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The Loving Cup Business Journey | Otter.ai

The Loving Cup Business Journey

dixon janney18min

Unknown Speaker

00:01

Perfect. Is it okay if I record Yeah,

Unknown Speaker

00:08

names, yeah, my name is Kurt Stevens, okay. I'm Emily Stevens, okay. And

Unknown Speaker

00:13

can I have you guys spell that

Unknown Speaker

00:14

just first name says, Fine, yeah. My name is Kurt, C, u, r, t,

Speaker 1

00:18

Emily, E, M, I, L, Y, and our last name is kind of different. It's S, T, E, P, H, E, N,

Speaker 2

00:24

S, perfect. All right, let me just pull up my questions here. So how long have you guys been running the loving cup?

Unknown Speaker

00:32

We started it in 2023

Speaker 1

00:36

Yeah, we started. We started the business in March of 2023 and we were just learning how. We learned how to roast coffee, and we started selling, like our whole bean, coffee in farmers markets that summer, while the trailer was being renovated, the goal is always the trailer. But we opened the trailer in November of 2023 and this was in Colorado Springs, actually. So, yeah. And then we moved to Lincoln in April of 2024 Yeah.

Speaker 2

01:12

And then what inspired you to start going into the coffee business? Well, we

Speaker 3

01:17

met at Starbucks in like 2007 we were both baristas and shift supervisors at Starbucks, and so we both had a passion for coffee way back then. And then what kind of kicked it into gear? We went to Europe and took a took a vacation and winter of 2022, and we just, we were kind of talking about, we went into some of the coffee shops over there, they had real simplified menus, just like, you know, cappuccino, latte, espresso, the mocha. They had like, five drinks. And we just started kind of talking about, wow, what would be kind of cool to start up our own kind of little coffee gig? Yeah, we

Speaker 1

02:00

so we met at Starbucks, but then we went on to have different careers. I've managed several coffee shops after Starbucks, and then Kurt started with T Mobile, and he ended up working for T Mobile for like, 715, years, something like that. And I became an elementary school teacher during that time too, and we were so he's working T Mobile. I was teaching, and we were spending all of our time apart like we never saw each other. We don't have kids or anything, and we're like, so we went to Europe. We're spending all this time together popping in and out of coffee shops. And we love coffee. And we just kind of started. We saw some little mobile setups and stuff that over there that were kind of cool. And then the idea was, like, while we were in Europe, I found out my teaching job was as I knew it was ending. I could teach offline and go back in the classroom. I was kind of like, not really what I want to do. And so that kind of sparked the whole thing. That was December, and then in March, we started up the LLC.

Speaker 2

03:10

It was pretty fast. What do you guys think makes the loving cup different from other like, smaller coffee shops in LinkedIn?

Speaker 1

03:18

I'm so glad you asked that, because it's so funny, like, right before you contacted us, we were talking about how we we felt like we should do like because we do little reels and stuff like that, and we felt like we should try to highlight some of the things that make us different, and can't Find anything, but we just talked about this, like the one, I guess one of the biggest things we're more mobile. We just have a 1957 trailer. We roast all of our own coffee, and we only get coffee from little farms around the world, and we roast in very small batches. So that's really, that's really a huge part of our passion is, you know, supporting small farms and businesses around the world. We make all of our own syrup. So vanilla, hazelnut, pumpkin, right now, it's real popular. TLC. Spice is our signature syrup. It's brown sugar, cinnamon. We committed to, like, all compostable packaging and or, you know, cups and that type of stuff. From the very beginning, it was like something we were very passionate about. We buy, you know, we were small, but we've committed to buying, like, high quality ingredients from the very beginning, so anything we can afford, and what makes sense to buy organic we do, or just things like, we're just really thoughtful about the ingredients. We feel like we provide like I would say we try to really provide, like, a very authentic and genuine customer experience. We know so many of our customers first names and their drinks and their drinks, and we love that's one thing we love about going to Avery is that we see a lot of the same people. So sometimes people come up and they're like, how come your drinks are, you know, more expensive than scooters or Starbucks or whatever, you know? And we so that kind of got us thinking, like, yeah, what it, you know? Why is it? And it's like, you know, we're a tiny little company, and all of those things I just listed ultimately cost more money. So we but we're committed to it, and we're those are things that we find are important to other people, and so we, we kind of stick with even in these times where things are getting more expensive, like, we're like, we're sticking to, you know, what we've always committed to is

Speaker 3

06:01

that also partnering with, like, what some local businesses in town too. Like, we get our teas that we sell on the truck from green leaf tea here in town, yeah, so, developing some partnerships with other local businesses,

Speaker 1

06:18

yeah, I think those were, like, some of the main things that we had thought about. You know, we, we it's just us, like we don't have investors or anything like that. We do. We built it ourselves. We didn't build the trailer ourselves, but financially, we built the business ourselves, and we tried it. That's like, always, the goals

Speaker 3

06:40

follow very specific recipes that we've created. We weigh everything out in terms of the syrups when we're putting it in the cup, and so everything's pretty should be the same every single time. So there's a consistency to the should have consistency to the drink. Or you go out some places, it tastes like this. One time tastes like this. Another it's not consistent every single

Speaker 1

06:58

time. Yeah. Oh, I know. The last thing was zero waste. Like, we really aim for zero waste, like cost, for cost purposes, but also just, you know, that's just, we don't drink out of our cups on the truck. You know, Kurt's really strict about that. And so we, you know, just to save caught anywhere that we can save cost to try to pass that down to the customers. And so that's one of those ways that we can do that.

