Love is Your Mission

A few days ago, I was driving up Highway 85 into Fayetteville praying for Love Nomads and thinking about all the growth and change we have seen just in the last year. We moved our roasting operation to 240 Glynn St S in Fayetteville where we have partnered in roasting for Java and Brie on their beautiful Mill City 6kg roaster. We also started working with Little Town Coffee in Bishopville, SC where the mayor declared our coffee to be the best he has ever had!

 We added Micah to our roasting team, and he has brought not only a knack for making great coffee but a genuine love for God and a relational heart to serve people. In December we reduced our standard batch size (now we are small-er batch!) and found much greater control over our roasting curves. For you roasting nerds: we have seen some nearly perfect rate of rise curves on several of our recent batches resulting in incredible sweetness and clarity in the cup. Adding Micah also gave fuel to our Coffee as Mission Internship program in which we mentor mission-driven coffee fanatics for 6 months to launch coffee businesses around the world. (PS - email us to learn how you can join our team!)

All of this was setting us up to begin working with Steeple Coffee in Atlanta run by a coffee culture veteran who was impressed by the body, sweetness, clarity, and great crema on our Nomadic espresso blend. We had just added an aenerobic Costa Rican to our espresso recipe, adding deeper fruit notes and aromatics. But he was excited not just about the beauty of the coffee but by our relational culture and missional focus.

I made a decision over the holidays that we would be create an unabashedly Spirit-led coffee culture on our team. The issue of being led by the Spirit is near and dear to my heart and I wrote about it in my 2022 book, Spirit Led Discipleship. Building a Spirit-led coffee culture means we pray together before each workday, asking God to pour out His loving presence on our work together, to bless each of our customers, and to show love to our Fulani friends in Africa. It also means that we ask God to lead us to the right opportunities and to show us ways to express unusual kindness to the people we encounter in our business.

My Ethiopian coworker from WDA was in town recently and I taught him all about the roasting process. His wife runs a successful espresso bar in Addis Ababa pumping out 500 macchiatos a day. We began to dream about starting Love Nomads in Addis to serve his cafes as well as a future direct trade relationship with Ethiopian farmers through him. He joined our Thursday roasting day and spent 30 minutes praying with Micah and I over this crazy dream of an international mission-focused coffee movement. He saw tremendous favor coming our way. I saw God was blessing the back-end of our operations and culture and that the coffee would then speak for itself.

Now back to my drive up 85. As I was rolling along, talking to God, an unusually clear thought landed on my mind. “Coffee if your craft. Love is your calling.” The thought stuck and I can’t stop thinking about it. Coffee is our craft. Love is our calling. Wow… How true that is. I love this drink. It still amazes me that God would create a humble seed that when roasted in a certain way, ground uniformly, and exposed to water for a certain amount of time at a certain temperature, would elicit so much joy and an experience of beauty! But even more exciting is the chance to work in community with people dedicated not only to the craft but to drawing people into a beautiful experience of not only enjoying something good but of being loved as a person.

I met a new friend the other day. Actually, he was customer, and he wanted try some coffee from us. I’ve never met him but within 5 minutes he was pouring out his story and the painful things he has experienced over the last couple years. He needed to get out of the house that day and just find a friend. We pulled several shots of creamy espresso, and he lit up saying it was exactly the coffee he had been searching for.

For two hours, we talked about coffee, family, and God. I found I loved him right away and by the end he asked if he could give me a hug. This wasn’t just business as usual. This was a divine moment, a chance to be glad to be with someone and slow down long enough to hear their heart. Finally, we prayed, I handed him some coffee, a Venmo payment was made, and then I reflected for a long time about it. Coffee is our craft. Love is our mission. That’s who I always want us a company to be… a people shaped and driven by Love.

Bonus question: What is your craft? And what is your mission?

3 Reasons Why We Drink Coffee

From our lovely nomadic coffee fanatics, Grace and Evan:

For some people drinking coffee is ritualistic, for some its a right of passage, for some it’s a dependance, and for some it’s a means of connecting socially. For Evan and I, the reason why we drink coffee each morning can be summed up in three ways.

