Master Roaster Bob Rivkin has been roasting coffee for over 30 Years at Schapira's Coffee & Tea.

Bob learned the art of roasting from company founder Joel Schapira, who had come to the Hudson Valley Region of New York State from NYC.

The Schapira family had been roasting and selling coffee since the early 1900s and the standard that was set over a century ago is proudly still present today. 

Schapira's Coffee and Tea was the first coffee roaster in the United States to vacuum package their coffee. Before the early eighties, true coffee roasters only had about a thirty-six to forty-eight hour window before their coffee would start to go stale. In 1982, Bob and the rest of Schapira's ventured out in hopes of finding a better way to package their coffee. While the technology for vacuum packaging did exist in Europe, it was non-existent in the states. After meeting with a gentleman from Italy named Luigi Goglio, Bob had finally brought the technology that had once seemed unattainable from Europe to the States.

Many food distributors and larger coffee plants steered away from this technology. Some thought the machinery was too expensive while others lacked the vision, but Bob saw the potential and eventually many would follow. What intrigued Bob most about this technology was the ability to literally stop time. Meaning that once the coffee had been vacuum packaged in the Goglio one way valve bags, time did not seem to matter. The thirty-six to forty-eight hour window suddenly became a four to six month window. 

Bob is not only an artist and a true craftsman but also a pioneer in every sense of the word.