Today we’d like to introduce you to Joseph Arze.
Hi Joseph, 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?
Harp & Bowl Coffee Co. is 2 guys- Andy Norton and Joseph Arze (me). We both come from the café background- Me being in management, and Andy being involved with several companies as a barista, trainer, quality control manager, and roaster. Andy’s wife, Morgan, used to come to my old café all the time while they were dating and eventually we learned of each other’s passion, love, and knowledge of coffee. We started as a catering business back in 2020, as folks were having small weddings post-covid, and we just happened to have the equipment to make it happen. After doing this for about a year and a half, we had come to the realization that we both desired to make something greater out of it, and saw a roastery as our means to creating our own brand and expressing our love for coffee in our own way. With the funds that we had made from catering, and a very small personal investment, we purchased an Aillio Bullet coffee roaster- the highest end of “home” roasters, but could run through a surprising volume of coffee. We started Harp & Bowl Coffee Co. LLC in November of 2022, and we both moved our full-time jobs to work somewhere that allowed the flexibility we needed to roast coffee in the evenings, or spare time. We purchased 3 coffees for our inception- a natural Nicaragua, a washed Ethiopia, and an anaerobic honey (which remains a signature for Harp & Bowl) Costa Rica. We sold our first bag of coffee in March of 2023, after months of work creating a beautiful brand. We kept the name “Harp & Bowl” that we had used from catering, but completely redesigned the brand images, colors, fonts, and feel. We saw that the look and feel of our packaging reflected the care to what we put inside of it, so we emphasized building a beautiful brand from day one, and did not take any short-cuts, which we believe was still one of the best decisions we’ve made as a company. We believe that since day 1, no customer has received a product that we weren’t honored and proud to give. Since day 1, we have emphasized traceability in our practice, purchasing coffees that we love and giving the consumer every ounce of information possible as to where the coffee came from and why it tastes so good. We believe in consumer education, that as we grew more and more passionate about coffee the more we learned about it, that might be true for customers of ours who fall in love with the global effort that it is to produce one beautiful cup of coffee, so we do not shy away from using our brand and packaging resources to educate the common coffee-drinker and equip them to understand that it is more than some brown beans. We eventually moved on from the Aillio Bullet roaster, as we were spending late nights and early mornings, roasting to fulfill orders coming our way. We’ve been growing organically now for the 2 and a half years of selling coffee, and it has required more and more hours from us. I went full time with the business in June of this year, and we’ve increased production, continued to focus on our brand and consumer experience, and develop more and more global relationships leading to amazing sources of beautiful coffees worldwide to share with our local community here in Rockwall. We’re now looking to open a customer-facing roastery in the heart of Rockwall, where folks can come inside, taste amazing coffees with us, and where we can continue to do what we’ve done since day 1 with more production and sharing with our community. We’ve developed some wonderful wholesale partners throughout DFW, and love working with folks around the metroplex, but are itching to get our coffee in the hands of people in our own town, and root ourselves locally. In the coming months of Harp & Bowl, you can expect to see new coffee offerings with new farmers and cooperatives being represented, as well as new packaging sold by some new partners!
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Starting a business is way more difficult than we expected! There are a million things that you could never think about until you do it. I’ve always been of the mindset that diving in is the only way to learn, and we’ve been able to navigate the roadblocks. Lord-willing, we’ll continue to navigate them as we grow. Each new phase of our business brings in first times of doing something, and the first time is always the hardest time. We didn’t know how we were going to buy an initial inventory of coffee, but we took a leap of faith when we did, hoping that our money wouldn’t go to waste. Here we are 2.5 years later and we’ve had hundreds of bags of coffee come in the door and go out. We’ve had to navigate roasting coffee in a tiny space, not originally suited for roasting coffee! We’ve had to learn how to utilize our finances well, where to spend our money, and how to optimize our funds to continue delivering a better and better product.
Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
We are a coffee roastery first and foremost. We also do coffee bars at weddings, corporate events, parties, etc. The joy of catering is that we can be face to face with folks and share what we love with them, but our roastery will always take the most focus from us. It’s not just turning green beans brown, but it’s connecting the consuming world with the producing world in the most responsible way possible. It’s creating a presentation of something that we find very valuable, and doing whatever we can to heighten the experience of what is typically a normal, every-day rhythm. We only purchase coffees that meet our abnormally high quality standards, which means that we are serial-samplers. We taste many, many coffees before we purchase a single one, to ensure that what we choose to represent Harp & Bowl Coffee would contribute to a trust in our brand, that it will always be a quality experience. We are proud of what we’ve been able to do brand and packaging-wise to build consumer-responsibility into buying a bag of coffee. Because coffee is such a commodity, especially here in North America, which is the largest consuming market of coffee worldwide, we attempt to use transparency and traceability in unique ways to influence the consumer to take responsibility for how they are playing a part in the commodity market. Ethical consumption is something that each person could take part in, that would have a massive global impact, and we do feel like we play a small part. Each local roaster has a bridge to their community, and as specialty coffee continues to grow, we deeply believe that it will have a global impact for millions of farmers, growers, producers, harvesters, and families who’s local economics depend on coffee growing.
Can you talk to us a bit about happiness and what makes you happy?
It gives us genuine joy to share conversation over a cup of coffee. We think that coffee is one of the greatest catalysts to good conversation, and Andy and I have both seen over the years how trust can be built and impactful conversation can be had by means of sharing a cup of coffee. Pure joy.
Pricing:
- Monthly subscriptions starting at $15/mo
Contact Info:
- Website: https://harpandbowlcoffee.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/harpandbowlcoffee.co/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/p/Harp-Bowl-Coffee-Co-100092535190342/
Image Credits
Coby Sherrod
