From riding his motorcycle into the residence halls to owning a coffee empire, ISU alumnus Danny O’Neill is a large contributor to the ISU community and living proof that hard work, curiosity and passion can lead to huge success.

Dan Fincham, manager of campus cafés and convenience stores, said Iowa State has been carrying O’Neill’s coffee since 2003. O’Neill’s business, The Roasterie, has provided thousands of ISU students and staff with coffee.

The coffee is air-roasted and 100 percent arabica specialty-grade coffee from 31 different coffee-producing countries, according to The Roasterie’s website. 

“Just going across campus it feels surreal,” O’Neill said. “I see our coffee cups every where and am just thinking how wild is this all these years later and everyone is drinking our coffee.”

His first real experience working with coffee came from an unexpected journey to Costa Rica his senior year of high school. He had spontaneously signed up with American Field Service to be a student in Australia, hoping to be reunited with his girlfriend who lived there. To his dismay, six months after signing up, he received a little letter that read, “You’re going to Costa Rica!”

Little did he know that it was not love he would find on his expeditions but the key to his success — the coffee bean.

After he returned from the trip, he joined some friends in tasseling coffee beans, thinking it was enjoyable but not imagining that it was, as he put it, a “transformative experience.”

The summer ended, and O’Neill began his freshman year at Iowa state. As a 6-foot-7-inch member of the football team, he was an active participant in the exciting college lifestyle. He could be found rinding around campus — and even in his residence hall — on his motorcycle, bartending for a local bar and enjoying the activities during Veishea.

With sports, all of the excitement and a rigorous class schedule, O’Neill became an avid coffee drinker to keep himself going. Before college he had not been. The first time he drank coffee had turned him off to it. It was in fourth grade at a stock car race and being that coffee is an acquired taste his younger self did not approve.

College completely changed his mind. He described one time during finals when he drank an entire pot of coffee. After he finished, he described the euphoria he felt afterwords.

“I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t sit still, I couldn’t study, but I loved the way I felt,” O’Neill said.

Every day since then, O’Neill has drunk a massive amount of coffee. One downfall O’Neill noticed was that the coffee options for students on campus at the time were extremely sub par and limited.

“We would get heart burn and then you’d have to eat Tums.” O’Neill said.

This was a problem for students who needed coffee to help them power through finals, especially coffee lovers like O’Neill who had at one time guzzled 40 espresso shots in a single day.

After college, O’Neill went on to work in sales and marketing for a large corporation.

Selling about $100 million of packaging a year, he was doing extremely well but knew something was missing.

“I felt like it was just squishing me, and I was having to be someone I was not,” O’Neill said about working for the company.

In the early ’90s, he travelled to Russia. The trip was an eye-opener for O’Neill. He found the individuals he met there to be incredibly passionate and full of life. They possessed a burning drive and curiosity that O’Neil realized he used to see in himself.

“I used to be like that,” O’Neill said.

After the trip he immediately decided that it was time for him to make a change. It was the fall of 1992, and O’Neill quit his job, deciding to go out on his own. He wanted to start his own business doing something he truly loved, and that was coffee.

He began in his own basement, disregarding the doubts and skepticisms of his relatives and friends. The coffee industry was minuscule at the time, and many questioned O’Neill as to why he would try and make any sort of business based on something as “trivial” as coffee. Their doubts only made O’Neill more determined.

“If I could find 50 people who drank as much coffee as me I could make my house payment,” O’Neill said. “That’s all I wanted to do, was just find 50 people.”

Business started off slow. For the first few months O’Neill did not find one person. For someone lacking O’Neill’s energy and passion this would have been more than enough reason to quit, but he pressed on. Finally his hard work paid off and the medical center at Kansas University made the first purchase of Roasterie coffee.

In 1993, a reporter heard about O’Neill’s business and did a story. People began to call wanting Roasterie coffee, and from that point on it took off. By 1994, O’Neill was working from 7 a.m. to 4 a.m. promoting the growing company and nurturing it into the business that it is today.

“If you’re just going through the motions, someone who is really passionate is gonna crush you,” O’Neill said.

O’Neill made sure to mention the fact that people are not all good at the same thing and that above anything else you gotta have passion. It was made clear by him that if someone wants success in life they must work hard at that something they love. He takes pride and enjoyment in his career and attributes his success to his work ethic and passion for what he does.

O’Neill knows that it takes an immense amount of time and energy to create a business. He, like many others, did not start at the top — in fact he started at the bottom in his basement. He was a college kid with a dream ,and he had the inspiration and the dedication to make it into a reality.

“If you’re starting your own business — whether it’s coffee or anything else — be ready for one hell of a ride,” said O’Neill.