Hero Coffee Works' knowledgeable staff has been serving Montana and the surrounding area's specialty coffee equipment for over 8 years. Prior to this, Robert Lafley, the owner of Hero Coffee Works, under the name of Joe Mechanic, assisted local customers for over 5 years. The familiarity and knowledge gathered over the years give Hero Coffee Works a unique and advantageous ability to suit the needs of our customers into the future.

Hero Coffee Works currently has 6 employees who fill different daily roles and specialties. All are experienced and familiar with the technical work of maintaining and repairing specialty coffee equipment. We distribute for well over 3 dozen specialty coffee equipment manufactures and have established vendor relations with a wide variety of parts and equipment companies specializing in specialty coffee needs

Hero Coffee Works has staff that have been factory-trained with La Marzocco, San Remo, MAVAM, Eversys, Nuova Simonelli, Synesso, Slayer, Rancilio, BKON, Concordia, and many other leading brands.

Hero Coffee Works is also a member of the Specialty Coffee Associations Coffee Technicians Guild. In the Guild we have exclusive access to technicians from all over the country to assist in any questions or needs of our company. Hero Coffee Works is proudly assisting in developing a curriculum for the upcoming Coffee Technicians Certification Program being developed by the Guild.

Hero Coffee Works maintains, repairs, and sells specialty coffee equipment to a majority share of Missoula area coffee shops as well as services clients throughout Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming. We are experiencing steady growth and predict adding more technicians and locations this year.

Hylan Joseph: Why did you choose coffee as a career?

Samantha Janssen: I had many different plans for a career when I was younger. I actually started school working on an art degree, with plans of pursuing social work. I quickly realized that working in coffee would personally give me so much more. I'll save you from my long sad story, but I think I wanted to do social work because it could give me something I wanted: connect with people in a totally non-superficial way and help them find happiness. As it would turn out, working in coffee did that for me, but in a way that I am way more cut out for! Coffee connects people and is an awesome non-judgmental community to belong to. It blows my mind when I think about how many miles and hands my coffee has passed through to get to my cup. From the farmer to the roaster, the tech maintains the machine that will brew my coffee to the barista that hands my cup to me. And that is happening all over the world. And to me, that is absolutely amazing.