Ghost Town Coffee Roasters has been a Bozeman staple for many years, known for their delicious
roasts and brews at two cafe locations. An essential third space for coffee lovers to congregate over drinks is in the works. Ghost Town is a worthwhile pit spot before your upcoming fall adventures. I sat down with Ghost Town’s owner, Chad Kimm, and their marketing/community relations coordinator, Jessie Solon, over coffee to discuss the cafes and roastery.

Taylor Owens: How was Ghost Town conceptualized?

Chad Kimm: I would say it was a desire to own our own business and combine it with a passion for coffee and community. Bringing people together for coffee and sitting across the table from each other. So really, it was an entrepreneurial itch I had to scratch to create a business and use coffee as a vehicle for that. I love everything about the coffee business, from the agriculture end to drinking coffee together at the very end of the process.

TO: How long have you been at the Bridger Center location?

CK: We’ve been here for a little over six years. We’ve been in business for 18. We started doing wholesale specifically only for the first 10 or 11 years. Our original roasting location was out in Belgrade for about three or four years, then we moved into Bozeman just off Rouse for wholesale roasting. We moved here about six years ago and opened our first actual retail cafe location of our own. But most of our business is still wholesale distribution to other coffee shops, cafes, grocery stores, and offices.

TO: What would you like people to experience when they walk through your doors?

CK: For us, it’s just about embracing our community and keeping people engaged with each other. We want to make sure that the moment people walk in the door they’re greeted and asked how their day is. And it’s all about just being good people to each other. That’s really what the basis of our business is, and that’s what we want. That’s what we want to happen when people walk in our door. Just being good to one another.

TO: Was the Olive Street location intentionally placed for the community that’s above it?

CK: It was not. The developer of that building (ironically, it’s the same developer that’s building our third location’s building) approached us about wanting a local coffee shop in that building. We weren’t necessarily looking for it, but it’s been a good relationship with them. We’ve had nothing but positive interactions with Homebase, which is the development company that originally built the building. So they really just wanted a local coffee shop, a community gathering place in that building. The nice thing about both of these locations is that they are equally as inviting for neighborhood people to enter. It’s not hidden inside the apartment complex; anybody who walks by or lives in that neighborhood can come and visit. That’s an important part of our community aspect.

TO: Do you have a specific drink and food item that regulars keep coming back for?

CK: We have a lot of regular people that come in, and oftentimes our crew will recognize them walking in the door, and they’ll have that drink out on the counter before they even get to the cash register. As far as anything specific, I think we’d have to consult with our cafe crew.

TO: And for food items, do you do a rotation?

CK: We do some rotation, but we also try to keep some specific things on the shelf all the time. We realize that people are creatures of habit, and we want to make sure that there are the same offerings, high-quality stuff that we can keep on the shelf. That’s always been a bit of a challenge for us to try to figure out the balance between coffee shop, fair food, then going on to the next step with a full restaurant. We don’t have a full restaurant kitchen to prepare stuff, but we’re continuing to make improvements on that and hopefully we’ll be able to find that balance of getting just enough equipment in our kitchen area over here to keep high quality, diverse food.

TO: Do you have a personal favorite menu item? What is your go-to drink?

CK: As far as drinks, honestly, for me, the heart and soul of what I started, we started this business of being coffee roasters, specifically. So we roast all of our own coffee. I don’t roast nearly as much coffee as I used to. We have some other great people on our staff who do that now. But for me, coming back, I’ve roasted a lot of coffee in my day, but just tasting regular old drip coffee, filtered drip coffee, has always been my favorite. So I can actually not only do some quality control, but taste the difference. Why this blend tastes different than in Ethiopia or Colombia or wherever else it’s coming from.

Jessie Solon: So what I’ve been drinking at home, which I’m absolutely loving, is I’m preparing my coffee as a cold brew with a splash of coconut water instead of just regular water, and a little bit of oat milk, and it is amazing. Outside of that, I just stick with the straight brewed coffee. It’s easy. I like it. Whether it be hot or cold [outside], we do a lot of cold-brewed coffee.

TO: Do you have a favorite roast at the moment?

