Tuesday, April 16, 2024
Take four lifelong friends with a serious entrepreneurial bent, add in a family history of moonshinin’ and distilling and throw some coffee beans into the mix, and you’ll get a pretty good idea of what Whiskey Morning Coffee is all about.
The company, based out of Sledge Distillery off Paluxy Highway, was founded last year by Granbury High School graduates Evan Sledge, Clay McNutt, Josh Yarbrough and TJ Ryan. Whiskey Morning sells fire-roasted coffee beans aged in Texas craft whiskey barrels, infusing the beans with the taste of whiskey without leaving any actual alcohol content.
Their product is undeniably good. Their story might be even better.
PARTNERS FOR LIFE
Sledge and Yarbrough have been friends since they were babies. The two met McNutt and Ryan during elementary school.
Since the time they were old enough to work, the four have been working together. Sledge had a landscaping business from the time he was 13 or 14, and the other three worked with him there.
They also worked as fishing and hunting guides, and after high school, Sledge figured Alaska was the place for him.
“We started (guiding) here and went off to Alaska, because somebody said, ‘man, if you’re going to be a guide, you need to go to Alaska,’” Sledge said.
That first summer was ideal – working boats and talking to customers was the dream, and they were living it. But once winter hit and Sledge started school at Alaska Pacific University in Anchorage, he started feeling differently.
“College up there sucked. My freshman class was, like, 30 kids,” he said. “I was like, ‘Man, I think I’m going to transfer back home.’”
Sledge transferred to TCU, but the guide business is still going strong. He and Ryan spend each summer guiding in Alaska, while Yarbrough and McNutt guide in Texas and watch over the coffee.
“None of us have assigned roles, so everyone is doing everything,” Yarbrough said. “That’s what helps us in the summer too.”
FROM PROJECT TO PASSION
The idea for Whiskey Morning Coffee started in a class Sledge took at TCU. His assignment for the entire semester was simple: Start a business.
“We pitched our ideas, and I was like, ‘Well, I’ve got a lot of whiskey barrels. What can I do with whiskey barrels?’”
Having been fishing and hunting guides, the group was no stranger to seeing their clients spike their morning coffee with a little whiskey. They decided to age coffee beans in whiskey barrels and “just see what happen(ed).”
None of them had a coffee background, although Sledge has a history of distilling in his family. His grandfather, Dub Sledge, made moonshine for his fellow troops in the South Pacific theater of World War II, and his parents adapted that recipe when founding Sledge Distillery.
So when they tasted the first cup of Whiskey Morning Coffee, they were thrilled.
“I tasted it, and I was like, ‘There’s no way this is stuff we just made,’” Yarbrough said.
That doesn’t mean the recipe hasn’t been tinkered with. The first batch was, as Yarbrough put it, “a little stout.”
“The first batch, we aged it way too long,” Sledge laughed. Customers were calling, saying that while they loved the coffee, the whiskey smell was strong enough that their bosses were worried they were drinking on the job.
But once the group honed in on the recipe and started selling to friends, family and other connections, Whiskey Morning became bigger than they imagined.
“We started selling beans, and the people roasting it couldn’t roast it fast enough for us,” Sledge said. “We had to become roasters, so we started learning how to roast.”
The group has participated in a competition for startups in Austin that went “really well,” Yarbrough said. Whiskey Morning didn’t win any money, but they did make the final round and were able to present their product.
That led to a call from the Capital Factory, another group aimed at developing start-ups, and Whiskey Morning hopes to develop a relationship there.
FRESH BREW
Whiskey Morning’s process is simple. After Sledge Distillery whiskey or bourbon is dispensed into bottles, coffee beans take the place of the whiskey in the barrels.
About 40 pounds of coffee beans go into each barrel. They’ll sit on a rack and soak up the flavor, with the group periodically checking to see how far along the beans are in the aging process.
Depending on the weather, beans take between a month and three months to age. When the temperature fluctuates, the barrel will expand and contract, imbuing the beans with flavor at a quicker rate.
Whiskey Morning fire-roasts its beans on site. After that, all that’s left is packaging and distributing.
STILL BUDDIES
Sledge admits the dynamic isn’t exactly what you’d expect at a business.