Drinking coffee each morning allows us a daily routine time to spend quality time together. Life on the road is amazing for many reasons but our favorite is that we get to spend all of our time together. A downside of that can be that it’s easy to not make space for intentional conversation time because we’re so focused on things like navigating our next location or what remains on our work to do lists. Our morning coffee routine allows us the time to sit down at our dinette while we wake up and talk intentionally about how we’re doing, what we’re experiencing, and our relationship. 

Our morning coffee routine also allows us to begin our day with a task where we get to practice working together as a team. It is a means for us to be reminded that we are a team and that we help one another in small and large ways. It bonds us and begins our day with a small (and delightful) success. 

Partaking in prep and consumption of daily coffee additionally allows us to experience our senses. For us, coffee doesn’t just taste yummy and hype us up for the day - it touches all 5 senses. We are always mesmerized by seeing the hot coffee pour into our cups as we watch the steam rise through the morning light (sight). The sound of this delicious beverage pouring into the base of our mug is music to our ears (sound). Using our hands to prepare the masterpiece of coffee provides a tactile gratification (touch). Before even getting a sip, the aroma of hot coffee (smell) awakens our minds and prepares our mouths for what is to come. The first intake of coffee (taste) into our bodies that travels all the way down to warm our bellies only enhances the flavors that can be found in that day’s chosen roast. The coffee experience from start to finish truly awakens all of our senses. 

So, what is it for you? What are the reasons you drink coffee? 

Nomads in Zendo

Grace here! We’re headed back east after having made it as far west as Sedona and witnessed our favorite sunsets to date. Arizona most definitely takes the cake when it comes to sunsets. 

We now find ourselves in Albuquerque, New Mexico sitting in a hip coffee shop called Zendo (http://zendocoffee.com). We kept our coffee orders simple today. Evan got light roast drip coffee and I went with a simple iced coffee. Sadly enough, this place is out of coffee ice cubes today so water cubes it is. What a genius idea right? Coffee ice cubes to keep your iced coffee strong. I like.

The walls inside this structure are white brick, adorned with local art. And strewn around the room are large painted wooden tables for remote workers seeking a nice spot of coffee and some wifi. There’s a nice buzz in this place on this mid-Monday and it seems this city is prepped and ready for a zendo coffee fix.

Zendo brews locally roasted coffee using beans from around the country and they pride themselves in the diverse community that flows through their doors. They claim to care about two things; coffee and people - certainly two things anyone would be happy to hear their local coffee shop in passionate about. An environment that anyone will feel comfortable in has been purposefully and thoughtfully created. To prove it, they serve tea as well - this coffee shop isn’t just for coffee lovers. They also have mini strawberry covered sprinkle donuts for littles, but I want one so you tell me who they’re really there to lure in… 

We’ve found a nice work spot here for a few hours. I’ve come to think coffee shops across the country are a great way to dive into local culture. If Zendo is my means to getting a read on this city, it tells me diversity and creativity are valued in this section of Albuquerque and that everyone is welcome. 

Drinking Values: Warm, Inviting, Synergistic

One of my friends said something really encouraging to me the other day. He said, “I wonder if you know, Nate, that every time I grind your coffee in the morning, there’s this amazing smell that brings back all kinds of good memories. And I wonder if you know that people associate that experience with you. So whenever I grind coffee, I have this impulse to call you.”

It reminded me of the power of association. I’m not just out there selling coffee. In a sense, I’m selling myself, my values, my ethos. Most of my sales are not blind transactions. They carry some kind of relational context and I like it that way. So how people experience me as the roaster is important. Who I am comes out in the coffee: from the roasting philosophy to the packaging to the business structures.

What is the experience I’m trying to give people when I deliver a pound of coffee, and when they drink it the next morning. What are the values I want to convey?

