Dalton and Courtney Eberhart’s maiden voyage with their Just Coffee Company cart was a hit. They were among the vendors at the recent Art on Fire at Dixon Gallery & Gardens.
“It was crazy,” says Dalton, 26. “We were slammed for so long. It was like, ‘Ohhh, man.’ It felt so good because it was literally our first official event. And that was a heck of a way to kick it off. It kind of reassured us.”
“Community” is one reason they got into the coffee business. “We believe coffee isn’t just coffee. It’s community. Cultures coming together. It’s people from different ages coming together. Different backgrounds.”
His parents drank coffee, but it was “a consumer coffee from the grocery store. I didn’t enjoy coffee, really. I was probably more on the side of frappuccinos, more frozen, sugary drinks.” Then a friend invited him to Foster Coffee Company, a specialty coffee shop in Lansing, Michigan. “Which started my coffee journey. It was like a flavored latte, at first.”
It took him a while to move to black coffee. “It was a cold brew at Starbucks. It was tough. I just kind of choked it down. But I was really trying to like black coffee. Once I started working at a coffee shop, which was around 2019, I really got into tasting espresso.”
Although he worked his way up to a barista, Dalton didn’t think about coffee as a career. “I was in the middle of my degree in photography at Lansing Community College. I really wanted to start my own photography business and do portraits.”
He moved to Memphis in 2022 after a friend invited him. But he discovered the photography market was “super saturated.” A week after he arrived in Memphis, his friend got him a job at The Hub, a coffee shop inside Mission Church.
“Working there was a blast. Super awesome people and community. And, personally, I still think that The Hub is one of the best coffee shops around.”
That’s where he met Courtney. She wasn’t much of a coffee drinker. “She liked more lattes and flavored things. Really, since we’ve been together she’s adapted to more unflavored lattes and some pour over black coffee.”
“I do enjoy flavored lattes, but probably not as sweet as I used to,” says Courtney, 26.
They began to think of starting a coffee business. “I had always been intrigued and wanted a coffee business of my own,” Dalton says.
Courtney, who has a marketing degree, also wanted to start some sort of a business. She thought coffee would be a good idea after she and Dalton attended a gathering where coffee was the center of the event. She found it was “something fun and welcoming and a time in my life that I really enjoy and look back on,” she says. Seeing that community “really encouraged us to start something like this.”
They felt a coffee cart instead of a shop or a food truck was the best way to start. “A cart is just like a cabinet that has the espresso machine and everything on it,” Dalton says.
As for coffee, Dalton adds, “We know a lot of different roasters that we love.”
They went through about five or six pounds that night. “I was expecting a little bit of traffic, but not that much. That was overwhelming and just great.”
And, he says, “My in-laws were there as well. And they said that for the whole two hours they were there, there were consistently 20 to 25 people in line.”
They want to do more pop-ups so people can try their coffee. “We can only be hired for events right now, but we do desire and really want to be out there and set up on some type of corner or in a complex of some sort,” Dalton says.
They both came up with the name “Just Coffee Company” for their business. “I originally wanted it to be ‘Justified Coffee Company.’ But as we were thinking about it, it sounded a little bit too churchy.”
“Just Coffee” is “more to the point.”
To book Just Coffee for events, visit thejustcoffeeco on Instagram.
