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

Amando, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to go back in time and hear the story of how you came up with the name of your brand?

I was raised in Indio California & at 6 months of age moved into the very first house my parents bought together. My whole life as I know it revolves around that house, the good times ( birthdays, Christmas, getting my first bike ) to the worst of times ( my parents divorcing, moving to another town and going to a new school for a year before moving back home, saying bye to friends ) That house is my biggest comfort in life. I have both the best & worst memories there. I bought that house at the age of 32 & met my girlfriend turned wife 2 years later at 34, That house is located on Quail Ave in Indio Ca.

My wife came up with the name two years before we started Quail Street Coffee Roasters, She printed out the back story & pinned it on the wall saying to me ” it would be really cool if you opened a coffee shop & named it Quail Street Coffee” I looked at her & said ” That’s so random, I don’t want to own a coffee shop nor do I plan on doing so ( I was still working for AAA as a travel agent & later US Bank ) By total chance I met a coffee roaster who later had me come to his roastery & watch him do his thing, I was absolutely fascinated with the process, My wife asked “do you think you can do it?” without missing a beat I replied YES! We looked at each other and laughed and in unison blurting out ” we have the name ” so for us coming up with a business name was the easy part.

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.

I didn’t become a business owner till I was in my late 40’s. My background is in fine art, I was an operations manager, artist, art installer and I was a Gallery director the last 2 years of those 18 years, I was always creative and artistic from a very young age, mostly pencil & paper but later delving into brewing beer and being creative from a different perspective. I never had an entrepreneurial mind set, more so I was always the guy the owner could count on, I could think like that person & make decisions like him or her just from working alongside them day in & day out. I got into roasting coffee by chance, I met a coffee roaster at a local brewery and he was kind enough to invite me over to his roasting facility, after going over a few times I was absolutely fascinated & hooked! Shorty after I told my wife I wanted to do this, when she asked ” can we pull this off? can you run a business and learn to roast coffee?” I was very comfortable saying yes, I said to her “it’s coffee, one of two things is going to happen, we’re either going to succeed and pay ourselves back in the first year or we are going to fail miserably & pay ourselves back in 3 years, We pulled a calculated start up cost from our saving & 1 month later we were on a plane to Minneapolis MN to visit Mill City Roasters for a 2 day workshop & to pick out our machine.

I’ve always been a very structured individual as I do struggle with OCD which works both for me & against me in the world of coffee roasting and as a business owner. As far as running a business I just apply what I observed in my prior careers ( i.e. marketing, sales & follow thru ) My work ethic is there by nature.

The book keeping side of things is handled by my wife / business partner Niki, she’s been in retail banking her entire life so she’s got the money & budget side of things under control.

Our product is isolated to the roasting side of things, we’re not a coffee shop so were not open to the public making latte’s, Americanos or offering avocado toast. We roast and sell whole bean coffee via our website & we also sell wholesale to a few local & not so local coffee shops. As far as what I offer my clients it’s simple, I always cover 3 to 4 continents so they’ll always be able to choose from Central America, South America & Africa, Then there’s the special offerings I’ll bring in, countries that don’t get the recognition they deserve, We’ve done coffee from Vietnam, Panama & the Congo in the past.

What we want our current and future customers to know is this, we are truly grass roots! Although we didn’t think we would own a coffee business, coffee has always been a part of our lives, Niki is from Italy so not a day goes by that the old beat up workhorse Moka Pot isn’t brewing up some stove top espresso two or three times a day. We’re passionate about coffee & we want to share that with you the customer.

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

In November of 2023 we found ourselves in a situation where our machine broke down. In the process of finding the issue we continued to manage incoming orders. We started to feel like our quality control process could be compromised and that would lead to our entire reputation of providing high quality coffee to our customers would be ruined by our choice to keep accepting orders. We decided to shut down the business not knowing if we would find a remedy and if we would be able to come back.

Within minutes of our announcement on social media text messages and phone calls started flooding my phone from both local and out of state coffee roasters, asking what was the problem and how they could help. The trouble shooting began and within a few days we had a plan of action in place. With a lot of R & D , and sacrificed coffee we were up & running 2 months later.

The universe works in mysterious ways they say & I couldn’t agree more. just a couple weeks after our relaunch one of our accounts opened a second location & we purchased a larger machine tripling our roasting capabilities & business is thriving thanks to an amazing coffee community & customer base.

Can you open up about how you funded your business?

We self funded, We calculated a realistic budget of what we thought we needed to be operational & fortunately we managed to pull it off. We started our business in a very humble manor such as hand labeled bags as opposed to pre printed fancy ones, We continue to put 100% of our money back into the business and add equipment as needed. This mentality comes with age and life experiences and but it ensures that we don’t overextend ourselves.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.quailstreetcoffeeroasters.com
• Instagram: @quailstreetcoffeeroasters
• Facebook: Quail Street Coffee Roasters

Image Credits
All photos are taken and owned by Quail Street Coffee Roasters, Graphic image provided by Brent Jacobson exclusively for Quail Street Coffee Roasters, TM, CR, & all rights reserved by Quail Street Coffee Roasters