Behind the beans: Happy coffee guy grows grumpy-led business

When Brian Abernathy moved to Southwest Florida from the St. Paul-Minneapolis area in 2013, he couldn’t find the kind of locally roasted, single-origin coffee he enjoyed. Seeing a need, he began thinking about how he could bring high-quality coffee to this area.

He wanted to hang on to his full-time job in software development and sales, so he ruled out opening a coffee shop. But sourcing green beans from around the world, roasting them fresh in Southwest Florida and then selling them to fellow coffee lovers would allow him to start off on a smaller scale and build the business in a manageable way.