We recently connected with Kevin Sprague and have shared our conversation below.
Kevin , appreciate you joining us today. Crazy stuff happening is almost as certain as death and taxes – it’s technically “unexpected” but something unexpected happening is to be expected and so can you share a crazy story with our readers
I can think of two stories that come to mind.
Every year since 2014 we have donated our time and product to a special event that helps people living with Multiple Sclerosis. It’s a non-profit called Meat Fight. They host an amateur bbq competition with local chefs not in the bbq community. On one particular year they had Nick Offerman (Parks + Rec, comedian) be one of the judges. He stopped by to try our coffee and actually did a little promo pitch for us. All the way to the point of “here let me turn it around so you can see the logo.” Such an unexpected thrill for us!
The other one was getting named “Best Coffee in Texas” by Food and Wine Magazine in 2018.
I remember it vividly. We were working at our desks one morning and started getting more than our usual online orders. Marta backtracked where the activity originated and saw that it was Food and Wine Magazine’s website. She said “OH WOW!” (or actually a word that’s little more colorful- ha!) “Food and Wine named us Best Coffee Roaster in the state of Texas!!” We were both surprised and elated!
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
What started out as a hobby for me turned into a business. Our first dive into the coffee world was selling at the Good Local Market in east Dallas in 2012. It’s a non-profit farmer’s market driven by the need to provide produce and goods to locals, manufactured within 150 miles of it’s location. We began to slowly build a following from there.
We continued growing with our online presence and wholesale accounts. Then in 2018 we entered into a national competition for food products called the Good Food Awards based in San Francisco, CA. It is a “blind tasting” of submitted products of over 2,000 entries. We were first announced as finalists and then blown away with the win for 2018!
We began offering cupping events (tasting coffee that we have roasted) at our roastery. These would regularly sell out before the event day. Always a joy to see people tasting coffee with notes of blueberry, peach or apricot. Keep in mind these are the natural attributes inherit in the coffee. We don’t add any flavors to the beans.
Most recently we submitted a coffee from a farm we have worked with for a few years to the 2022 Good Food Awards Competition. It from a farm in Panama called Bambito Estate. It went through another arduous “blind tasting.” We were once again blown away with yet another WIN!!
Can you talk to us about how your side-hustle turned into something more.
What started out as a hobby for me turned into a business. Back in 2003 Marta, my then girlfriend, bought me a small home coffee roasting set-up. I’m always curious what makes things function. I’ve been into making my own breads and pastas for years, most recently milling various grains to make my own flour. I fell deep into the world of coffee origins and roasting. We would take vacations to the Pacific Northwest, Colorado and New Mexico. I would have all the roasters I wanted to visit plotted on Google Maps and we would stop in to see the operations. So many of them were gracious enough to allow me to watch them roast and answer any questions. Fast forward to 2010, the country was feeling the effects of the 2008 housing crisis. The company we worked for was closing its doors. We were both laid off not long after that. We decided to create jobs for ourselves in the process. That was the beginning of Noble Coyote Coffee.
We’d love to hear about how you keep in touch with clients.
The Noble Coyote Coffee roastery is open to the public five days a week. We like to invite people in to try our coffees and see the roasting process. We also do educational cuppings and events monthly at our shop to help people explore their coffee journey. Noble Coyote can also be found at multiple events around the community from supporting Cafe Momentum, an organization that helps at-risk youth, to serving coffee for our local Bike MS ride. We like to connect with community over coffee.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.noblecoyotecoffee.com
- Instagram: http://instagram.com/noblecoyotecoffee
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/noblecoyotecoffeeroasters/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/noblecoyote
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/noble-coyote-coffee-roasters-dallas
Image Credits
Kathy Tran