What was your motivation in starting a coffee business?

Raymond: I have always wanted to work for myself. I was in the restaurant business before and I found myself in Mississippi wanting a fresh start and I was thinking of what kind of business I could start without having much capital. I had been toying with this cold brew coffee idea while I was out in California. California was where I actually began making coffee on a larger scale and I thought about selling it out there. When I ended up in Mississippi, I thought I would give it another shot. I remember my sister bought me a MAC computer and I was searching online to find out how to porter bottles and buy a domain so I kind of crept into it. My intention was always to be self-employed and to do something that I liked doing. I like to drink coffee and I was once a chef. I love serving people and making them happy. That’s my nature.

As a chef, what were your specialties?

Raymond: I could make just about anything. I owned several restaurants in New Orleans, which is where I’m from and my sister still owns a restaurant there. I was also a chef in California for an over fifty-five community out there.

How many flavors or variations of coffee have you tapped into?

Raymond: We started with just the original and we made chai tea as well. Then we made this caramel sweetener that went with it and we were doing well with that. We started thinking about how we could do different flavors and we just decided to move into that very slowly. We ordered different flavors and we had tastings to see what people liked. A lot of this flavors came from the original demos we had done. We had drinks like the Mississippi Turtle, where we put Hershey’s chocolate and caramel in it. It was well received so we decided to go ahead and make that flavor. We developed our vanilla simple syrup and we created our Mill St. Vanilla flavor. We have five flavors now and we just ordered some hazelnut so we will have six. We will probably do seasonal flavors as well, like a pumpkin spice for Thanksgiving.

Do you have to drink this coffee cold?

Raymond: No, you can heat it up in the microwave and drink it hot. It is very stable. If you made a cup of regular coffee and you saved it and put it in the refrigerator and went back to drink it the next day, it would not taste very good. This coffee, even if you made a cup and diluted it with milk and put it in the microwave, drank half of it and put the other half in the refrigerator and came back to drink it the next day and poured it over ice, it would still be just as good. It does not turn bitter. It is a concentrate so it can be mixed with water, milk, vodka, whatever you like. We’ve done a lot of promotion with Cathead Vodka. Several restaurants have this coffee on their menu. They use our coffee for mixed drinks and to make their desserts.

What is your favorite flavor?

Raymond: My favorite is the Salted Caramel, but I also like our Chai Tea. The Chai Tea idea came during the time I was selling my coffee at the Farmers’ Markets. Not everyone liked coffee so I said that I would make something they would enjoy. I love chai and I used to do yoga and I would see people making chai all the time. I tried it out and I came up with a pretty good chai I believe.

Do you have to do a lot of experimenting in order to come up with a flavor?

Raymond: Oh yes. My business partner, Jon Peterson and I, worked on the flavors for a long time. We had to determine how much of this ingredient to put in and how much of that ingredient to put in. We had to test it to see if we put in too much or too little of something. I tested the flavors with the people at the Farmers’ Markets and I would get their reactions.

Jon: I interact great with people and so I know how to sell the coffee. I am not a coffee drinker so I don’t have much input in choosing the flavors, but I taste the coffee every now and then to help test the flavors. I know how to make it, bottle it, market it and sell it. I make the product relatable to people because there are so many ways to use the product. It can be used as a seasoning, in a dessert or in a mixed drink. I show people like myself who don’t drink coffee how to use this coffee in other ways than just drinking the traditional cup of coffee.

Do you guys do everything when it comes to manufacturing the coffee and tea?

Raymond: We do everything here except grow the beans and pick them. The beans are roasted here in The Hatch by my friend Doug Eltzroth, owner of Northshore Specialty Coffee Company. All of our coffee is in liquid form. We don’t sell the grinds for customers to make their own cold drip yet.

Why did you bring your business to Midtown?

