A New American Town - Bentonville, Arkansas
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A New American Town - Bentonville, Arkansas
The Vision Behind Onyx Coffee Lab
Join our conversation with Jon Allen, the visionary behind Onyx Coffee Lab to discuss coffee culture and how their brand continues to reach millions.
We uncover how a small coffee lab in Arkansas grew into a nationally recognized name in specialty coffee. From touring with a band to co-founding Onyx with his wife, hear how they've maintained their core values while elevating hospitality workers and promoting transparency in coffee.
Jon demystifies high-end specialty coffee and delves into the importance of educating consumers. He shares a sneak peek into Onyx's upcoming projects, including 3 new cafés and partnering with Nike.
Learn more at Onyx Coffee Lab - Coffee Roasters • Café • Barista Training
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Welcome to A New American Town presented by Visit Bentonville. I'm your host, Beth Bobbitt, broadcasting from Haxton Road Studios, and today we've got a really cool collaboration to talk about with John Allen from Onyx Coffee Lab. Jon, thanks so much for being here.
Jon Allen:Yeah, thanks for having me.
Beth Bobbitt:So before we jump in to talk about this Nike partnership, let's go back in time a little bit. I'd love to hear about the origin story. I remember, you know, the early days of Onyx, and now, of course, they're everywhere, and in fact, I was in the airport last week and I was served a latte by a robot, and so how did we get you know from there to here? Walk us through that story.
Jon Allen:Yeah, gosh. So Onyx started back in 2012, even though with my wife and I, who had been in the coffee industry for a long time previously um, and even in an entrepreneurship role in coffee and other companies, but um had always dreamed of creating a brand that was for hospitality itself. And so, over the course of four or five years, while we were working and doing other things, we had been writing everything we loved about the coffee industry and everything we hated about the coffee industry. And like, what would it look like if our demographic was the baristas and the roasters and the chefs themselves, instead of still looking for consumers and whatever else was out there, because we felt like no one was targeting us as hospitality workers, and so that was really the emphasis of Onyx.
Beth Bobbitt:Yeah, what did that inventory checklist look like? What were on the pros and cons?
Jon Allen:Yeah, it was long, I think. I don't know, I mean the coffee we could.
Jon Allen:it would go on too long, but the coffee industry still to this day, and especially at the time, was a very old kind of secretive industry where not a lot of information was shared, whether that was financials or transparency or traceability of coffee, and so a lot of that was kind of kept under lock and key and that made our job as baristas of whatever educating consumers are really wanting to take a deep dive of our own personal knowledge into coffee really hard to find, and so I think there's a lot of things within coffee we could talk about from quality and sensory science and things standpoint. But I think the big pillar onyx was trying to do was sort of like sort of take those blinders off, remove the gatekeeping and sort of start publishing out all the data that we could find on coffee to begin with. That would help one the cafes that we're serving our coffee and ourselves and just start to kind of put that general knowledge out there.
Jon Allen:So, it almost was an education platform as much as a company.
Beth Bobbitt:Yeah, wow, I love that perspective. So let's let's back up a little bit to hear about you. I'd love to just know more about your background and, um, how you became interested in on this path early on.
Jon Allen:And um. And then, right out of high school, I actually started playing music and I joined a band of a fan, a band that I was a fan of in high school, and started touring right away and was on the road for about seven years and so, uh, we, we toured about eight out of the 12 months a year. So I was always stopping at cafes around the world, kind of like visiting different cultures, and coffee and and um just fell in love with, like the whole kind of universal community that these coffee shops provided for each culture, and it was always a hub where, you know, I don't know if we were here locally, you would see a VP from Walmart sitting next to some artists, next to a plumber, next to some punk rocker and like there was just like an aspect of it.
Jon Allen:That sort of like there were a lot of separations in life but cafes always kind of leveled the playing field, yeah and it's it's the heartbeat of a community, you can get
Jon Allen:so much out of that one experience it is if you're traveling, it is and it bleeds through, I think, like the entire industry. You know like I mean. Technically, coffee is and it bleeds through, I think, like the entire industry. You know like I mean. Technically, coffee is a commodity, it's an ingredient. But you know, we talk about things differently than I think. When you see a bunch of I don't know soybean traders getting together to talk about their crops, right. It's got just a different feel and culture.
Beth Bobbitt:Right, yeah, there's a built-in community, for sure. And how do you stay true? Okay, so 2012. Where was the original location?
Jon Allen:so the first one, uh, was in this little shed, basically warehouse, where we were roasting in springdale, and then, and then our first Onyx Cafe was also in Harbor Meadows in Springdale, which no longer exists now. Right yeah.
