This first blog I figured needs to be about coffee. Since I am trying to build a coffee business to bring high quality coffee to everyone around us, then I figured I would talk about coffee first. We started this venture back in 2017 just wanting to bring something different and exciting to Tupelo. And what is more exciting than Black Coffee. So that is what we did. We began with just an old table that I put some wheels on and some good coffee from a roaster out in Georgia. After a few months of just selling black coffee, I took the plunge and purchased a small espresso machine and the fun had begun. I lived on Youtube and steaming milk. I am pretty sure we went through 3 gallons of milk a week. That was just Kelley and I practicing. Doubt we drank any those first few weeks, but we sure tried. Eventually we got the hang of what we thought was good coffee drinks. We started to share these drinks with more people and really had fun with what we were doing. Trying to make good coffee and take it to people instead of them having to come to a shop. So we continued on down this path for a while. During this time, our family grew by a couple. We added our dog Owen in August and then our first born Aoife in January of 2018. The other thing that started to fester in my head was that I could do this whole roasting thing. Again, I was studying youtube, reading as many books as I could find, internet articles, anything that offered any helpful info on roasting. The only problem was that I did not have the money had another place it was going instead of towards gadgets and hobby equipment, a baby. So after some random conversations with friends and unlike meetups, I found someone that let me borrow and old roaster for a while.
So the journey continued! I started to purchase very small bags of green beans and try to cook them away on a small HotTop roaster. It was crazy fun and smelled amazing. However, I had no clue what I was really doing and just hoped everything tasted good. Well it just so happened that people liked what I was doing!
I continued to roast, getting a little better as I went. Learning more and more until I wanted to get a roaster of my own. I took the plunge again, purchasing a small sample roaster that was bigger than the HotTop, but still nothing too big. However, now I was able to produce twice the amount of beans at each roast and even could replicate the roasts much easier! I was on cloud 9. With the cart picking up and me roasting, things were rolling along pretty smooth. Until we got pretty busy. We were getting our beans in more and more stores and had more and more events. This meant that just me roasting on one machine, putting out 2 lbs every 20 minutes was very time consuming. So what do you do? You buy another roaster of course. Double your output and also be able to use two machines at once! I was rocking and rolling. Roast during the week and set the cart up on the weekends. Sounded fun! We did different festivals and events. Setup downtown at Elvis Fest, Gumtree, and down on Main concert series. We kept our cost low and in our head profits high while still taking the coffee to the people! Then we came across an opportunity to open a store.
A store was something we had put on the back burner since we started due to me working a job and having a small child, it would have been quite the undertaking and the amount of stress to provide for everyone with a store would have been very hard. We decided to hold off on any opportunities, until we felt the right one came along. With a location near downtown and the growth we thought we could get, we decided to again, take the plunge. Man we had some great timing. April 2020. Sounds like a good time if you were in a coma all 2020. Pandemic had just started, and no one knew what was going to happen and we decided to open a coffee shop. Well the first year has had its ups and downs, but we had made it. You may ask, how can you provide for a coffee shop with two small roasters? Well you can't so I purchased a much bigger roaster in May and sold the two small ones. This made life much easier! I am able to put out much more coffee than before and the quality of roasts is better as well. Now we are cooking with butter! Things are rolling along. Pandemic, new roaster, new accounts and new customers. We are getting our name out and people are wanting to come share a cup of Joe.
Now we have been in our current location for a little over a year and have continued to grow ever since. We have more things on the horizon and hope to continue to grow. Our goal is always to bring quality coffee to the people, so be on the look out for more coffee coming. We want to be able to be a part of your day in many different ways and hope to bring joy and happiness when we do.
PV
