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Meet Jacob & Janelle Sikora of Two Cats Roasting Co. in Arlington

Today we’d like to introduce you to Jacob & Janelle Sikora.

Jacob & Janelle, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
The story of Two Cats is really the story of us. Jake and I met in Chicago back in 2007. We struggled as broke kids living in rundown apartments with leaky roofs and bad HVAC before throwing in the towel on life in the big city. We eventually settled into the northwest suburbs and rented a little white house with a red roof on Rose Avenue in Des Plaines. It looked like a Kleenex box (and wasn’t much bigger!) But it was the first place we called home together and we LOVED it! Unfortunately, we had to leave a lot of cool stuff behind when we moved to the burbs– including easy access to the really good micro-roastery coffee we’d grown accustomed to. That’s what inspired Jake and me to take up roasting our own coffee beans. We started with an air popcorn popper, roasting only a handful of beans at a time and later graduated to a Behmor 1600 with a capacity of just under 1 lb. The Behmor served us well for a number of years and even kept up with demand (for a little while) after we moved to Texas two and a half years ago, but soon more and more of our co-workers and friends were asking for our coffee and we couldn’t roast it fast enough!

A couple of months ago, Jake and I finally decided to bite the bullet and make our roasting hobby an actual business. We bought a hot rod 12lb. barrel coffee roaster and I created a logo with our two cats, Pico & Baja serving as the mascots. We started selling our beans at a different farmers markets and began a Two Cats Roasting Co. subscription service which is now open to everyone living in the DFW area (yup, we deliver!) We have just recently joined the Cowtown Farmers Market in Ft. Worth as our Saturday morning home market from 8am-12pm every week. We’re still very new to the Dallas/Fort Worth coffee scene, but we’ve already made a ton of new foodie friends and even have some exciting collabs with other small businesses coming up!

We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc. – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
Surprisingly smooth. Because we took so long to actually pull the trigger, we had researched and problem-solved a lot of the potential challenges we would face. Jake and I have also had a lot of management training, extensive visual merchandising knowledge and years of experience with talking to customers which I think has served us well in starting our own business.

So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the Two Cats Roasting Co. story. Tell us more about the business.
We specialize in whole bean and ground small-batch roasted craft coffee. We roast all our beans fresh each week (usually on Tuesdays!) and grind everything fresh the day before we take it to market/ deliver it to your door! We donate a portion of our proceeds to the SPCA of Texas– where we adopted our two cats from!

Has luck played a meaningful role in your life and business?
The biggest! Jake and I have the very good fortune of being each other’s best friend and biggest fan! We’ve been together for ten years (married for 5!) and as it turns out we each bring something different to the table for our business. Jake studied Theology in school and has got a hell of a thinker’s brain, while my background is in art so I approach things from more of a creative and aesthetic side. We like to joke that he’s the steak and I’m the sizzle, but there’s definitely some truth behind it!

Pricing:

  • $15 coffee (12oz. whole bean or ground)
  • Delivery to your door ranges from free-$5 (DFW area only)
  • $15 Two Cats Roasting Co. tees

Contact Info:

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