Beth Bobbitt:Wow, and how many are there now?
Jon Allen:So we now have four brick and mortars and are currently building three more. But our main model is really not the cafes themselves, it is roasting and shipping. So about 98%, I would say, of the coffee we roast leaves the state of Arkansas.
Beth Bobbitt:Wow. So that kind of answers my next question how do you stay true to your vision and values with so much growth?
Jon Allen:Yeah, I mean you know part of that is the reason is that while it seems like a lot of growth, we're actually a pretty slow-growing company, maybe not in terms of volume of coffee but in terms of expansion models in that way. So most of the cafes that we, or coffee brands we compete with or grew up with, would have 30 or 40 stores by now, kind of all across the US.
Jon Allen:You know the normal. I would say the normal playbook is sort of five to six in your hometown and then you do one in New York and you go one in LA and one in the Bay Area and then you do one in Tokyo and you kind of like follow this blueprint and that for us, which could someday be the future, but always felt like it was really hard to stay true to the quality and just some of the pillars that we had as a company to do that expansion.
Jon Allen:We chose the digital route to say if we're here to tell a story of the producers and what we do with coffee, we can do that from our home base and grow through that way, by shipping coffee and really roasting for a lot of other cafes and and hospitality concepts and now just to direct to consumer and still maintain everything that we were built on, which I think ends up getting a little bit watered down as you continue to kind of reverberate out. So it was, it's been a pretty um, I don't know tactile, like on purpose position to sort of really slow down by design and only kind of build when something special really shows itself.
Beth Bobbitt:But you're obviously still looking for those strategic opportunities and creating the illusion that you're everywhere, even if you aren't. And one example of that is with you know this partnership with Nike, and I wonder if you could talk to us a little bit about the launch, how this came to be.
Jon Allen:Sure, one mission statement with Onyx is that we talk a lot about it in our creative department is how to make specialty coffee pop culture. That's a pretty big initiative for us to make. Maybe the coffee farmers aren't household names, but how much can we push coffee into pop culture environments that bleed out other ways so that people start to have an appreciation on what true specialty coffee is? And so collaborations have been, I think, our best format to do that with artists or different brands, and Nike is obviously a brand we like, highly respect for a lot of reasons, and so, yeah, that that opportunity came pretty organically and once we started chatting, everything from brand value sort of aligned in it and it really just kind of came together quickly.
Beth Bobbitt:Yeah. And what is the partnership? What is this launch that we're anticipating?
Jon Allen:Yeah so we're kind of pairing some coffees with Pegasus, kind of pairing some coffees with Pegasus, and we have, um, some runs kind of planned and different pop-ups that will continue out through, uh, different cities as they launch new sneaker ideas and and things. That I think, um, while this is just kind of the initial uh launch that we have, I think it's sort of the tip of the iceberg on where the coffee culture and sort of the running culture or some of the athletic culture are going to meet.
Beth Bobbitt:So you are essentially providing that product on site for those runs. That's right, okay.
Jon Allen:Yeah, some of them are gifts, some are on site, some will be sold online. I think there's going to be a lot of mediums and platforms for the collaborations so cool yeah.
Beth Bobbitt:When does it launch?
Jon Allen:I should have that date Soon Soon. Yeah, we'll tease it out in the copy. We'll get that date.
Beth Bobbitt:Great, and so what are your goals with this? You talked about specialty coffee, you know, in pop culture, and that's the core of it, but what else do you hope comes of it?
Jon Allen:With the Nike collaboration. Yeah, I think, I really think that is the main ethos is to try to position high-end specialty coffee in the hands of people that probably still drink coffee to this day but don't have a full understanding of what they're drinking and how to bring transparency to.
Jon Allen:Maybe it's just like, well, I haven't had coffee that actually tastes of these different kind of fruit characteristics or whatever it is, that sort of kind of opens the eyes no pun intended of like, what coffee can be. Yeah, I think that's the goal. You know it's a, it's an interesting beverage we have that like most of us consume every day and I think, for the most part, know little about, which makes sense. It's not grown in the west, it's not native, so like we're not around coffee farms all the time and not expected necessarily understand the industry, but it's we're hoping this can kind of change that. And I think Nike understands those values, along with some other brand partners, and so they are, you know, supportive of pushing those efforts to try to, I think, educate the average consumer on what they're putting in their body every day and how that impacts global economies and financial rates and coffee trades and real people and real families and all of that.
