays an important role in helping promote Good As Gold. “Most important is that we source the best coffee beans and use the best roasting method,” said Goldman. “We pride ourselves on having something to please every palate. And, we offer great value.”
The company in celebration of their 40th anniversary is giving away a $25 gift card each week to one of its favorite places in the Canal District. Lots of restaurants! Visit Good As Gold’s Facebook page for more info. Later on, the business also may do a few local pop-ups as a way to introduce more people to its coffees. “We always want to make the company more visible,” said Goldman.
The 2000s have been “an exciting time” for this local company. Goldman said it has expanded into new ventures as a result of “an enlightened” generation of coffee drinkers that have entered the workforce. There are more unique coffees, he said, and coffee drinkers are more inquisitive about them. They not only ask questions about origins and want to know the story behind the producers, but they’re also more quality focused and value driven, he said.
When Good As Gold received the Better Business Bureau’s 2017 Central Massachusetts Award for Marketplace Excellence, Goldman said the family was honored because the company strives its best to live up to what the award stands for, which is ethics in business, being good for your community, good for employees, good for your customers.
“Coffee is a passion for us,” said Goldman, who pointed to a company sign, “Enjoy life, one cup at a time.”
Cheers to 50 years of coffee!
Xxxx
Taste of Shrewsbury Street in Worcester was a popular event held June 20, with 29 restaurants and businesses participating.
Vintage Grille & Gourmet Pizza, 346 Shrewsbury St., took first place in Best Food; Dad’s Keto Kitchen, 119 Shrewsbury St., second place. Basil n’ Spice Thai Cuisine, 299 Shrewsbury St., got honorable mention.
Look to many of the Shrewsbury Street restaurants’ participation in Worcester Restaurant Week scheduled in August.
If you have a tidbit for the column, all (508) 868-5282. Send email to bhoulefood@gmail.com.
This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: Table Hoppin': In changing Canal District, Good As Gold is a stalwart
