1 Year Anniversary... PARTY!

Photo by Phillip Blume, Blume Photography

One year ago today, Taproom (with the help of hundreds of people) opened its doors to the public for the first time. In those 365 days, we served 4,473 cappuccinos, 4,236 cups of hot tea, 5,206 muffins, 6,392 glasses of beer, and 13,018 regular cups of coffee. We've hosted numerous community events and we're proud to have become part of the daily routines of neighbors in Kirkwood and regulars from all over Atlanta. We were even honored with a couple of "Best Of" nods from Creative Loafing and Atlanta Magazine, and landed the cover of a national beer magazine.

It's been a wild ride, and I'm still having fun. I mean, I get to live the dream and run my own small business. I get to come into work every day -- alongside an incredible staff -- and hang out with and serve my neighbors and friends, connecting and sharing moments over coffee and beer. I get to constantly meet new people and learn new things. I get to shape and mold a tiny piece of a puzzle as it fits in the greater, ever-changing landscape of Atlanta. 

I know this is just the beginning and that we've still got a lot of work to do. There are hopefully many years ahead of us, many challenges to face, many more milestones to achieve. But for now I wanted to sit back and reflect... I wanted to cheer wildly at getting to the one-year mark. So to celebrate our first birthday, we're doing a few things...

• First, we're hosting a huge bash at Taproom in a couple weeks, on May 14th, from 7-10pm. For no special reason, it'll be a beard-themed party. Red Brick Brewing will be releasing a beer called Beard Envy, we'll have a fun informal beard competition sponsored by Dream Beard Oils, Ratio Bakeshop will be handing out nibbles, JERT will be doing caricatures of people, and Yelp will be there with a photo booth. Everyone's invited to come on over and celebrate with us!
• Second, we're coming out with some fun Taproom t-shirts and stickers, and those will be available by the time we have our anniversary party.
• Third, as a thank-you to our faithful supporters, we'd love to extend to you a Gift Card Bonus Deal: For the next two weeks (April 29th-May 14th) you can get a bonus $5 gift card balance for every $20 gift card you purchase. Use it for whatever you want, give it away or spend it on yourself. 

As always, I'm grateful for everyone who chooses to journey alongside me. I hope to see you soon. Cheers!

Growing Pains

If you've come into Taproom lately you may have started seeing a trend... Empty pastry case. Only a couple bar stools open. Baristas running around nonstop. On the one hand, great problems to have. On the other, we've been forced to think through all of the challenges that come with being an increasingly busy community hub. So if there's been a time recently when you were disappointed with not being able to sit down for drinks or maybe you didn't get that muffin you were craving - I apologize. 

Taproom started as a dream, and we're still seeing what it looks like to have that dream realized. This is a small business. My wife and I are the only owners. We're doing our best and learning a ton along the way. Way back when we were just planning things out on paper, we thought that maybe we'd get to the current level of customer flow and sales after something like 2 or 3 years, not 9 months. We didn't expect the packed cafe every day, the "Best Of" nods, or the people who go an hour or two out of their way just to visit us. We didn't expect to land the cover of a national beer publication. So we've been playing a bit of catch-up. 

There are a bunch of things in the works to help alleviate some of these growing pains. We're working on some additional seating options so that we can accommodate more people who want to stay for a while. We've increased our bakery orders every week (again and again). We're staffing up on the busier weekend times. 

Overall, thank you. Thanks for supporting Taproom by being a customer. Thanks for spreading the word. Thanks for understanding when we sometimes get stretched to the limits. Without the awesome community of people around us, we'd never have come this far, and we could never sustain a successful dream. You rock.

Why so many events?

Way back when Taproom was barely an idea, I already envisioned it as a gathering place. It wasn't really all about the coffee. Or the beer. It was about connecting people. I would close my eyes and could picture crowds of people on a regular basis, filling the space and building into a sense of community. So it's no surprise that now that Taproom's a reality, my favorite times are when we have events. 

Many people comment on our frequency of events, or ask how we go about choosing what kind of activity or event to host. If you really want to know, here's the inside scoop: I'm up for anything. Really. I actually sometimes just walk up to my baristas and say, "What's some random event you'd like to have?" I asked just that a couple months ago, and Matt said - half jokingly - "We should have an ugly holiday sweater contest." So we did. It turned into the Not-so-Silent Night: Christmas Karaoke and Ugly Sweater Contest, which doubled as a release party for Mother Earth Silent Night beer. Crazy fun!

