Last Friday, at the Colosseum Gyms' member appreciation
barbecue, I struck up a casual conversation by the deserts with Patti Griffin. Predictably
our small talk turned to work.
“What do you do for a living?” I asked.
“I work in a family business,” she replied.
It’s an old family business too. Pfefferkorn Coffee has been
roasted in Baltimore
for over a hundred years. Patti is the daughter of the family patriarch; Louis
Pfefferkorn, Sr. She told me that her grandfather once owned a sizable farm in western HoCo. “He
moved out here after selling his original farm behind what is
now Edmonson Village Shopping Center in Baltimore ." The business needed a farm for the horses for their delivery wagons. Before they
focused exclusively on coffee the family was in the grocery business.
It’s good coffee too but you can’t buy it in HoCo right now.
The last HoCo retailer that carried Pfefferkorns coffee was Yates Grocery on Main Street in Ellicott City . Last month the store owner, Betty Jacobs, announced that Yates would be closing after 127 years.
“We hope to have a couple of new retailers in Howard County