CK: I think for me, once again, it goes back to my coffee roasting history. But I get that question a lot. For me, it kind of revolves around what new fresh crop coffees are coming in. Coffee is an agricultural product, just like the wheat, barley, and potatoes grown around here. But we tend to get fresh coffees harvested once a year, much like wheat and barley. Right now, we’re looking towards getting some nicer, unique Central American coffees [from growers]we have relationships with. My favorite coffees tend to be what is new and coming in that we can experiment with: test, sample, and taste.

TO: What would you say makes you unique in the local food scene?

CK: I think as far as... there are obviously a lot of different coffee shops out there. We’re just starting with the fact that we do roast our own coffee. We can actually control the quality of how it’s roasted and how it’s packaged, and we send it to our customers. I guess I’m thinking more like on the wholesale side versus our retail-owned cafes. But all of the stuff we do on the wholesale side works its way into our own retail cafe locations, as well. I think what makes us unique here is that we can not only provide this really high-quality, specialty coffee but, on the wholesale side, we distribute lots of other things, like equipment, and we do sales and service of equipment. I guess if you were to narrow it down to something more unique for our retail cafe locations, once again, we’ve been in this business a long time. We’ve seen that there’s a lot of hipster coffee out there, for lack of a better way to describe it. We’re always wanting to fight against being too hip with our coffee. We want to make sure it’s approachable, that anybody can walk in the door and feel comfortable just getting a cup of black drip coffee, or anything high-end… a latte, or anything like that. That’s always been a focus of ours, making sure that we are community-oriented and very approachable for our local retail customers to come in and not only get a good product, but also feel like they’re a part of the community.

TO: What do you personally enjoy most about being part of the Greater Bozeman community?

CK: Once again, I think it kind of comes down to that community thing. I think we’ve, especially with Covid and the subsequent years, we’ve lost a lot of face-to-face community things. We want to make sure, not only with our customers, but with our coworkers, that we have a comfortable relationship with any person. It could be our competitors across town. I think coffee is the most communal beverage that’s consumed in the world, and we take that very seriously. We want to make sure that what we’re doing not only justifies everything else that happens in that community prior to us receiving the coffee; when we get it, making sure that we are honoring it. It might sound a little cheesy, but we honestly feel like we are honoring the journey of the coffee just by making sure that we represent it properly and keep our community together. I’m a native. I was born in Bozeman. So, with all the new people coming in all the time, I think it’s honestly great. But as we grow bigger and bigger, the sense of community gets less and less. We’re here to embrace and make sure that we are trying to maintain that community.

JS: We have two taglines. Our secondary tagline is the spirit of community. It’s a huge foundational piece of Ghost Town. I’ll say just from my involvement here, just witnessing how Chad and Clarissa run the business, they’re very community-focused in supporting different non-profit organizations and other businesses here in Bozeman. So, it goes beyond just the social interactions, which is a huge foundational piece, but also, supporting different events with brewed coffee outside of the cafe. And it’s beyond sponsorships. It’s really beautiful to witness. He really stands by what he’s saying here.

CK: The reason Jessie is sitting here is because she’s officially our community relations coordinator. So we have her in charge of making sure that we are being good stewards of our community with our business.

TO: Do you have anything coming up that you would want readers to know about?

CK: I think probably as far as our community stuff, we are opening our third location. It’s not too far. It’s two blocks north of Main Street instead of two blocks south of Main Street, which is pretty much our Black Olive location, so they’re not too far from each other. That’s probably one of our bigger Bozeman-local things we are trying to promote. It’s a part of what they call the One 11 Building on North Willson and Beall. We should mention something about Ryan’s brewing classes and things, too. Before Covid, we would offer pretty regular community education classes. One of our lead baristas... officially, we call him our retail coffee director, actually keeps track of the quality of the coffee that we’re serving to our customers, and makes sure that our baristas are trained properly. He’s been hosting a brewing methods class that has been really popular. So things like that are just fun little community things that we’re continuing to do monthly.

Stop by Ghost Town Coffee Roasters’ multiple locations this October and enjoy a cozy space and heartwarming drinks.