Humble Beginnings
Our journey to coffee roasting began humbly… very, very humbly. We were early in our dating days and bonded quickly over a shared love of coffee. Nothing serious (yet) but Jules loved the routine of waking up, putting on a pot of coffee, sweetening it until it was basically just creamer, and starting the day. Trevor was (still is) more meticulous about his cup of coffee. His setup included a cool espresso machine, grinder, and an arsenal of YouTube videos showing him how to do it all.
One day, we became curious about how to roast coffee. After a few google searches, we learned we could just buy unroasted coffee online. A few days later, a quick trip to Goodwill for a $10 popcorn popper, and a few more YouTube videos and we were ready to roast our first batch of coffee… We set off the fire alarm in my apartment. Then, after moving to my apartment balcony, we created a total mess. Uneven, undrinkable, and so much fun. We had to dive deeper.
We quickly moved on from the popcorn popper to a small camping stove and flour sifter. Swirling the beans around in the sifter, over the open flame, yeah… we were a little crazy. Full on caveman style. But, we were roasting our own coffee. Believe it or not, this is the stage we started drinking our own coffee. It wasn’t great, but it was ours, and we had to do something with all of our experimentation.
Our first real coffee roaster, kind of, was called the Hive. Same idea as the flour sifter, it was a donut shaped container with a handle meant for shaking coffee beans over a fire. Although this roaster will always be special to us, we did move on quickly to something that we could do indoors so we weren’t constantly sitting over a fire in the Texas heat.
Our next roaster was called the SR800. Small but mighty, this roaster had a small glass tube where we could actually watch our coffee roasting. Stable roasting temperatures broadened our scope on what coffee roasting could be, and we used this roaster for quite some time while learning more about roasting. At this time, the scope of our knowledge came from YouTube and trial-and error. Between both of our jobs, hobbies, friends (and still very early in our dating), coffee roasting was a small side hobby for us to do together. We’d roast the coffee, though it wasn’t great, and do coffee cuppings in our apartments.
This is how we operated for some time. Living, working, roasting coffee. After some time, we both came to a point where we were unhappy in our respective jobs. Trevor, working as a manager for HEB Curbside, was feeling the burnout of 50 hour weeks and grueling commutes in the Austin, TX traffic. Jules was having a hard time finding her footing after graduating college. Getting a job in her field felt impossible, and though working as a barista was a fun and exciting chapter, we both met at the crossroads of deciding what came next.
Our hobby was just that - a hobby. We accumulated some equipment over the years, would post some videos from time to time, and we shared our coffee with friends and family who wanted to try. Our coffee became better over time, as we kept learning and roasting. 2 years since our first experiment on the apartment balcony, and we decided it was time to move forward with coffee roasting.
Real ones will remember, our name was Better Day Coffee. That’s what we aimed for - creating better days with good coffee. Trevor built out a small roastery in the garage and made everything official for operation. Jules worked on branding, building a social media, and a website. Then finally, we made our first big business purchase: the Allio Bullet. It was a very big deal for us, to invest what felt like so much money, in coffee roasting. But the Allio Bullet served us so well, and definitely signified this big step in our roasting. We started with friends, family, neighbors, anyone who wanted to drink our coffee. We knew opening a coffee shop in Austin would be a longshot (hint hint), so we stuck to selling bags online and subscriptions. It was slow moving, at first. We were working our jobs, building Better Day, and overall felt good about starting our business with the hope that one day it would take off.
At the beginning of 2024, we made this decision to move to Waco, TX (Jules’s hometown.) We were ready for all sorts of next steps: having a home together, getting married, and scaling up our roasting operation. We wanted to move into wholesaling. We’re fortunate to have such a strong support system in Waco, and quickly made headway on building out a new roastery. We changed our name to Longshot to signify how we felt - this was, truly, a longshot. It wouldn’t be easy. But we had a vision, support, and each other. So we made it happen.
In 2025 we flew out to Hatteras, SC and drove home our new roaster, the Valenta 7. This roaster pushed us into the wholesale market - allowing to produce more coffee than ever before without sacrificing any quality.
