We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Jesse Mohler. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Jesse below.

Jesse, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

I’d received a Hario pourover and some exotic coffee beans as a Christmas gift. From there, I started going down the rabbit hole of brewing methods and trying to get the perfect flavor extraction from my ground coffee beans. Then the wheels started spinning and I thought, man, I could start roasting my OWN coffee. So, I looked into it and sourced some green coffee beans. I had this idea that I could roast better coffee than big corporate brands with just some bare essentials from my home. I used a cast iron skillet over a small fire in my backyard, turning the beans with a wooden spoon and monitoring heat with an infrared thermometer. This primitive style of roasting led to a lot of burned & scorched beans, but definitely helped in my learning the process of roasting a quality coffee.

That same year I attended the annual Columbus Coffee Festival, here in Columbus, Ohio. As a spectator I visited with roasters from all over Ohio and picked their brains about how they started and the issues they had to address along the way. This only fueled my desire to further pursue this endeavor. I was totally convinced I could roast better coffee than Starbucks with just the bare essentials – no fancy marketing schemes, flashy packaging, or any of the gimmicky specialty drinks. This spawned the mantra “NO FLUFF; NO FRILLS. JUST GREAT COFFEE” that I’ve used since the beginning. It’s printed on a banner and hung in my roasting room as a reminder to focus on the core product with a minimalistic approach.

The minimalist style that I’ve incorporated into the branding started from my roots, growing up in Southeastern Ohio in the Hocking Hills region where hiking and camping are very popular. This “leave no trace” idea along with reducing waste was already instilled in me long before coffee roasting ever crossed my mind. So, it was fairly easy to transfer these principles into my business model for KAMPFIRE.

The name KAMPFIRE Coffee stemmed, quite literally from roasting the beans over a campfire – the old school cowboy coffee approach to roasting. Stripped down to the core essentials and perfected over a series of trial-and-error. I’ve since moved onto using an actual drum-style coffee roaster, but the principles of the process remain very similar.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

As I’d touched on previously, I got into coffee roasting by curiosity and sheer stubbornness. haha! My brain is wired in such a way that I like to figure out how things work. So, once I started brewing coffee in different methods, I had to figure out why different coffees tasted differently and why different roast profiles produce different flavors. The DIY’er in me just said, hey, I can do that! So I jumped into it and just kept going. Granted, it took a lot of failing and a ton of scorched beans to learn how to get a consistent dark roast haha! It’s all part of the process and growth.

I studied Graphic Design at Columbus State Community College – seemingly a lifetime ago – back in 2013. I now work a full-time job as a wide format print specialist for an athletic company, here in Canal Winchester, OH where I also do some graphic design projects. I used some of these design skills to come up with the logo, branding outlines, and package designs for KAMPFIRE.

I run KAMPFIRE Coffee from my home in the evenings & weekends as a one-man operation. I source ethically-grown & produced coffees from all over the world and roast them myself from a spare bedroom that I’ve converted into a full-on coffee roasting operation. I created and manage KAMPFIRE’s website, social media pages, new product testing, packaging, and shipping – I wear many hats and I’m constantly juggling multiple projects – fitting for a guy nicknamed “Jester”.

I’m very proud of the accomplishments and the growth I’ve experienced since starting this business back in 2018 and I’m so very thankful for those who’ve supported me along the way. It’s a ton of work and ya don’t always see a lot of capitol profit in return. I just truly love being able to craft a product that people can enjoy; keeping the artisanal approach alive within coffee roasting process. Knowing that folks can sip some of my coffee around a campfire or breakfast table and enjoy some good conversation, that’s what it’s all about.

How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?

In my case, I was fortunate enough to have a full-time job with hours that allowed me to have some free time in the evenings. So I was able to start small – very small – and invest slowly and steadily into my business as it’s grown. It takes some serious discipline to remind yourself to take anything gained and reinvest it back into the business to continue an upward trajectory of overall growth. So far I’ve been blessed enough to not have to take out any business loans or anything, I’ve funded this endeavor solely out of pocket for the last eight years.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

Resilience…. a fancier word for my stubbornness! haha! I think I’m going to start using that from now on – I’m resilient, not stubborn!

In all seriousness, though. Coffee roasting is not always super profitable and you have to genuinely love the craft and the process of creating something. KAMPFIRE has somehow survived a pandemic, inflation, tariffs on imported coffee beans, and more. It can be a roller coaster at times, for sure.

I started KAMPFIRE in March, 2018 and by 2020 I’d seen some steady growth, thinking I was on my way to breaking even on my investments. However, the pandemic hit and it became harder to get coffee beans and some of my retail locations had to close up – some of the smaller shops closed permanently during this time. KAMPFIRE came out of the pandemic and once again started gaining some positive momentum. Social, political, and economic shifts led to higher inflation rates, causing prices to raise on EVERYTHING – from green coffee beans, to packaging materials, to shipping costs. Since I’m just a small one-man operation, it’s tough to compete with the big name corporate coffee giants, so it makes it tough to continue selling at a competitive price when the cost of the raw materials skyrockets overnight.

Inflation rates start to creep back down and I think, ok we’re back on track to getting out of the red and back to making some money with this business. POW! Tariffs get slapped onto green coffee beans and the price of coffee DOUBLES overnight, cutting deeply into profits. Again, I’m so thankful that I’ve got a day job to pay the bills and keep KAMPFIRE afloat – paying for a web domain, accounting services, etc… all the behind-the-scenes type of stuff that are necessary, but not NEARLY as fun as simply roasting coffee.

It takes a special kind of stubborn, errr I mean, RESILENT type of person to run a small business. haha!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.kampfirecoffee.com
• Instagram: kampfirecoffeeroastersllc
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kampfirecoffeeroastersllc