Speaker 2

07:27

So yeah, I think those are the things perfect. And then what drew you guys specifically to, like, parking on the university, like over by Avery, is that

Unknown Speaker

07:36

great question? I'm gonna let her answer.

Speaker 3

07:38

So I, I'm originally from West Virginia. I'm not from Nebraska or anything. So I grew up in West Virginia, and I started following Nebraska back in the mid 80s. My favorite color is red. Draw the day back to November 22 86 Nebraska was in all red uniforms for the first time since just this season. They've only worn them like once in like 40 years. So I fell in love with the team that night, and I was only about 10 years old, and then developed an affinity for the football team over the course of time from West Virginia back in the glory days, of course. And then I moved to Yeah, fell in love with Tom Osborne, and then we moved to Colorado, and, you know, we were there teaching. I was working for T Mobile. We came to a game a couple of years ago, and we were kind of at that time, we were talking about, kind of doing the coffee shop, but we had started in Colorado Springs. We were walking across the parking lot, and I saw an old, vintage, like truck that was parked in the parking lot that there was, like tailgating that day. And it just flashed into my mind. I was like, wow, what if we brought the coffee truck to Lincoln and try to run it at the university, so I can get to develop a relationship with Nebraska that I've loved for so long. But I didn't go. I didn't go here. I don't live here anything. So I was just me from afar, and it was like a fleeting thought. And then it was New Year's Eve. I was sitting down in my basement, and all of a sudden, it was just like a lightning rod hit me out of the sky. It was just like, you're gonna take the coffee shop to Lincoln and run it on the campus. So I told her, I was like, we need to take the coffee shop to Nebraska and, like, run it at the university. We owned a home in Colorado Springs. I lived there for like, 24 years. That's where I was, like, settled. So we drove over here, like, a week later in the middle of a fog storm,

Speaker 1

09:21

no like, three days. So that way we drove over here, January, 3, it was fog. Couldn't see anything. And we came with, like, through the lens of like, what would it be like to live here? You know? Because then when we came for games, we just come in a hotel, go to the game, eat, go back home. So we were like, what would it be like to live here? And we started driving through some of the neighborhoods, and especially this East Campus neighborhood where we landed, and we were just like, Oh my gosh. Like, this is this is awesome. And we felt like it seemed like a little bit of like, a step back in time from what we were living in in Colorado. Colorado is getting so busy, and this just seemed a little simpler. And then also, in January, Kurt, we got back home, we're like, Okay, this seems cool. And Kurt contacted Carrie Jackson at the at the university. And I mean, everything just took off from there. They're like, yes, we have the food truck program. Yes, you can bring your

Speaker 3

10:21

drive back. We drove over here. We're like, Yeah, this seems like a pretty cool spot, you know what I mean. And then I called on my bike. I was like, broken. She's like, yes, we do. And I was like, thinking about bringing my picking up and bringing my camper coffee shop to move into Lincoln Lake. She's like, Yeah, you can run it. They did. They designate where we park, so that wasn't where we got there's, like, that spot on the main city campus. There's two spots you can park over here. We're just not that busy over here stuff. They've actually told us, you know, that's the spot to park in. But we went back home and we're like, wow. So they have the future. And we literally was just like, let's just go for it. I mean, coffee shop. I was like, I could get over to Nebraska develop relationships with university students. Coffee like this is a good idea. The business could take off.

Speaker 1

11:08

Really did. So that was in so we got here first week of April, started running on East Campus, just to kind of get things going mid April, 1 week of May of 24 was our first week on city campus. And right off the bat, we were,

Speaker 3

11:28

it was the last three days of the semester. Yeah, it was, like a Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, literally, the last three days before, like, finals week. And we parked there, and it like, hit pretty quick. I was like, Wow, this could be pretty good, but we didn't know. We're like, Okay, that was just three days. So now we have to fill in gigs over the summer, find other you know, business, which we did. And then when the when the fall campus hit in 2024 we're like, we called the university and we're like, okay, hey, we want to come, like, all the time. They've never had a food truck do that. So we're like, you know, you can pay by the day, by the month, or by the year. We're like, we'll pay just for the whole year. So we're gonna park right there and just establish right there and see how it goes, and just kind of be the coffee shop on campus, hopefully that people come to. So it's just kind of gone from there now it's like, you know, we're there three to five

