How Long Is This Origin Story?
Let’s check in, where were we last? In Origin Story Part 1, we covered a few important things. First, here at NuRange Coffee we love espresso martinis. Second, we loved them so much that we started an Instagram devoted to rating them. Third, we made an agreement to quit our jobs to create the golden standard in the coffee cocktail world. Now that we’re all caught up, let’s fast forward to October 2019, Origin Story Part Two let’s go!
Collin and Zach had quit their jobs to pursue their coffee dreams. Establishing Three Beans LLC we moved into an office to start planning our empire. The plan was simple: create pre-batched, kegged, espresso martinis to be sold in kegs to bars. This was the perfect idea, right? Wrong. Turns out, bars don’t want to run coffee through their tap lines. Even worse, espresso doesn’t keep longer than three to four hours.
We started looking into espresso alternatives, and landed on cold brew coffee. Cold Brew Coffee (if refrigerated) is good for up to four weeks! It was time to pivot, and pivot we did. We realized that there were a ton of exceptional things happening in the cold brew market. However, there was room for even more innovation. We broke out our idea board and got to work.
First we realized that canned cold brew is a much more appetizing market than kegged cold brew. Individual cans allow for more flexibility, plus we could showcase our extensive creative talents (Collin worked in finance and Zach in trucking) through our packaging. By breaking it up into single servings of cold brew, we could better control what each customer experiences.
Cold brew coffee is a very saturated market, so we knew that we needed to change things up. The problem with cold brew struck us pretty quickly. Most cold brews are both black and harsh, or are lattes packed full of sugar and other crap that’s bad for you. Why not make something in the middle of the spectrum? Why not make a cold brew that tastes like a latte but has the nutritional label of a black coffee? While we’re at it, why not make coffee shelf stable without refrigeration or preservatives. Yeah, those are a lot of questions…but it seemed like we were the only ones asking them. The ball was rolling, and we were cooking.
We had a business plan and a direction, but we still were missing the most important part of any coffee business: the beans. That’s a blog post all in itself, and its coming soon. This origin story is starting to turn into a saga. That’s it for Origin Story Part Two, stay tuned.
