let’s talk coffee
Hey there. Whether you’ve been around for a bit or this is your first interaction with us, we think there’s something important you should know about the hygge team: We love coffee.
Like, seriously love it. For us, coffee is way more than a way to get caffeinated throughout the day. It’s something that brings us joy. It’s a way for us to connect with friends, colleagues and new acquaintances. It’s a pick-me-up when we need it. It’s comfort. It’s a way to support local businesses.
So when Garrett started hygge years ago, he knew he wanted good, local coffee in the space – not k-cups or Folgers or anything like that. He wanted to work with a local, Charlotte coffee roaster and provide the #hyggefam with quality coffee made by passionate people.
When we (or really, Garrett) is in search of a coffee partner, there’s a lot of thought that goes into it. Because coffee means so much to us, who we work with is important. We’ve partnered with four Charlotte coffee roasters and shops who are dedicated to coffee, but also people. They are businesses that believe in the power of supporting local, that engrain themselves in their local community and that are passionate about what they do. Basically, they’re our kinda people, and they serve our kinda people.
With International Coffee Day coming up on October 1, we’d love to tell you a bit about each of our coffee partners and why they’re important to us. Please add these Charlotte coffee shops to your list to visit and give them some support – we promise you won’t regret it.
The start: Pure Intentions Coffee
When Garrett opened the first hygge coworking location near Panthers Stadium at Hill Street, he didn’t know a whole lot about what he was getting himself into. He had a lot to learn still, but the one thing he knew immediately was he wanted to serve really great coffee. Enter Pure Intentions Coffee.
Garrett met the owner of Pure Intentions Coffee, Matt Yarmey, through We Love Charlotte, a local meetup series that Garrett started and was (arguably) his first claim to fame. Their relationship grew from there and they found they had a lot of the same ideals when it came to building community and prioritizing people. So when Garrett had a space for people that would ultimately need coffee, it was a no brainer.
Pure Intentions got its start in 2011 on a 1/2 lb home roaster in Matt’s apartment. Matt took a deep dive into specialty coffee and ultimately created his own. His “purest intentions” for the business was to find a way to meld art, science, and community into a way of life. Yeah, it’s kind of obvious how this partnership started, right?
Since his humble beginnings roasting coffee at his apartment, Pure Intentions has grown to its own location on North Tryon Street, became Charlotte’s first USDA Organic and Fair Trade Certified coffee roaster, and offers services including wholesale specialty coffee, canned/kegged cold brew coffee produced in-house, equipment services, training services, consulting services, and more.
Learn more about Pure Intentions Coffee here.
Here comes the west side: Enderly Coffee Co.
hygge coworking quickly outgrew its original location and there was a need to expand. Garrett found a space at the corner of Remount Road and Wilkinson Boulevard that became hygge coworking west charlotte. Charlotte’s coffee scene was vast and Garrett decided he wanted to spread his support to as many folks as possible when running hygge. This included coffee, so he started to consider a different coffee partner for hygge’s second location.
Over time Garrett had met Tony Santoro, a guy truly passionate about two things: the Charlotte community and great coffee. Tony is the guy behind Enderly Coffee Co., another coffee roaster that got started out of his home – specifically, his backyard. We actually asked Garrett what made him want to work with Tony while working on this blog post, and his answer was pretty simple: “Because Tony’s a better person than all of us.”
It’s true. Tony Santoro is the type of guy who will do anything for anyone, and we know that gets said about a lot of super nice folks, but with Tony, we mean it. His love for people and Charlotte is unmatched, and Enderly Coffee is good as hell, too. You can see all of this engrained in the Enderly Coffee brand.
For example, Tony and his wife, Becky, have been living in Enderly Park since 2007, which is exactly why they named their coffee what they did. They’ve had a few different locations on the west side, from an abandoned warehouse to Project 658 and later a temporary space on Monroe Road, before they opened their own coffee shop in in 2018, six years after Becky and Tony had begun roasting coffee in their backyard. Located on Tuckaseegee Road, right on their shop is a clear sign: People first, coffee always. It perfectly sums up Tony’s mission and also perfectly sums up why Enderly Coffee Co. became the coffee partner at hygge west charlotte.
Learn more about Enderly Coffee Co. here.
Joining the Camp Fam: Hex Coffee
hygge kept growing and needing more space. Garrett toured a building at Camp North End in the early days of the 76-acre revitalized industrial park. The building, which was previously a Rite Aid office space and before that a mess hall for the army, took a lot of vision to see what it could become. Luckily, vision is something Garrett’s got a lot of.
This was perhaps the easiest location to choose a coffee partner for because there was already an incredible coffee roaster and shop at Camp North End: Hex Coffee.
The Hex Coffee team might be some of the most passionate folks about specialty coffee that we know. They are committed to serving the coffee of the highest quality and have spent a lot of time curating coffee sources and perfecting their roasting process to do so.
Hex Coffee was built out at Camp North End in 2016 and strives to serve coffee in its purest form. This means their coffee is bright, fruity and undeniably tasty.
Learn more about Hex Coffee here.
Going bigger: Not Just Coffee
Things were going great for hygge coworking in 2018. There were three thriving, exciting locations, but hygge wanted to do more. And that’s where hygge jay street came in.
hygge’s jay street location was a huge project. Literally: it was and still remains hygge’s largest location to date. The space was massive, so Garrett wanted to do something even bigger when it came to this location’s coffee partner. He wanted to find someone who could operate a public-facing coffee shop out of the front of the old warehouse while also providing top-notch coffee for the hygge fam.
Garrett had known Not Just Coffee owners James and Miracle Yoder for a long time. Not Just Coffee has multiple locations throughout Charlotte and was looking to further expand at the time the jay street location was being built out. All of their locations at that point were on the smaller side, so they were excited to have a space that was larger than any other where folks could come, hang out and do work.
Not Just Coffee’s motto is “Love people, not just coffee,” and we think that perfectly sums up why they made an incredible fourth coffee partner for hygge. As a brand we are all about supporting people in their dreams, so to connect with another brand that believed in the same was a perfect match.
Miracle and James opened up Not Just Coffee, which serves Counter Culture coffee specifically, in 2011. They now have 6 locations across Charlotte and have expanded to open up a new brand with Undercurrent Coffee called Night Swim Coffee. The first Night Swim Coffee location will open in Oakhurst, but there will be plenty more to come.
Learn more about Not Just Coffee here.
There ya have it. We count ourselves incredibly lucky to be able to work with so many diverse brands that create incredible coffee. And we hope you’ll check each of them out for yourselves and show them love, because they are truly the best.
Want to grab a cup of coffee at one of our hygge locations? Come cowork for a day.
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