Chris Allewelt is a coffee connoisseur.

Nine years ago, she couldn't find the quality of coffee that she wanted to serve in her cafe, so the owner of New Moon Cafe in Aiken and downtown Augusta took classes in Philadelphia and started roasting her own coffee beans.

The bumper sticker on her car shows her passion. It reads: "Life's too short to drink irresponsible coffee."

"It's not glamorous work, but it's fulfilling and very satisfying," Ms. Allewelt said.

Moon Beans roasts about 35 blends and has many local clients, including Earth Fare, The Bee's Knees, Metro A Coffeehouse, Coffee Break Cafe and What's Cooking in Aiken.

Ms. Allewelt also has mail-order customers in the eastern United States.

She works closely with coffee brokers in New York and Bellingham, Wash., that navigate the commodities market on her behalf.

"They're good contacts for finding good, specialty grades of coffee," Ms. Allewelt said.

She orders her beans in 150-pound bags and roasts them in 10-pound batches. She prefers to roast her own coffee because it provides a fresher product.

All of her beans are the product of sustainable farming, a natural farming method that doesn't exhaust resources.

Her business is the first Fair Trade Certified Roaster in South Carolina. She purchases much of her coffee from the fair-trade market, which allows farmers to operate in a co-op and ensures they will receive a fair price.

In the conventional market, farmers often sell their beans for less than it costs to grow them, explained Joseph Holbrook, the wholesale representative at Moon Beans.

"There's this cycle of poverty that they just can't get out of," Ms. Allewelt said.

Earth Fare, which supports fair trade, sells one-pound bags of coffee from Moon Beans.

"We started carrying everything they have, and it's flying off the shelves," said Bridget Cooper, an associate in the specialty department at Earth Fare.

Ms. Allewelt considers coffee roasting to be an artisan trade. It takes about 30 to 45 days to train a roaster at her shop. Many businesses use a computerized roaster, but she prefers to use an old-fashioned gas-jet drum, which requires monitoring the beans by sight and sound.

Moon Beans sells coffee from Brazil, Kenya, Columbia, Papua New Guinea, India and many other countries.