“We go to those pitch competitions and stuff, and it’s like, ‘Okay, we’ve got our IT guy who has a background, used to work for Dell or something, and we’ve got our marketing guy and this or that,’” Sledge said.
“On our team, we’ve got me, a general studies major from TCU with a business emphasis; TJ Ryan, a welder, going to school at TCC; Josh Yarbrough, who’s getting a master’s in geology at SFA; and then we’ve got Clay Mc-Nutt, who does, like, house restorations. So it’s not like how you would picture it.
“But the reason why each business has been successful is because every dude goes 100 percent, and they don’t care if they lose. They’re willing to risk it all because they’re nothing to lean back on.”
Business meetings are relaxed, to say the least. The group had a membership at a WeWork office in Fort Worth, which gave them meeting space and some cold drinks.
“We were getting free beer on tap,” Yarbrough said. They’d hammer out business ideas over a few brews, just four friends chasing success.
“We’ve been always talking about wanting to work together,” Yarbrough said. “We know each other’s strengths and weaknesses.”
“I feel like our whole group has a pretty strong work ethic. We know what needs to be done.”
There are ups and downs, as with any business.
“There’s always a roller-coaster,” Sledge said. “The more you’re in here roasting, doing new products, marketing, taxes – you’re like, ‘Dang, this is tough.’
“But the moment we go to an event and get emails from people or customers call us and tell us how much they love the product...dude, this is fun.”
Being friends for so long has allowed the group to trust each other, which is key when two of the four spend summer months on an Alaskan fishing boat.
“They keep it popping, those dudes,” Sledge said of McNutt and Yarbrough. “When me and TJ leave for Alaska, they have to put in overtime.
“Clay and Josh are great at having it under control. Because when we leave for Alaska, and our time change is different, and we work the whole day on the water with no internet service, man, they’re on their own.”
On average, Yarbrough roasted 30 pounds of beans every Friday, typically worked an event on Saturday at the distillery and promoted the coffee Sunday nights at places like The New Gran-bury Live.
There’s also a “constant” effort to call people and make more sales, Yarbrough said. It’s a ton of effort for a project that isn’t yet a full-time job for any member of the group.
“Yarbs, he’s getting his master’s in geology,” Sledge said. “And he’s thinking, ‘Man, it’s rolling, let’s keep this thing going.’
“We always talk about how we have to sacrifice. This ain’t a salaried job.”
THE FUTURE
Whiskey Morning is currently only available online and on site at Sledge Distillery at 8210 Paluxy Highway, and Sledge says the group plans to keep it that way for a while.
“We might do the retail market, but right now probably not,” he said, at least for the whole beans. Whiskey Morning is planning to unveil bottled cold brew coffee and a bottled spiked drink, which they hope will debut in January.
Also around that time, the group hopes to develop a process that will allow customers to customize what barrels their coffee is aged in.
“You can totally customize your own bag of coffee that nobody else might ever taste,” Sledge said. “We want to do that because we think it would be cool -- if we were drinking coffee, we’d want it that way.”
Yarbrough’s excited about the spiked drink in particular. Much like the first ever cup of regular Whiskey Morning, when he sampled the spiked stuff, he thought, “Good lord, how are we putting this stuff together?”
In the meantime, Yarbrough – listed as the group’s “digital diva” – hopes to have more content for the website, whiskeymorningcoffee.com .
“Hopefully we’ll keep growing, keep getting the name out there, get a lot more content rolling out,” he said.
Whiskey Morning’s original long-term goal has changed slightly since the first cup.
“We said, ‘Man, we’re making coffee for the average Joe,” Sledge said. “We don’t care what the coffee people say, we’re making this for the dude who likes whiskey coffee, or doesn’t even like whiskey but he gets up and works every day. People that drink Folgers every day, like we grew up on.”
But then coffee reviewers tried a Whiskey Morning cup and gave rave reviews, which helped the group realize they can achieve something greater.
“We’re like, ‘Okay, maybe we’re onto something,’” Sledge said. “The Folgers guy likes us, and the coffee hipster likes us.”
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‘Every dude goes 100 percent, and they don’t care if they lose.’
Evan Sledge, Whiskey Morning Coff ee
