Today we’d like to introduce you to John Peter Vance.
Hi John, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
I am born and raised in Tupelo, MS. Played baseball at Northeast Community College and then went to Ole Miss. I couldn’t settle on any one degree, so I decided to get a few. Psychology was my first degree followed by MIS and then a Business degree. I sprinkled in a Computer tech certificate just for fun. Needless to say, I couldn’t decide.
So after finishing my MIS degree, I got a job in Memphis as a furniture store, and my wife and I moved up to Memphis. We stayed for about a year before we decided to come back home and start over. I worked a few different jobs in computer and investments. Anywhere I went I wasn’t ever comfortable for a long-term thing.
My wife and I needed something of our own. This is when we decided to start our coffee business. We started as a side hustle in 2017, had our first kid in January of 2018. Now in 2021, we just had our 2nd kid a boy, and opened our 2nd location.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall, and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
We opened our shop right in the middle of Covid, so we don’t really know if we have had struggles as much as it just seems the norm. We don’t know what it’s like to have a shop without Covid but keep pushing to figure out more ways we can keep growing.
Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about Tupelo River Coffee?
Tupelo River was first started as a small coffee cart by me and my wife in 2017. We wanted to bring hood quality coffee to Tupelo and wanted to take it to the people instead of having to go to a shop. We started with just black coffee from a roaster we found in Georgia. After a few events and a couple of months, we decided to take it up a notch and purchase an espresso machine and start selling more detailed drinks. So started teaching ourselves how to use our new toy and started adding more to our menu.
After an out of 6 more months, I got the idea of roasting our own beans. We were already making all of our syrups and roasting was just the next logical step to provide a completely local experience. So I started roasting small batches for friends and family. After getting lots of good feedback we decided to start featuring our own coffee slowly until we finally were using 100% of our own locally roasted coffee. I was had originally borrowed a roaster from a friend for a while until a purchased my own roaster. This was a couple of months after starting to roast. About 6 months after starting to feature only our own coffee I purchased another 1kg roaster.
I was roasting on 2 roasters and having a hard time keeping up. So in 2019, we were approached to take our coffee business to the next level by opening a shop downtown. So we decided to jump on it and in April of 2020, we opened our first shop. In May of 2020, we also purchased a much bigger roaster to help us keep up with the demand. We got our 5kg roaster in May and put it to work. We roasted for our own shop downtown and started getting more and more attention. In January, we got our first wholesale account with another local shop in New Albany. During the summer of 2021, we were approached to open our second shop in a local grocery store.
We jumped at the chance to partner with a great family business like Brooks Grocery. So we opened our 2nd shop in August of 2021. As we are coming into 2022, we are continuing to grow. We have added another section of our roasting services to include K-Pods. We will be providing all the K-Pods to the newest hotel in Tupelo, Hotel Tupelo. In 2022, we are also adding our 3rd location located in BNA Bank’s newest branch located in FairPark in Downtown Tupelo.
Risk-taking is a topic that people have widely differing views on – we’d love to hear your thoughts.
If you aren’t taking risks then you aren’t living. I decided to quit my comfortable money investment job to work full time at making coffee. I’m dabbling in a few other businesses as well because when the opportunity presents itself, no is never the first answer.
Contact Info:
- Email: tupeloriver@gmail.com
- Website: tupeloriver.com
- Instagram: @tupelorivercoffee