I want everything associated with my brand, from the relationship with the roaster to the bean freshness, to the atmosphere in any coffee shop I may open in the future to convey an inviting warmth, a “y’all come on in” hospitality, and an invigorating synergy. I want my coffee to be both warm and lively. That’s why I gravitate towards coffees with a refreshing brightness and roast them to a medium full city roast. The flavor carries a natural sweetness and a beautiful balance between the grassy brightness of a light roast and the roasty burnt flavor of certain big franchise roasters. At that level, there tends to be this big warm aroma “pop” that makes you want to bury your nose in the beans. One of my favorite things is getting comments from people like, “I opened my mailbox today and it smelled SOOO good!”

That’s why I chose kraft brown coffee bags hand-stamped with our logo over glossy printed bags. That’s why I love the name “Love Nomads”. Yes, our whole business was created to show practical love through good works to a marginalized nomadic tribe in northern Ghana. But also, the name just feels warm. It makes me think of someone coming in out of the rain, plopping down their backpack and curling up next to the fire.

These are the best elements of the home I grew up in. An inviting “revolving door” house where individuality was encouraged within the connected context of a big bustling community. My parents are warm, inviting, energetic people and there were always different people at our dinner table. As I’ve pursued ministry, business, and friendships. I realize that so much of what I do seeks to promote and reproduce the best elements of this warm and vibrant culture.

These are the values I’d like to capitalize on. How are we doing so far? What comes to mind when you think about “warm, hospitable, synergistic?”

Ethiopia: Coffee done right

Buna. Macchiato. Latte. When you are in Ethiopia, coffee abounds. And with a variety of coffee-friendly growing regions, your average man on the street can tell you the difference between Harrar and Yirgacheffe, and he would never dream of drinking month-old stale coffee! A pound of green beans is under $3 a pound and Ethiopians roast it in simple tin pans over a coal fire and drink it fresh from a traditional clay pot. Sound good? It is! Even modest snack shops have large manual espresso machines that pull creamy espresso shots into glasses of frothed milk for a truly beautiful macchiato that costs only pocket change.

This girl is doing it all! Roasting, sorting, brewing, and serving simultaneously. And she makes it look easy!

As I return from the land of milk and buna (black coffee), I’m again inspired by the simplicity, the attention to detail, and the humble artistry that goes into each teensy little cup of coffee. You don’t need industrial equipment to make great coffee. Just a good palette and lots of practice!

Lakeside macchiato on Lake Tana! These beans were likely sourced locally from the great farms around the lake.

My imagination was ignited this trip by the coffee grown around Ethiopia’s giant Lake Tana. Shade grown on peninsulas and islands around the lake, it grows next to the ancient Coptic monasteries that have stood there for centuries. When I visited one of these monastaries 2 years ago, a young girl served us coffee roasted from her family’s private coffee garden. It was some of the best I’ve ever had. Rich, chocolaty, creamy. But for all my research, this coffee hasn’t been exported to the west in nearly a century. In a back-alley market I found a woman selling green coffee from Dek, the largest island in the middle of Lake Tana. Dek is where the Ark of the Covenant was once rumored to be kept. Though I joyfully bought 6 kilos from her to test roast, a frowning guard at airport security informed me that I could not take green coffee out of the country with me. URGH!! Next time, I’ll have to bring something for test roasting with me and then properly import this stuff!

Overlooking Lake Tana. The large lake sits at a high elevation and is a great climate for shade-grown coffee on the Zegie peninsula, Dek island, or one of the many monastery islands on the lake!

There’s a startling knowledge gap with Americans when it comes to their coffee. For as much as we drink the stuff, it’s curious that we often have no idea who farms it, how it’s roasted, what makes it unique. That gap doesn’t exist in Ethiopia. I’m inspired to continue in my passion to close that gap for my American friends, to serve amazing fresh-roasted coffee that makes you want to learn more about what you’re drinking. I’m inspired to keep refining my roasting techniques and find creative ways to bring the best flavor out of each variety.

As we wait for the new crop of Yirgacheffe to come in, let me recommend the Tanzanian to you. It’s becoming a favorite for us and our customers as the roast profile has evolved into a juicy medium light coffee with a great mouthfeel and crisp (but not overpowering) acidity. Enjoy!