When James Kroll and Victoria Goldsby talk about coffee, their eyes light up.
And not just from the caffeine.
“I’m always on the hunt to make the perfect cup of coffee,” Kroll said. “The perfect cup tastes a whole lot more like how coffee smells.”
William & Mary graduates, Goldsby and Kroll are the owners of a 4-month-old coffee company, Column 15, that is growing quickly in the area. Since October 2018, the pair have hired employees, produced hundreds of pounds of coffee and are planning to open up a shop soon.
But for both of them, the passion for coffee started a long time ago.
For Kroll, he spent most of his childhood hating coffee but when he was 14 he tried a specialty coffee at a friend’s house and fell in love. From that point on, Kroll began learning the process of making coffee, what draws out certain flavors and how to cultivate a unique product.
And for Goldsby, her love came from a lifetime of coffee drinking. When the pair realized they both wanted to start a company together centered around coffee, they created Column 15.
This is not the first independent coffee company that has come to the area, though. Kroll said the concept is starting to gain traction all along the East Coast, even in Williamsburg.
“Coffee is starting to follow the same trend (as craft beer),” he said. “It’s a few years behind but it’s starting to be a lot more about quality ingredients, the people want to know where the coffee comes from, how it’s grown, how it’s made, how it’s roasted and that’s definitely noticeable here.”
While they both are involved in all aspects of the company, Goldsby takes on many of the business aspects while Kroll takes on the science of the bean.
Getting people to switch from quick cups at Starbucks to independent coffee labels was easy for the pair, Goldsby said. Since opening, the company has connected with people at multiple farmers markets and events across Hampton Roads.
“It’s about kindness,” Goldsby said. “It’s building a relationship with people that will last. You’ll keep seeing these people at markets and around town and they’re not just numbers to us.”
But for them, one of the best parts is getting a non-coffee drinker to like their product.
Kroll said a lot of large coffee companies have to roast an extremely dark coffee in order to have a consistent taste across the board. But in reality, he said, that’s not necessarily supposed to be that way.
Their coffee is sourced from Guatemala and Colombia, where Kroll is fascinated by the different flavors that can come from not only different countries but different regions. And that’s how the pair makes their art.
“Coffee from one mountain might not be the same as coffee from another,” he said. “You don’t really start with a blank canvas, you start with a bucket of qualities that come with that particular bean from that particular region and then you can cultivate and develop that into what you want to bring out in a coffee.”
While the pair focuses on online sales at the moment, they are starting to get their product in to Earth Fare and are looking for locations to open a store. But at its core, the owners of Column 15 are making their company something that isn’t just about selling coffee.
It’s about experiencing it.