We've also ended up doing a lot of coffee and beer education. The goal there is not primarily to get super geeky (although super geekiness is not discouraged) nor is it to show that you have to be an expert or highly-educated aficionado to enjoy those things. The purpose is instead to simply have fun while learning about something with some new friends. We recently had a Brew & Brew event where we taught some of our neighbors in Kirkwood how to pull better shots on their home espresso machines. What was the best result from that event? Not the assurance that they're now achieving better espresso extraction, but rather the fun conversations we've had with those neighbors since. We got to have a shared experience through the event, and those friendships and connections - even across the counter - are better for it.

So if you go to our event page, at any given time there's a long list of upcoming events. Some involve coffee. Some involve beer. Some involve board games or local art. All of them serve to connect people. Come join us sometime.

Holiday Hours

Black Friday Deal

Black Friday (and Small Business Saturday) is coming up, and though we're not the typical retailer with crazy deals, we're doing a small promotion on our gift cards:

• Buy a $50 gift card, get a $10 gift card free
• Buy a $100 gift card, get a $25 gift card free
• Buy a $200 gift card, get a $60 gift card free

This is of course really perfect for all of our regulars who could get a bonus free card to give as a gift to someone else! The deal will run this Friday and Saturday only, available for purchase at the register at Taproom.

So in my personal goal of honesty and transparency, here's the truth: It's the end of the year, and the time has come for business license renewals, annual fees, etc. Things have been going great for Taproom's first 7 months in business and the long-term outlook is extremely healthy, but in the short run things are tight. We're not going under or anything, but we're still a baby business trying to grow things one day at a time.

I'm so thankful for the culture and community that has built up around Taproom! My wife Sarah and I are constantly in awe of how quickly all that has come about, even in our first year of operation. We hope that our dream place continues to take shape and become an integral part to people's lives, as we focus on the heart behind what we do (community and connection) just as much as we strive to simply serve great coffee and beer.

Taproom would probably benefit from another successful Kickstarter campaign, but I wanted to come up with a way for us to get some needed finances while also being very worth it for our customers and supporters. So the gift card promo it is! Please spread the word. Especially if you come to Taproom several times a week, this could be an easy way for you to give a Christmas gift to someone and not spend any more money than you would have anyway.

And in case you missed our announcement earlier this month, we landed the cover picture of the current issue of the nationally-distributed BeerAdvocate. Every beer brewery in the country gets a copy of this beer magazine!

Any Coffee, Any Brew

I'm a big fan of Counter Culture Coffee's message of "Any Coffee, Any Brew", which basically supports the idea that you can brew a delicious cup of whatever kind of coffee, however you want, depending on your personal preferences or mood. My own home is filled with a crazy amount of brewing equipment that I've acquired over the years, though I almost always find myself either reaching for a French press or taking advantage of the ease of an auto drip brewer.

At Taproom, we brew coffee several different ways. One of our favorites is a simple manual pourover method, using ceramic drip cones. Now, we don't claim that this is the best method, or that it magically produces perfect coffee in any way. What this method allows us to do is brew a great cup of drip coffee, just for you. You choose whatever coffee that sounds best to you from the list, and we spend a few minutes going through the brewing ritual. If you want to just stand there, quietly observing the circular motions and the slow drip as the glass beaker fills with your personal cup of joe, that's fine by us. If you want to chat about your day, or discuss the science behind the brew process, or talk about Gurley's return, that's totally cool too.

A lot of coffee brewing methods have this time and ritual built into them, giving you and others the chance to chat and connect. That's one of my favorite parts about coffee: the ritual. But even if you only see it as a means to an end, learning different ways to brew coffee can be a lot of fun. You find out that a bit of curiosity and personal education can result in you having more control over exactly how your daily cup of coffee tastes.

