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

Kenzel, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you talk to us about a risk you’ve taken – walk us through the story?

Both of our co-founders came from professional careers that focused on risk management with Tio being a Mechanical Engineer in the Oil & Gas industry and Kenzel being a Corporate Risk Manager in the Banking industry. This weighed heavily in our perspective of risk-taking as we understand risk is not always negative but rather should be balanced and calculated against the level of return expected. Risk can be healthy and risk can be positive and some individuals or business have a greater appetite for risk than others. In starting and building Three Keys, we wanted to take strategic and business risks by being a bit of a positive market disrupter in the coffee industry, offering a fresh perspective on how coffee can and should be enjoyed. However we are extremely averse to financial risk. So we started Three Keys with our own savings, choosing not to take on debt or investors so that we could have more freedom and creative control over the strategic direction of our business. This required a lot of sacrifice in the years leading up to launching our business (paying off student loans, not taking on car notes, budgeting heavily, etc) and meant that we had to delay some of our moves but having the appropriate balance has been incredibly rewarding.

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

Three Keys Coffee is a family-owned craft coffee roastery that offers a multi-sensory coffee experience through taste, sight, and sound. Founded by Tio and Kenzel Fallen, Three Keys Coffee explores the connection between art, music, and coffee through vibrant bag design, curated Spotify playlists to pair with each roast, and top-quality, award-winning coffee.

To date, Three Keys Coffee has been consumed in all 50 states and several countries. Both the company and the founding team have been recognized globally as featured in Sprudge, Bloomberg, Roast Magazine, NBCNews, Houston Chronicle, Imbibe, Food & Wine Magazine, TheListTV, Cosmopolitan and Barista Magazine.

We’d love to hear the story of how you turned a side-hustle into a something much bigger.

Three Keys Coffee, co-founded by Tio and Kenzel Fallen, is a craft coffee roastery based in Houston. Three Keys takes its inspiration from the sounds and art of Jazz, and specifically derives its name from the keys of the trumpet—an instrument of simplicity that uses just three keys to produce notes across a creative and complex range of tonal outputs.

The trumpet is a personal connection to the founders, considering Tio played the trumpet for over 15 years. Coffee became a passion for both Kenzel and Tio after years of traveling abroad to coffee origin regions and connecting with local coffee shops. Tio began learning the craft of roasting through formal training and started roasting on a home coffee roaster which quickly grew into a commercial interest. Being a mechanical engineer by trade, he was intrigued by the science of roasting but also drawn to the art of roasting which is reminiscent of the artistic freedom and creativity of playing the trumpet. Our passion project quickly grew into more after we were approached by Trader Joe’s to sell our coffee in over 40 of their grocery locations.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

Quality is paramount to us and this is reflected in the way we have won awards, globally in the coffee industry. Food & Wine Magazine named us the best coffee roasted in TX because of our strong reputation and commitment to excellence.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.threekeyscoffee.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/threekeyscoffee/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/threekeyscoffee
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/79535694/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/threekeyscoffee
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCY-DqR_byDc-Urdk4tG_-JA

Image Credits
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