Today we’d like to introduce you to Eddie Laughlin.
Hi Eddie, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today.
Like most people in specialty coffee, I got my start at 18 years old as a Starbucks barista. After college, I lived in Austin for 5 years where I worked from home and visited a steady rotation of coffee shops weekly. We moved to San Antonio in 2015 and I found myself working at coffee shops throughout the week and always trying different places. I was very impressed by the San Antonio coffee scene. One day I went to a local roaster in San Antonio while on the phone with my mom, and I mentioned wanting to learn how to roast coffee. Sharing my love for coffee, she suggested I give it a try. I went home that day and started researching coffee-roasting machines. I pulled the trigger on a $4,500 BC2 roaster a few days later. After I got a few roasts under my belt and worked out the kinks, my mom suggested that my GF and I host coffee pop-ups in front of our house. We live in a popular, walkable neighborhood in SA, so we set up a table and sold bags and cups of freshly roasted coffee to passersby. After five or six pop-ups we were growing in popularity but felt we needed a legitimate operation. We looked at several spots around town with the proper zoning for roasting coffee and eventually found the perfect spot in Warehouse 5. Located near downtown, Warehouse 5 a multisuite commercial building with multiple tenants, including a brewpub, leather goods maker, caramel company, tattoo artist, and hair salon. It’s been Shotgun’s home since March of 2018. Since we opened our doors, we’ve been scaling up our wholesale department as well, recently upgrading our coffee roaster to a San Franciscan SF-25 – arguably the finest small-batch coffee roaster in the industry. We have wholesale accounts with grocers like Whole Foods and Walmart and are actively looking to expand and share our brand throughout Texas.
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?
Unless you have a tremendous amount of working capital, owning a small business is never a smooth road. My girlfriend and I financed the company ourselves and balancing our other jobs with owning a small business has at times been a huge struggle. It’s certainly a lot of work and not for the faint of heart, but we have an amazing staff that can essentially run the day-to-day operations of the cafe while I handle the wholesale/roasting department and deliveries, and she handles the behind-the-scenes type stuff like payroll, taxes, etc. We actually had a 2nd location that closed during COVID, and that was a huge learning curve for us as business owners. Knowing the right way to grow as a business versus trying to force something when we’re not ready. But through all of that, Shotgun is doing better than it ever has. It all starts with our Warehouse 5 location and our community. When COVID hit, the community really stepped up and kept me busy for months with online orders that I delivered all over the city until we could reopen the shop. They really kept us afloat. Beyond the shop, a big part of our future is our wholesale operation, and we’ve landed some great partnerships with grocers like Whole Foods and Walmart. We’re a coffee roaster first and foremost, but we also offer other products like our Fresh Chai Tea Concentrate that you can find at places like Whole Foods in Austin. We upgraded our coffee roaster in 2021, and we’re looking forward to taking a big step forward in production and wholesale in 2023.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your business?
Shotgun House Coffee Roasters is a specialty coffee shop & roastery in San Antonio. Tucked away inside Warehouse 5 – a longtime sewing factory turned multi-suite creative space – our roastery is a hidden gem on San Antonio’s near Westside. Equipped with a San Fransiscan SF-25, we proudly roast and package specialty coffee on-site and offer a full lineup of espresso drinks, craft beer, wine, breakfast tacos, and vegan cake donuts. We specialize in roasting specialty coffee and offer wholesale offerings to grocery stores, coffee shops, offices, yoga studios, and anything in between.
Before we go, is there anything else you can share with us?
We offer free shipping on all online orders. So, join our coffee club or by some merch today and get free shipping always!
Contact Info:
- Website: shotgunhouseroasters.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/shotgunhouseroasters/
