Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Jasmine Jackson. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Jasmine, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today The first dollar your business earns is always special and we’d love to hear how your brand made its first dollar of revenue.

I got my first clients were my parents and my in-laws. Once I revealed to them my dream they gave their full support. They purchased a bag of each flavor I had.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

When I was a kid I use to sneak and drink my grannys coffee. She wouldn’t let me have my own so I drank hers. Later on in life I went to Culinary School and got a experience different flavors. While being a line cook in a fine dining restaurant I would sneak and make different juices and lemonades using the purees we had on hand. One day I came into work and my boss came and put few different purees and concentrates on my station and said “Make enough for the whole line”. I thought I was sneaking making drinks and come to find out he was the one sneaking my drinks from the cooler. From then on I made a drink every shift I worked and my coworkers enjoyed them.

Can you talk to us about how your funded your business?

In the begging of stages of my business I used my personal savings. I had about $350 put up for a purse I wanted to buy. Instead of getting the purse I purchased 75 bags of coffee. I didn’t know where to begin. I then purchased stickers and put them on the bags. I sold as many as I could then the pandemic happened. Business slowed down tremendously. I then began to do porch drop offs to my customers. After that I saved all of the unemployment and purchased an empty trailer and a cooler. And for about a year myself, my husband, and both my father and father in-law built my mobile trailer.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

We didnt know what we were doing or what we had gotten ourselves into. But thanks to people in multiple Facebook groups we figured it out. Designing the layout to be both functionable as well as fitting all of the rules of the city. Trying to cross all t’s and dot every I was stressful. The paper work was the hardest part about this process. But someone from the FB group reached out and offered her services to help with paperwork and prepare for an inspection. Because we live in Michigan you know we have those really cold months. So trying to put in a water tank was so hard because everything kept freezing. But we learned our lesson after replacing it twice. We now just close our business down in the winter and open from Spring to Fall.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.DetroitBlackCoffee.com
• Instagram: @DetroitBlackCoffee
• Facebook: Detroit Black Coffee

Image Credits
All photos were taken by me using my personal cell phone.