Jenna Hetzell ’10 took the skills she learned as a URI rower and used them to build a local coffee roasting brand.
It’s a sunny Saturday morning in West Kingston, R.I., and Jenna Hetzell ’10 is in her office. Burlap bags stuffed with green coffee beans from Honduras, Vietnam, and Brazil stand sentinel, and two rowing oars with blue and white blades hang on the wall overhead.
“So, this is it,” she says, gesturing to the space around her. This is Seaworthy, a coffee roastery that aims to, as Hetzell puts it, “give the people what they want.” And what they want is a no-frills, smooth cup of coffee that tastes great.
Hetzell does this through slow roasting, a method that reduces acidity and leads to a smoother brew with less bitterness. “It’s like cooking a steak slow or fast— it’s gonna be different,” she says. “The aroma I get is richer because I’m slowing the whole process down; I’m not killing these beans; I’m preserving the flavor.”
She takes a scoop out of a bag of roasted beans and fills a black bag emblazoned with her logo, which includes a loop-to-loop rope knot. While Seaworthy is all about coffee, if you look at the details—the rowing oars, the knotted rope, the names of the coffee blends (Way Enough, Even Keel), and the intensity of the roaster herself—you notice there’s something below the surface driving Hetzell’s operation. That something is rowing.
Hetzell dusts her hands on her sweater, which features a coffee bean catching a wave on a red surfboard and adjusts her glasses. She projects the aura of a scrappy entrepreneur, but you can also sense her inner athlete.
“My experience on the rowing team at URI from 2006 to 2010 was unbelievable,” she says. “Going from not knowing how to do it at all to becoming a championship rower in 2008 (first time in program history) and 2010, to becoming a coach who brings a team to the national championship (in 2013, 2016, and 2019)—it was wild. That’s what I love about rowing. You can join and become a fantastic rower.”
But becoming a champion rower and coach takes more than just passion—it requires logging data, tracking progress— and a whole lot of self-discipline. And it’s not a stretch to say that learning to row, learning to roast coffee, and starting a business all require the same skill set.
After a decade of rowing and coaching, Hetzell got a job at Starbucks, where she learned how to grind espresso, pull a shot, and steam milk. “It’s a lot like walking onto the rowing team,” she says. “You have to learn fast, get into the system, and just start screwing up so you can get good at it.”
She fell hard for coffee and later worked with a local roaster before deciding it was time to get in the boat, push off, and start her own roasting company. “I really felt called to this,” she says. “I felt about it the same way I felt about rowing, and that’s how I knew this was something I needed to do.”
And she’s done it. You can find her coffees at many Southern Rhode Island markets and eateries. Paula DiLullo, co-owner of the Beach Rose Cafe in Charlestown, serves Hetzell’s light-roast, Swiss water process decaf and a special dark roast named after the cafe.
“Jenna is energetic, passionate, professional, and very much like a scientist. She brought athletic discipline to her role as a roaster, with a laser focus on quality and taste,” says DiLullo. “Customer feedback has been extraordinary. Most customers come here for the coffee.”
Hetzell believes her experience at URI helped her succeed.
“To be a championship-winning rower, you need to know how to track your data over the long term. Rowers are all about the numbers,” she says. “That has influenced how I approach my coffee business. My wife was also a Division I athlete, and we run the company together, so we always joke that we run this coffee company like a Division I sport.”
—Grace Kelly
PHOTO: NORA LEWIS