Speaker 1

12:12

days a week. And then it's been so successful that Kurt was able to leave T Mobile in July. So now we're doing it full time all

Unknown Speaker

12:23

the time. That's our main gig. Now, neither one of us has the teaching

Speaker 1

12:27

Haymarket Farmers Market, which is pretty big deal. That was a big deal for to kind of carry us through the summer while schools not in and, yeah, it's just been a dream, honestly,

Speaker 2

12:39

wonderful. And then do you guys? I know, I know you're still probably, probably pretty early in the process of everything. Congratulations, by the way. Thank you. Any chance that you guys are planning on opening, like a, like a stationary location or talks,

Speaker 1

12:59

we so I managed a lot of coffee shops, and so I don't see it happening. I think I see if anything was to happen, it could be that we'd have another coffee trailer. There's been some times where, because we're on campus five days a week, and we do the Haymarket farmers market, we get called for a lot of gigs that we have to say no to because we can't be in two places at one time. I feel like there's a chance that we could maybe hire one or two people, a couple of people. Managing people is really hard. Like it's a it's a great thing, but it's, it's really difficult, and then people's, it's just life takes people in all directions. So coffee sometimes is one of those things like hard to find consistency with employees and things like that. Not to say that we couldn't, but so I feel like that, if if there was a next step, like I said, it's just us. We don't have kids. We're not passing this down to anybody or anything, but we love it. We also, we also Kurt's 48 I'm 44 so we also know we can't do it's physically taxing, and so we also know we can't do it forever. So I don't know I, like, I said I could maybe see another truck down the line. I don't see a brick and mortar down the line. It's hard. It's really good to be able to go where the people are. Like, that's a huge aspect of the business, that if, if your people aren't coming to you and your store, you can't take your store somewhere else. So, but it had, it would be kind of cool at times to be able to say, yeah, we'll bring our other trade, you know, we'll bring one of the two trailers. Or, I think the other possibility that we almost actually did last year was a coffee cart with that you can, like, take in two places, so businesses where it just doesn't fit logistically, to have a trailer out front, or there's no parking or whatever, to be able to bring, like, a coffee card in or in the winter, in the winter, like today, we're not out today because it rained most of the morning is kind of cold, so we weren't at Avery today like We normally would be. So that could, I guess realistically, I could see that being the next step, and then potentially another trailer, coffee truck of some sort, being something after that. I think

Speaker 3

15:31

everything's possible right now. We're just so small getting it going. We, like, was like, Okay, this is our whole thing. We deliver a product a certain way. We deliver high quality service. We don't want, you know, we're just, like, almost afraid of, like, if we hired a couple people and then they didn't do a great

Unknown Speaker

15:46

job. We're like, Yeah, yeah, yeah. So,

Speaker 3

15:49

I mean, but we're growing pretty quick. So, right? Like, do you ever bring more? Like, no, it's like, why? Yeah, we kept getting more gigs and we could keep up with it would make sense. Potentially, I would never write it off. Yeah? Right now we like the whole vibe and experience of running it out of the camper. We think that's unique, as compared to just walk inside of a shop and sit down like there's so many just coffee shops like

Speaker 1

16:10

that. Yeah, I guess that's another thing that makes us very unique. The camper is a 1957 mercury. It's, it's all original for the most part, you know, so that when we bought it, it was still a camper. We just turned it into, we had somebody help us build it and turn it into a coffee shop. That's pretty unique.

Speaker 3

16:32

We never read anything off. You never know what's going to happen. So we do want to continue to grow the business, that's for sure. Yeah,

Speaker 2

16:39

right. I guess my last question would just be, is there anything that you guys think people should know about you that I could kind of incorporate into the story that we haven't already touched on any kind of, like Final thoughts,

Speaker 3

16:54

kind of hit on that it's just for small little mom and pops. We're married. We run the whole show by ourselves. You know, we have a great passion for excellent coffee. We love what we do. We love the interactions

Speaker 1

17:06

with our customers. We love what we do. We love we're really, really, really grateful and thankful for this community. And would like we did start it in Colorado Springs, and it just, it just did not it was going to be so slow getting it going. And so we are just every day, I feel like we at some point, say to each other, like, can you believe we're Lincoln and like, we love it here. We love our neighborhood, we love the campus.

Speaker 3

17:36

We love this support we've been given to campus, and all the support we've got from Lincoln's and

Speaker 1

17:42

this town is amazing for supporting small business and community. It's just really beautiful thing. I love it, and so that's probably one of the biggest things I'd like to make sure that we we see it, we see it, we love it. Well,

Speaker 2

18:00

I think that's all I had for you guys. Thank you so much for meeting with me. Yeah.

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