Meet Our Team of Jam Makers, Baristas and Bakers

This is one of our owners, Jennifer with our pup, Ruby

This is our owner, Danny

This is Kym, our barista and front of house full-time employee

This is our baker, Zoë.

Her favorite thing to make is the sourdough croissants. She is also Jennifer’s daughter! She does the baking prep, baking and jam-making assistance at the jam shop and also works the McMinnville Farmers Market.

Front of House Employees, Kym and Laney. Laney also helps with baking prep and jam prep.

 

Alchemist Jam is a company owned by Danny Roberts and Jennifer Fisher. We live in McMinnville, Oregon, just a few blocks away from our jam shop.

Danny is a musician and skateboarder and has worked in the culinary arts for over ten years. After many years of positive feedback about jam that he makes, he was encouraged to start his own jam company. He also loves to bake and our bakery has grown over the years as Danny gets more and more curious about sourdough and great pastries to make with local grains and fruits and vegetables.

Front of House employee and barista, Eddie

Jennifer is an artist and entrepreneur who focuses on weaving, painting and jam shop ownership. She is autistic and her identity as an autistic person greatly shapes the ways that she works in the world. Her current interests include: local food systems, social justice, neurodivergence, queer and gender theory, plants, care work and fiber arts.

We currently also have eight amazing employees that keep everything going and are the heart and center of our business. We couldn’t do it without them.

Alchemist Origins

We enjoy the process of combining healing herbs with berries and fruit to make jam in much the same way that an alchemist works.

 
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 Alchemy is, in its essence, a spiritual practice involving the self-transformation of the practitioner as they transmute a common substance into something of great value.

Small Batch

We make our jams in small batches and do all of our processing of the fruit and ingredients by hand and cook down the berries in large copper pots over the stove, and hand-pour into jars.

Organic & Local

We use organic ingredients whenever possible. The cane sugar and lemons used in our jams is organic. Our bakery grains are 100% local and organic. We are the only place in McMinnville that offers organic cow’s milk for our coffee drinks.

Our fruit is locally sourced from farmers throughout Oregon. We use Aesthete Tea, a tea company from Portland, for our tea menu. The coffee beans used on all of our coffee items are roasted for us by Portland small roaster, Bastion Coffee Co.

Mindful

Sustainability and care of the environment are extremely important to us. We work hard to eliminate waste in our shop, using cloth towels in our kitchen as well as reusable trash can liners. All of our food waste is composted, and we recycle everything that is recyclable.

Small Batch ·

Organic & Local ·

Mindful ·

Small Batch · Organic & Local · Mindful ·

FAQ

  • Danny first learned the ropes while working for a local jam company in his mid twenties. He later expanded his repertoire while making all of the jam for a local brunch restaurant. After he and Jennifer started dating, they spent the winter of 2016 trying different combinations at home and experimented with adding herbs. They came up with their current recipes together after lots of trial and error.

  • We make all of our jam by hand in copper pots at our tiny jam shop in McMinnville, OR. Our address is 207 NE Ford St, McMinnville, OR 97128.

  • During the summer season, we directly purchase berries from local farmers at the farmers markets that we sell at. Or, we go to farms in Yamhill, Clackamas, Lane or Multnomah county and purchase fruit directly from farmers. Occasionally (if we’re really lucky) then neighbors and community members drop fruit off at our jam shop, especially if they have a bumper crop that year. During the off season we get our berries and fruit from Blue Reaven in Amity, OR, and they locally source the berries for us. All of our fruit and berries are local!

  • We use fair-trade and organic sugar which we source from a local distributor for all of our jams. We also use organic lemon juice for every recipe. All of our herbs are organic and are sourced from Mountain Rose Herbs, Starwest, or purchased directly from growers in our area.

  • We try our very best to make all shipments within 1 week of your online purchase. Sometimes we have to make a batch of jam in order to fulfill a purchase and we make jam on Tuesdays. Most shipments will be made within a few business days and our shipments usually go out on Tuesdays or Fridays.

  • We sell our jam every at Made Here PDX, Tender Loving Empire, Harvest Fresh, Carlton Bakery and a number of other retailers and wine tasting rooms. We also sell at the McMinnville Farmer's Market on Thursdays.

Which jam is your favorite?

For Jennifer, it's Pear Butter. It’s so sad when the last jar of Pear Butter gets eaten and we have to wait months before the next pear season starts.

 

For Danny, it's Morning Marionberry (because, COFFEE!)