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Mail Tribune Business News
November 30, 2006
Marcus, left, and Bob Bezuhly started CMC Espresso nearly 10 years ago, and the business has since taken off. (Mail Tribune / Jim Craven)

The caffeine craze

Coffee kiosk supplier CMC Espresso thrives under caffeine-addicts' radar

The company name Cool Beans probably doesn't ring a bell and, unless you're a coffee stop retailer, neither does CMC Espresso. It's not the place where Rogue Valley caffeine addicts find their fix.

Yet, the insatiable desire for more coffee and espresso drinks here and elsewhere is driving CMC Espresso's thriving bottom line.

The nearly-decade-old enterprise now housed on Industrial Drive near the Medford airport manufactures and distributes espresso, smoothie and coffee carts and kiosks as well as coffee brewing equipment and training videos. Its products can be found as near as Jacksonville and as far away as Kazakhstan. CMC recently began constructing pre-fabricated drive-ups that can be reassembled by the buyers, and the company bought a maintenance business to service roughly 1,000 Southern Oregon commercial coffee and espresso machines.

The company's roots go back to the spring of 1997 when Marcus Bezuhly, now 32, was attending Sierra Nevada College in Rocklin, Calif., working toward a business degree.

"He was driving from Grass Valley down to Rocklin, working full-time at a coffee cart and using mochas to stay awake at night," said Bob Bezuhly, 58, who serves as the company's sales manager. "Eventually they built a campus of the college in Grass Valley and my son said, 'Dad you've got to get the contract to sell coffee.' "

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Cool Beans was introduced that fall, but by then the Bezuhlys' cart-building prowess had been spotted when they were working the Music in the Mountain music festival. Another vendor saw their cart and asked them to build one, and the rush was on.

"Originally I wasn't looking much past setting up a little stand and replacing my existing job," Marcus Bezuhly said. "And then real quick, I realized 'Gosh, there are a lot of people who want to get into this business.' "

The family soon had their own Cool Beans sites in Rocklin, North Highland and Sacramento — which they retained until selling off the retail side in 1999 — but it became readily apparent that there was more opportunity on the manufacturing side of the equation.

"We had a short-sighted view of where we were going and we were learning the industry as we were getting into it," Marcus Bezuhly said. "Then we realized there aren't that many companies that do what we do. We're one of maybe 20 companies in the country and the growth potential hit me and I knew we needed to really stick with this."

Since then, CMC Espresso has pumped out 100 carts and kiosks or more per year.

The company, which employs 12, had sales of $750,000 in 2005 and expects to finish this year with revenue of $1.2 million.

In 2001, CMC landed a contract to build an on-campus Starbucks coffee set-up at the California State University-Stanislaus campus in Turlock.

"Right after that, we did one in Texas and since then have done a whole bunch of them," Marcus Bezuhly said. "Those are pretty big jobs when you get to do design work for a big name like that. Hey, that's cool when you're selling to Starbucks rather than buying from them."

Since then the manufacturer has had contracts to build coffee stations for the U.S. Energy Department's complex in Oakridge, Tenn.; the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.; and the Warner Brothers lot in Southern California.

"It just kind of snowballed," Bob Bezuhly said.

He predicts college campuses will continue to be key outlets for a long time. Recently, the University of Iowa's medical center had one installed and projects are planned for more in Cedar Rapids. Then there are retailers, such as Ghirardelli Chocolate and Dutch Bros, that use their carts to serve trade show traffic.

Typically it takes four to six weeks to turn out a cart, which runs $15,000 to $18,000, or a multiple-cart kiosk, which retails for $23,000. Of course those numbers can grow when bells and whistles are added. The Cerritos Library in Southern California paid $80,000 for a boomerang-shaped kiosk.

The company moved from Grass Valley into its 7,000-square-feet Medford facility in 2004, primarily because its previous labor pool ran dry.

"What we found here was a ready labor pool and we found getting parts in and out of here was easier," the elder Bezuhly said. "We're also able to subcontract welding and powder coating to local companies."

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