Raymond: Millsaps would be the answer to that. I got involved with the ELSEWorks program through Joe Donovan and Jon Peterson, who is now my partner. He has been working with me since he was an Analyst with ELSEWorks. They found this spot for me. We got in touch with Dr. Kristi Hendrix with Midtown Partners and I was the first tenant here. Millsaps is how I got here and it has worked out perfectly. I was one of the first presenters at One Million Cups and little did I know that I would be right here today. I believe that it was a good business decision to bring Mississippi Cold Drip to Midtown. Being here at The Hatch has really helped us cost wise and we are about to move into a much larger space in the back of The Hatch. Being here has given me the opportunity to be around producers and small businesses. Being around other creative people is great, we run ideas by each other all the time. Also meeting and working with Jon has played a vital role in the success of Mississippi Cold Drip.

Jon: I was an ELSEWorks Analyst when I met Raymond. I was in the first class that Raymond pitched Mississippi Cold Drip to. When I became a senior at Millsaps, I became an Analyst as one of the first two undergraduates allowed to enroll in ELSEWorks. We worked on the business plan, getting equipment to set up the facility, we then went on to set it up, and we worked on the branding like labels and bottles. I was very involved in the early stages and the fact that Raymond and I hit it off early was great. I went on to get my MBA at Millsaps and I became an Analyst as a graduate student. I was still involved with this project and I took over a lot of the accounting and the day to day operations. When I graduated, I really liked the idea of being self-employed. In the beginning there wasn’t a lot of money coming in, but I still wanted to be a part of this business, so we decided on partnership.

What do you like most about being in Midtown?

Raymond: The community is awesome. I grew up in New Orleans so I like the city feeling and the vibe here. I like the way they are trying to revive the community. I plan on staying here for as long as I can. I really like it like here.

Has Midtown been an inspiration for any of your coffee flavors?

Raymond: Yes, we have the Mill St. Vanilla which was inspired by Midtown. It is a really good seller too.

Has BAM helped you to get a better sense of the community and residents here in Midtown?

Raymond: Absolutely it has. We have done events with BAM and I have had the opportunity to meet some residents and get to know some of them. We have done events with OffBeat and Pearl River Glass where I’ve gotten to meet a few people in the community. Sometimes people from the area will just stop in to see what we are doing here and just to speak.

Where do you see your business in the next five years?

Raymond: I see it as a regional and hopefully national company. We are already on the East Coast in New York, Maine, New Hampshire and Massachusetts. We just got a picture of a guy on social media in Albany, New York with our coffee. We do a lot of demos up there. We have a great demo team and we use a lot of students from Millsaps.

Jon: We paid for an ad on RangeMe.com which is a platform for vendors to come across retailers and for retailers to come across vendors that think their product would go great in their stores. We got highlighted and we sent samples to them and that’s how we got in those markets. We also have an agent up there that helped us.

Raymond: We are also in Birmingham and Memphis and we have been approved for Nashville and Montgomery. We are in some Whole Foods stores, Kroger stores, Hannaford Supermarkets, just to name a few.

If your coffee were a superhero and had a superpower, what would it be?

Jon: It would be a Brainiac. The superpower would be infinite wisdom. It is always on que.

Raymond: You can’t do anything in the mornings without having your cup of coffee first. Coffee is brain food. Caffeine keeps you on your toes.

What do you like to do in your spare time?

Raymond: I like to cook, ride my motorcycle and I’m about to get back into working out. I also like to spend time with my two dogs. I love doing charity work also. We do the Wells Festival each year, which is a festival held by Wells United Methodist Church to benefit a local charity. We do quite a bit with animals in the community. We trap cats, take them to get spayed or neutered and then release them back into the community. I really enjoy doing things like that.

What’s coming up for Mississippi Cold Drip?

Jon: We will be having another grand opening when we move to the larger space here in The Hatch. We don’t have a solid date, but we will make sure that it is on the website and our social media pages. We are also working on the seasonal flavor, Pumpkin Spice for the holidays coming up.

For more information on Mississippi Cold Drip Coffee and Tea Co., visit the website www.mscolddrip.com. You can also visit and follow the social media sites:

Facebook: facebook.com/mississippicolddripcoffeeandteacompany

Instagram: @mscolddrip

Google: Mississippi Cold Drip for more articles and news

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