In the spirit of embracing all the different kinds of brew methods, over time we're going to be teaching our customers various methods of brewing coffee at home, through hands-on tutorials we're calling "Brew & Brew". The basic idea for this monthly event is that we want to chat about coffee brewing and share our knowledge and resources with others, but a lot of people only have free time in the evenings, when they don't want to drink a bunch of coffee. Our solution: Brew the coffee, but drink beer instead.

Our first free Brew & Brew event is tomorrow night (November 13th), at 7PM. We're starting off teaching folks about the same manual pourover method we use at Taproom - the Bonmac drip cone - but other months we'll tackle different brewing devices. I hope that as we go through this series, you'll have more tools under your coffee belt, and you'll find your favorite go-to brewing method!

Cultivating Connection

It's always been my desire to create a place where people's lives can intersect. In starting Taproom, I wanted the kind of place where you can meet up with someone to catch up on life, or where you can schedule a business meeting and sign some paperwork. I wanted to be in the business of cultivating connection.

We zip through our lives and think about ourselves a lot. Not that it's necessarily a bad thing - to think about self - but I know that my personal tendency is to keep my head down and get my stuff taken care of, and not bring in any more than I think I can handle. Even with a seemingly outgoing personality, a colorful family, and a growing business, I find that I often want to just shut out the world and stay in my own little bubble. I put up my blinders and avoid connection.

When you ask someone to share a coffee or beer with you, those barriers are broken down, even if it's for just a moment. In accepting an invitation to imbibe, you enter into a mini social contract that states, "I'm there to connect with you, for at least as long as it takes to get to the bottom of my cup."

That's what I was shooting for in opening Taproom. I wanted to provide opportunity for people to have those interactions - to enter into that mini social contract - dozens, hundreds of times a day. And even though coffee and beer are the headlining rock stars, of course that interaction can happen over tea, cookies, wine, or whatever else.

Coming up this month is a big event that I'm hoping will just help people in the community connect with each other. We're doing a pumpkin carving contest! Granted, a pumpkin carving event doesn't really have anything directly to do with coffee or beer, but it has everything to do with community. My hope is that we pack the place out with neighbors who end up being elbow-deep in pumpkin seed goop, laughing and chatting and having a great time as they carve pumpkins with their kids. And who knows, maybe this will start an annual tradition - one of many events that regularly takes place at Taproom, giving a random reason for people to interact with each other in a way that builds memories, community, and connection.

Coffee. Beer.

I'm so pumped about the launch of our new website and branding! We worked with graphic designer James Martin to come up with a revamped logo that connects more with the colors and feel of our store, and more visually captures the heart of what we're all about: Coffee and Beer. Stay tuned as we roll this new branding out in our signage, menus, stickers, and more!

It's now been 4 months since Taproom launched. It's been a wild ride so far! We began with our crazy successful Kickstarter project and haven't stopped moving yet. The local neighborhood of Kirkwood welcomed us with open arms, and our spot has grown to be an active hub where many people choose to work, relax, and connect over coffee and beer.

We're still finding our feet in a lot of ways, but overall I'm overwhelmed with the way my personal dream has quickly become a reality, and how hundreds of people come through our doors every week to join me in this crazy fun journey of life. Some days I just step back - just for a second - take it all in, and smile. I love how one family comes in almost every morning and the dad gets a cappuccino and his daughter gets a vanilla milk before school. I love how our neighbors can dip in wearing their PJs and grab an emergency bag of coffee beans. I love how our beer menu rotates out constantly and people can enjoy a glass of great draft beer from breweries in Atlanta and all over the world.

What's next? Well, much of the same: Taproom will still put out quality coffee and quality beer every day, in an environment where people love to hang out and connect. Taproom staff will continue to get trained up through Counter Culture and Cicerone education programs. We'll also be increasing the number of events we do every week, featuring everything from coffee and beer nerdiness to purely social holiday events for the neighborhood. As we learn and grow, I invite you to be part of the process! If you've ever got any ideas or comments that will help us be better, please don't hesitate to shoot us an email or just come in and chat. We're in this together.

Jonathan Pascual

Join Us!

For the next week, we're promoting two awesome organizations with huge hearts. Not For Sale and So Worth Loving. Go ahead and block off next Wednesday night (September 3), because you're spending it at Taproom with all of us. Bring some friends and help raise awareness on human trafficking. More info to come. RSVP here!