From Car Racing To Coffee
Our mobile cafe is 2500lbs of finely tuned joy on wheels. During the summer peak, we fit a team of four into less than 150 square feet. In a flurry of ordering taking, grinding, shot pulling, steaming, icing, and delivering we routinely make over 300 drinks within the span of four hours.
It would be laughable to say that everything always goes as planned but at this point, there aren’t too many things that can go wrong that haven’t already gone wrong. It’s the beauty of repetition.
With the process of our first cafe well under way, we thought we’d take the opportunity to tell the story of our beloved trailer before she becomes ‘old news’.
Internally, we call her Sweetness. Despite her name and present appearance, she looked a lot different in her past life.
Origins
She was brought into being in 1998 and served as the transport trailer for a drag racing car named Nanook. While the car was on the track, the trailer served as a store for Nanook branded merch.
We don’t know exactly when she was retired from the racing world but by 2012 she had been set out to pasture. Whoever bought her next had plans for a mobile taco stand. It sounds like a pretty tasty idea to us but nevertheless, the plans came to nought and she was sold again.
But let’s leave Sweetness in southern California for now and time travel to Richmond, Virginia in the fall of 2021.
The Search
In late September of 2021 we had been at the farmer’s market for almost three months. At that time we were the newest of six coffee vendors at the market. Not only were we the newest coffee kid on the block, we were also the farthest back in the market.
We had just started roasting a few months previously and wanted to stretch beyond the secluded confines of garage roasting and online orders to meet the coffee lovers of Richmond face to face.
As many before us, we started our heros journey at the farmer’s market. We sold cold brew and pour overs under a fold up tent.
The early months were filled with torrential downpours, generator problems, chaotic queues of cups interspersed with ego bruising periods of being nobodies with no line. Steadily, though, we found our rhythm and a loyal tribe of regulars.
But just as we settled into a system, the weather began to change. Suddenly, the appeal of cold brew vanished and everyone was clamoring for hot coffee. Every hot coffee order meant a 3 minute pour over. We got to the point where we’d have multiple pours going at one time.
The week we did 72 pour overs in four hours, we knew it was time to level up.
And so we began to contemplate the idea of an espresso cafe on wheels. Not one in a box truck that towers over you as you order and has a small sliding window where an arm reaches out from the darkness to hand you a drink. We wanted something bright, welcoming, and as open to the customer as possible. An environment that brought the outside in and the inside out.
With this in mind, we started to look for trailers. Our timing couldn’t have been much more challenging. It was the tail end of lock down cabin fever and it seemed like everyone was looking for a project to work on or a camper to hit the fresh air of the woods in.
Within hours of being posted, sometimes minutes, anything that looked halfway decent was snatched up for crazy sums.
We looked at everything from an old, retired ice cream truck in DC to a tiny tear drop camper that only had a 6 foot ceiling.
As our search extended from days to weeks with no progress and few prospects, our enthusiasm dimmed.
Every new trailer just seemed like another potential disappoint. When Sweetness first showed up in our feeds we all marked it for consideration fully expecting her to be gone within a day.
But in the middle of the afternoon on a Tuesday, we got a call. The trailer was still available. Mike, our dear friend and faithful advisor, had made contact with the seller. The showing the seller had earlier in the day had fallen through.
It was our time. But we had to get out to Buckingham Virginia as soon as possible. Mike, who lived closer, offered to arrive ahead of us to take an initial look. If it was a dud, he’d try to save us the two and a half hour round trip.
Buzzing with wary excitement, we hit the road into the Virginia countryside. Then we received a laconic report from Mike.
“It’s clean, guys.”
According to our translation of Mike-speak that was a glowing endorsement.
Wary excitement turned to giddy anticipation. As we pulled into the yard, the sun had started to set. The trailer lights were glowing in the growing darkness. A light rain started to fall.
We circled the trailer taking in the details, looking for defects. The seller had used her as a transport for his move from California to Virginia. Although he’d replaced the tires and resealed the roof, she still bore clues of her former life. The floor had the wooden chocks that had kept Nanook from rolling around. The walls were mounted with peg board that used to hold merch.
After a huddled consultation under a hickory tree in the yard, we quickly made our decision.
With the deed signed and promises made to send her previous owner pictures of her transformation, we were off.
The ride home was one of joy and relief but the real ride was just beginning.
