We recently connected with Stephen and Leah Soule and have shared our conversation below.

Stephen and Leah, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What was it like going from idea to execution? Can you share some of the backstory and some of the major steps or milestones?

We’ve been married for 13 years and together for 17, and coffee has always been a part of our relationship–drinking, brewing, and home roasting. When Stephen decided to retire from Metro Nashville Police Department, Leah asked what he wanted to do instead, and Stephen said he’d like to give a roastery a shot. He wrote a business plan and purchased our first Sonofresco air roaster from Craig’s List in August 2020. Since then, we’ve purchased 2 additional air roasters and a drum roaster to maintain our small/micro batch quality and freshness while meeting demand for our product.

Stephen and Leah, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

Our business philosophy focuses on the notion that coffee is comfort. Preparation, relaxation, conversation–they’re all enhanced by a good cup of coffee. For us, coffee is home; it’s love. We want to share that warmth and connection with other people.

All of our coffee is roasted 1-2 pounds at a time, and apart from a few seasonal blends throughout the year, all our roasts are single origin. This ensures that we can quality check everything we produce. Furthermore, we can speak directly to every coffee we sell: tasting notes, origins, green coffee production, and roast levels. We also brew every coffee we roast using any number of methods so that when a customer asks what’s good for a French press or an espresso or a cold brew or a pour over we can provide a variety of suggestions.

The goal is to have something for every taste that (1) comforts someone and (2) makes that person want to share the experience with others.

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

Consistency!

We provide a quality product at a reasonable price, and our customers know exactly what they’re going to get. Moreover, our customers know just where to find us and how to reach us if they need something. We’re responsive and direct.

Okay – so how did you figure out the manufacturing part? Did you have prior experience?

Scaling up from a few grams of home roasted coffee to more than 100 pounds a week has been a true challenge. We have a total of 4 coffee roasters to keep up with demand while maintaining quality.

Still, green coffee to sale-able coffee takes a few more steps than tossing it in a roaster and calling it a day. Observing and adjusting for volume can be a guessing game–we have definitely roasted coffee at 9pm because we over sold stock. Choosing packaging that’s attractive and within a margin is a challenge–we hand stamp every bag instead of using stickers. We’ve purchased a generator to bring to our markets to grind coffee fresh but also prevent product loss. And manufacturing our 100% compostable kcups require us to roast 100 pounds of coffee and ship it to Virginia to be processed (by another small business!).

Contact Info:

• Website: www.madjoroasters.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/madjoroasters
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/madjoroasters/

Image Credits
All images are credited to Mad Jo Roasters (Stephen and Leah Soule)