Beth Bobbitt:Yeah, I mean, I love that commitment to education, but in a way that's not pretentious. You're meeting people where they are.
Jon Allen:That's the hope, right? There's no shame in this. It's just sharing data and understanding and hopefully creating an appreciation, without force feeding some sort of I don't know moral structure on people.
Beth Bobbitt:Right, right. So this is a pop question. I didn't plan to ask it. But if not coffee, what would it be career wise Like? Can you even fathom?
Jon Allen:That's a good question. I mean, uh, I mean I, I would love to just like be a stay at home, dad.
Beth Bobbitt:I would take that. Um but I don't know how. Two, how many kids?
Jon Allen:Two kids, two small girls, yeah, but I don't know. I think always some form of hospitality would be in our heart, like our posture, both my wife and I. Who's my partner in the business like is. We both enjoy really everything about the idea of hospitality from beginning to end. So I have trouble envisioning myself in another industry.
Beth Bobbitt:Yeah, yeah, well, we, we like you where you are so you can stay put.
Jon Allen:Anything you want to tease, anything coming up for Onyx that you can talk about yeah, I think you know, if we're talking locally, we have, uh, we do have some new cafes that we're excited about mainly the downtown springdale cafe which will launch, hopefully sometime this year, assuming, uh, construction delays don't continue.
Jon Allen:that's exciting, which we're very excited about. It's been a almost a three year design project for us, um, and so we feel really encouraged about the way the aesthetics are coming together and the drinks that are going to be served there and sort of the I don't know just the entire community that's kind of revolving around that cafe.
Beth Bobbitt:And it's your hometown, did you say, that's where we?
Jon Allen:live. We are Springdale. We've been trying to do something special there for a long time in the downtown and it just took a while, but we're really excited to be back there. So that's probably top of our mind right now.
Beth Bobbitt:That's so cool. Yeah, and don't worry listeners, we're getting back to Bentonville with our wrap-up question. So we ask all our guests this Jon, what does a dream day in Bentonville look like for you? I assume you'd start with some coffee.
Jon Allen:I would definitely start with some coffee, but at any of the cafes in.
Jon Allen:Bentonville, there's a lot of good coffee in Bentonville, so we're not choosy. In fact, we went to I would say it would start at at um the new motto because, uh, I mean they are, they are serving Onyx. But we went to kind of do some training and testing and, honestly, the coffee they're putting out there and the quality is like absolutely amazing. Yeah, um, the baristas they've trained, they're incredible and and they're really dialed in. So I would say we started the motto.
Beth Bobbitt:And the environment. They're incredible and they're really dialed in. So I would say we started the motto and the environment. I mean the art we were just talking about it, it's stunning.
Jon Allen:Yes, yes, gosh from there. I don't know, I would probably I like to eat too much, so it's like I'm like thinking through like six different restaurants that I would try to hit instead of really anything else.
Beth Bobbitt:Would you jump on a bike at any point?
Jon Allen:You of really anything else, would you? Would you jump on a bike at any point? You know what?
Beth Bobbitt:I don't, I don't even think I should say this on I'm not a cyclist.
Jon Allen:You don't have to be I'm.
Beth Bobbitt:I'm a runner so does that count? That counts you're using the trail.
Jon Allen:So we put on some pegasus is what we would do, and then we would go run the trails um, but uh, yeah, I would definitely be hitting up all the FMB food scene in Bentonville because it's beautiful and it's a. It's a. It's a tight knit community here in Bentonville which is great from a hospitality standpoint. I think maybe because we're coffee and so we don't compete with everyone, but it's like we're Switzerland in the industry, but all the chefs are close and we're all in large group text threads and like are always talking about what's happening in the area and helping each other out, and so it's. It's a really holistic environment here, more so than probably think people realize like the underbelly of the hospitality scene here is actually quite strong.
Beth Bobbitt:Yeah, that's really important and probably very rare.
Jon Allen:I love that.
Beth Bobbitt:Well, thank you, john, you've been so generous with your time and I appreciate the conversation, so thanks for being on, of course, Thanks for having me. And tell us where we can learn more about this collaboration or other social media website.
Jon Allen:Yeah At Onyx Coffee Lab on all your social media and onyxcoffeelabcom for the website. Perfect.
Beth Bobbitt:Great Well, stay tuned for more on the launch. Grab some Onyx coffee today and don't forget. Visit Bittenville is here to help you navigate things to do, where to eat and stay and what's going on in our new American town. Give us a follow on social media, sign up for our newsletter and check out our website at visitbittenvillecom. Thanks for listening.