Called Coffee Company

Food trucks have grown in popularity over the last few years and they are here to stay. A mobile restaurant that can follow the crowds at events and festivals, and after a while, creates its own crowds wherever it goes! Called Coffee is a unique kind of food truck that serves the morning folks their daily coffee and pastries to start their day off right. Owner Jerod Snider is a man on a mission. To improve the lives of the locals in his home of Calhoun County, and to improve the lives of the coffee farmers he met while doing missionary work in Peru. Jerod was able to take time out of his busy morning to talk with me about his business and his calling.

• Tammy (T): How and when did Called Coffee begin?
  Jerod (J): Called Coffee actually began in 2017. My family and I were living in Peru as missionaries and some of the members of the church down there are coffee farmers. We ended up getting their coffee and found out it was really good and started working to help them export to the US. At the same time, we decided to move back to the US and decided to sell it ourselves. In 2018, we started Called Coffee and started roasting the coffee and selling it by the bag. Then we built a coffee cart that had an espresso machine on it and started selling the drinks. In the middle of 2019, we started building out the coffee truck we have now. So we started kind of on accident and we actually started on a coffee farm instead of here. It’s been an adventure and we love doing it! We didn’t know we loved coffee so much but we love it more than we ever knew. It’s a great way for us to build relationships with people here and still work in Peru.
• T: What kind of goodies do you offer on your menu?
  J: We have regular coffee, of course, which is my favorite, just black coffee with no cream or sugar. We have lattes, which is a shot of espresso with steamed or cold milk, if you’re doing it iced. Then we can add flavoring in the lattes, we have vanilla, caramel, mocha, or white mocha. And we also have the seasonal drinks. We try to keep some drinks for kids as well, we have hot chocolate or iced hot chocolate. We can do all our drinks as steamers too, which is latte without the coffee, for kids. We also offer pastries from Artisanal Baked Goods in Anniston. They’re baked fresh for us every morning and we pick them up and sell them on the truck and they go fast! If you want pastries, you gotta get here early.
• T: So you’re teaming up with small businesses too. Who else are you working with? J: Healthy in Bama in Jacksonville, and Dugger Mountain Fudge in Piedmont. They both sell our coffee and a lot of local churches have our coffee as well.
• T: Do you change the menu up very often?
• J: Usually by seasons. Our biggest change is probably in the fall, because we do a pumpkin latte, not a pumpkin spice, really. We make it with real pumpkin puree. We also had a maple sage latte last year. In winter, we have a peppermint mocha which is a big one. We’re coming out with a couple new spring drinks very soon. Every now and then we’ll come up with a drink so good we’ll put it on the menu, whether it’s seasonal or not.
• T: What are your best sellers?
• J: Right now, it’s the Snow Day Latte, which is a white mocha sauce with hazelnut, and you can get it hot or iced. Number 2 is probably honey lavender, we always sell a lot of those.
• T: Why did you choose Calhoun County and the places where you park?
  J: I grew up here in Calhoun County. When we moved back from Peru, we had thought about going to Atlanta or Birmingham but just felt like we should stay home in Calhoun County and that’s what we did and we don’t regret it at all. We love Calhoun County! The places we park, some of it’s by invitation, some of it is us trying to find a place to park. It changed a lot with Covid. Before Covid we were doing mainly weekend events and festivals. When Covid came, all that was cancelled and we had to start finding places to park during the week. I actually went full time with it at the beginning of March 2020, so I had two weeks of awesomeness and then the world shut down. We started talking to local business owners and they would let us park at their business for a couple hours in the morning and that’s how we’ve gotten the places where we park.
• T: What is it like to work in a food truck?
• J: Food trucks are not as easy as everybody thinks they are. You only see us for four hours, but really it takes 7 hours total for us to get ready. Sometimes it’s 9pm and I’m going to the store to get stuff, it’s never ending. I think it helped us during Covid because we did have the flexibility to go other places, and we weren’t in close contact with some people like you are in a restaurant. But it is definitely hard running a food truck!
• T: What do you love most about your business?
• J: I think being able to help people locally, whether that’s just giving them a coffee that helps start their day off right or just saying I hope you have a good day. But also, we’re helping people in Peru. The family that grows our coffee, we’re paying 4 times as much now as they were getting before, so it’s drastically changed their lives. We still do a lot of mission work in Peru, so I love to be able to do both, and have a reason and a tax write off for my trips to Peru because it’s for business. I think combining both of those things has been a dream of mine and that’s what I enjoy the most.
• T: What are your hopes and expectations for the future?
• J: We have a building and we’re about to start construction on a coffee shop, so that’s our next step. We want to continue to open up small kiosks in malls, coffee shops in other towns, or add another truck. We want to continue to grow it and we think there’s room to grow it in Calhoun County and even outside of Calhoun County, so that’s the next step. My personal vision is to be able to use the money here to finance the missions we do in Peru and hopefully spend 2-3 months a year in Peru and the rest of the time here, working the business.
• T: How can people book you for local events?
• J: You can message us on Facebook or Instagram, we use both of those. You can email us at [email protected] and you can go to our website.

I hope you enjoyed this Small Business Spotlight.