A Start-Up is Brewing

Buoyed by their success at that competition, they began to sell more coffee beans. That’s when Jessie and Hannah decided to transition into manufacturing bottled cold brew coffee instead. However, they faced a big challenge: how to break through. “We went to trade shows, we did product pitches, and we spent a lot of late nights formulating strategy,” says Jessie. Their hard work paid off when they found a local distributor. When another, larger company acquired that distributor, “Kopi went through some almost-macro changes,” says Jessie.

“First off, we realized our limitations,” she says. “To support a business like that, with just two people and an intern, was basically impossible without sufficient funding.” Then there was the fact that their timing was off. “We were right in the middle of the cold brew bubble,” says Hannah, “so there was a lot of fierce competition.”

Undeterred by these setbacks, Jessie and Hannah adapted and persevered. “We’re working with restaurants now, supplying them directly. It’s a little more relationship-based rather than margin-based,” says Jessie. And one day, she hopes to open a Kopi Trading Co. brick-and-mortar location. “We’re in it to win it,” says Jessie. “We’re not a unicorn in the tech space. We’re just a small company, trying to put it together in a very dynamic way.”