Breaking New Ground(s)

Photo by Logan Kirkland

Breaking New Ground(s)

By Emily Daniels

According to Business Insider, coffee is the second most sought-after commodity in the world – second only to oil – with an industry that is worth more than $100 billion across the globe. On average, 500 billion cups of coffee are consumed worldwide every year.

Studies have shown that coffee – the miracle drink jumpstarting mornings for many people – is actually good for you, thanks to high levels of antioxidants and beneficial nutrients like riboflavin, potassium, magnesium and niacin. Not only can it help you feel more energized, burn fat and improve physical performance, it may also lower your risk of several conditions such as type 2 diabetes, certain cancers and Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases. It’s even been shown that consuming your daily cup of joe can make you feel happier.

It’s no wonder that College of Business student entrepreneur Madison Grant’s love for coffee has turned into a fast-growing business. Grant saw an opportunity to get in on the coffee craze, providing freshly roasted cups of happiness for the masses with her company, jitterbean’s coffee.

The recent business administration graduate from Elberta, AL, admits that as a high schooler, her drink of choice was “basically creamer, with a splash of coffee.” Grant shares how her appreciation for non-diluted coffee finally came to pass.

“Before transferring to Mississippi State, I attended Coastal Alabama Community College, because it was near my hometown,” says Grant. “By the first semester of my sophomore year, I had to take classes at two different campuses. Both were about 45 minutes away from home, so it didn’t make sense to go to class, drive home for an hour, then turn around and drive to the other campus every day.”

One of the classes she had to take that semester was only offered in the evenings at the campus in Fairhope, AL. One day while Grant was waiting for class, a friend from home called her.

“My friend was visiting Fairhope that day, and she said that she found this coffee shop across from campus and asked if I wanted to meet her,” recalls Grant. “So I walked into this coffee shop – Refuge Coffee – and the atmosphere was really cool! I knew nothing about coffee, so my friend talked me into an iced mocha because she said it kind of tasted like chocolate milk with espresso.”

Soon Grant found herself going back every time she had class, becoming more adventurous with her drink orders each time she entered the door.

“The baristas were so friendly, and they knew that I didn’t understand the coffee world, but they wanted to help me learn and introduce me to different drinks,” she says. “But what made their coffee so good was the fact that they focused on the quality of the bean and of the brew and the milk accenting it without having all these sweet sugars that totally drowned out that flavor! You work so hard to roast a coffee bean…why would you add so much sugar that you can’t even taste it?”

As she was sitting in her new favorite coffee shop one day, enjoying the atmosphere, Grant remembers wishing that she could take that atmosphere with her when she left. She had a light bulb moment.

“I thought, ‘How fun would it be to have a food truck that was actually a mobile coffee shop?’” she recalls. “You could not only take the coffee to people, but also bring the atmosphere! I came home that night and shared the idea with my family. They thought it was a cool idea but weren’t sure how realistic it was because I didn’t have any money to start it, and I still didn’t know much about coffee at the time. But the idea stuck with me.”

By May, Grant had earned an associate’s degree in business, and she set her sights on earning her bachelor’s in business at a four-year campus. After much deliberation and prayer, she found herself moving to Starkville as a transfer student at Mississippi State University.

“I really only knew my roommate when I moved here, and so I decided to get involved on campus,” says Grant. “I got an email about some Entrepreneurship Club [eClub] meeting, and I thought it sounded interesting. I remember sitting in Dr. [Melissa] Moore’s marketing class, and she made a comment about the E-Center and how great it was.”

She decided to go to the meeting at the Center for Entrepreneurship and Outreach (E-Center) to find out what this was all about. After all, she was interested in entrepreneurship, and it was a place where she could meet people.

“That night was ‘Pitch Night,’” she says. “Anyone could pitch an idea for a startup, and after selecting the top three ideas, the club would break into groups and work on them throughout the semester.”

Grant decided to pitch her idea for the fun of it. She said her mobile coffee shop could be something on campus that would coincide with football tailgating and could eventually be franchised out to other SEC campuses. She had even come up with the perfect name – jitterbean’s. “Bean” not only referred to coffee beans but also to a nickname she earned from her dad when she was younger. That night, her idea was one of three selected.

Over the next couple of months, Grant and her eClub partners, Caleb Lovejoy and Brandon Johns, came to the E-Center for help bringing their idea to life. There they learned about VentureCatalyst™, a comprehensive, co-curricular program where students and faculty can earn investor backing for start-ups.

Pitching jitterbean’s as a roaming coffee service was enough to attain funding from the E-Center’s Peer Review Entrepreneurship Panel, but mobility wasn’t enough to earn full funding from the next review panel, the Entrepreneurship Center Advisory Board (ECAB). After all, they didn’t even have coffee in their presentation.

“After the presentation, Dr. Charles Freeman [ECAB board member and an Assistant Professor of Apparel, Textiles and Merchandising] came to us and said that he thought the idea was cool but our business model was all wrong,” she says. “He told us we needed to roast our own coffee beans. He said, ‘It’s not hard. I do it. You need a skillet, a grill and coffee beans.’ And he gave us a link to a website to purchase the beans.”

So the team purchased everything, including a high-end coffee siphon, and met at Grant’s house. There they learned how to roast varieties of coffee beans, ranging from blonde to French.

When the next ECAB meeting rolled around, she and her teammates were ready. They brought the beans they had roasted, and using a high-end siphon, made coffee during the presentation to serve to the board members. Their revised business model and improved product earned jitterbean’s full funding.

“So, we built a website and started taking orders online,” she says. “We got an order for nearly

40 bags, and it takes about 38 minutes to roast a single pound. There’s a lot of time spent roasting just one bag, so I wanted to be sure that people really were getting the best, premium coffee. We eventually decided to do that full time and leave the mobile coffee shop idea behind.”

Later that year, the team had the opportunity to sell their product in the Idea Shop, an off-shoot of the E-Center located in downtown Starkville.

“After that, I got an email from James Jankowski with Aramark on campus, who asked if we would be interested in being the official coffee of State Fountain Bakery in the Union because they wanted to keep focusing on the community aspect of MSU, and we had a great story to tell,” she shares. “I had to get a bigger roaster.”

Brandon Johns and Madison Grant (second and third from left) participated in the February ribbon cutting for the newly updated State Fountain Bakery.

Photos by Logan Kirkland

Business was already booming when the biggest opportunity came along. “Dr. Freeman was giving a tour of the Idea Shop to Todd Vowell, CEO of Vowell’s, a Mississippi grocery store, and he mentioned jitterbean’s and told our story. Todd loved the idea and offered to sell the product in their stores!” exclaims Grant.

So what’s next for jitterbean’s? They recently started brewing jitterbean’s espresso at Arepas, a new Venezuelan restaurant and coffee bar in Starkville. And they are currently in talks with Kroger about selling their product.

“One of the coolest things we are doing now is private labeling, where we roast customized blends for different companies to sell as their official coffee,” adds Grant. “We are already doing this for Old Waverly Golf Club in West Point, and some others are in the works as well.”

Of course, you can always find jitterbean’s brewing where it all began – at MSU’s E-Center in McCool Hall.