inducted 2011

Danny O’Neill is the “Bean Baron” of The Roasterie, inc., a specialty coffee roasting company which services espresso bars and coffee houses, fine restaurants, high-end grocers, offices and retail accounts.  Danny started The Roasterie in the basement of his Brookside home in November 1993.

It all began during his senior year of high school when Danny spent the year in Costa Rica as an exchange student.  While visiting he spent several weeks picking coffee, and it was at this time that his passion for it ignited.  Since then, Danny has made hundreds of trips to origin, touring different segments of the coffee industry and locating the best coffees in the world.

Since The Roasterie’s inception, Danny has become a sought-after expert in the ever growing coffee industry.  He has judged cupping and barista competitions all around the globe since 1995. In April 2001, he was awarded “Super Taster” status on the Specialty Coffee Institute Sensory Aptitude Test.  In 2005, he authored a DVD, Cupping 101, which is sold around the world.

Danny’s business experience includes ten years in varied sales and marketing positions, spending the last seven of those years with a large multinational corporation.  In his final position, Danny was responsible for an entire industry segment, with sales in excess of $80 million.  He serves on a number of advisory boards for various local companies and associations, and is currently on the Board of Trustees at Park University, Board of Regents at Rockhurst University, and is a past President of the Specialty Coffee Association of America.

Danny was born and raised in Denison, Iowa, and is the middle of ten children.  He received a B.A. from Iowa State University in 1983 with a double major in International Studies and Political Science, and a structured minor in Economics. In 1993 he received his MBA from the Rockhurst University Executive Fellows Program in Kansas City.

2005 marked the birth of Danny’s son, Terry, as well as the opening of The Roasterie Café in Brookside, which to this day is one of the most successful coffee shops in the country. In 2008 Danny’s daughter Sophia was born; and in November 2010 the second Roasterie Café opened in Leawood, Kansas.

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