Today we’d like to introduce you to Shawn and Kendra Wallace.
Hi Shawn and Kendra, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start, maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers.
We are Shawn and Kendra Wallace, both born in Dallas, Texas! We married in 2011 and moved from Dallas to Rockwall County, where we lived for 10 years.
In August of 2021, our family of 5 times took a leap of faith and moved from Rockwall County to a fixer-upper on a few acres in Hopkins County. While we renovated our home, we rented office space at the Chamber of Commerce in lovely downtown Sulphur Springs. This allowed us to meet many friends, get to know other businesses, and fall in love with our new small town.
Fast forward to early May of 2022, an old dry cleaners became available that some friends asked if we might be interested in. On a whim, we stopped by to take a look and immediately had a vision of a coffee shop and vendor mall. With no prior plans for opening a coffee shop, we took massive action and purchased the building. We asked God to direct our path as we took on a crazy, exciting project and new business! Over the 8 months, we put in countless hours of hard work, along with prayer, a few tears, and some really late nights, to bring our vision to life.
We have 5 amazing children, each of them had a hand in making Deep Routes Coffee what it is today! Our parents and friends all pulled together to help us to soft open in December of 2022.
We grand opened with a FULL house on January 20th, 2023, just 4 days after our 1st grandchild was born.
Some of the highlights of our first year included 2 amazing outdoor concerts and several indoor concerts featuring national artists and local talent alike! Our 1st Annual and very popular Fall Bash was full of pumpkins, a spectacular vendor market, and fantastic live music. Of course, we have pretty dang good coffee, so it was very cool to be voted best cup of coffee in Hopkins County in 2023. We were also voted best breakfast taco and 2nd best gift shop! Our gift shop touts 25+ local vendors, and we love featuring young entrepreneurs! There is something for everyone inside Deep Routes Coffee!
Along with our children and our very supportive family, we also have been blessed with amazing staff! Several of our staff members have been with us from day one, and some from almost day one! We have always had great staff who are willing to work hard and adopt our values of helping each customer leave with more joy than they came in with!
Our mission is to inspire our community to stay connected and shop local. We love people and so for us, this mission just comes naturally. Inspiring and encouraging our customers, our staff, and our community each and every week is a blessing.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
It has not always been a smooth road! Some of the struggles we have encountered are natural disasters, including the wonderful freeze last year that froze our water pipes, creating NO coffee and no ability to steam milk! Shawn is always a problem solver and created a warm box around our pipes, and we were able to get up and running within a few hours! Another bump that felt completely overwhelming was a massive flood. Water just literally ROLLED into our building like waves at the ocean. Luckily, our staff (our middle daughter) was there when it started and got almost everything off the floor before it was ruined!!!
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
Shawn and I are known for always creating new businesses. We have created and run over 10 different businesses, one of which has been with us through it all, and that is a business dealing in dirt moving equipment and semi-trucks. Crazy, huh? We buy and sell construction equipment and heavy trucks all over the world. Shawn is also an amazing pilot! He has been a pilot since 2013, which has helped us inspect used equipment all over the US as well as given us the opportunity for some fun in the sky! We are grateful for the opportunities and experience of starting and owning multiple businesses. Each has taught us new lessons, and the greatest lesson is that our failures are always the launching pad for greater success!
In terms of your work and the industry, what are some of the changes you are expecting to see over the next five to ten years?
This is a tough question because we are in the middle of making some decisions about shifts. An amazing opportunity has presented itself to start a new business, but in the midst of evaluating our values and priorities, we are unsure what lies ahead. We do know that the world is shifting as AI becomes a part of our everyday world and also as equipment shifts to more and more green ways of operating (electric equipment and trucks). So, I’d say in the next 5-10 years, we will see a huge shift to battery-operated equipment that has traditionally run with diesel engines.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.deeproutescoffee.com
- Instagram: @deep.routes.coffee
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/deeproutescoffee
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/deep-routes-coffee-sulphur-springs
Image Credits
Kendra Wallace
