GROUNDS KEEPERS
Scott Reeves (ex-steve, GH et al) talks about his new family coffee business, Revival Roasting Company
Coffee has been part of Scott Reeves’s life ever since he was a young boy. “I remember waking up in my grandparents’ house as far back as I can remember and that’s what would wake me up in the morning, the smell of coffee percolating on their stove,” relays Reeves. “When I was five, my grandfather said, ‘Well, I think you’re old enough to have your first cup of coffee,’ so he poured about an eighth of an inch of coffee in a mug, the rest milk and sugar. So that’s when my love and my passion for coffee was born. And it never died; it just intensified. As the years went by, waking up with our coffee became a big thing we would look forward to. There’s something about that time in the morning, that time of devotion and reflection.”
The idea to create and start selling his own brew came to him after his son went to work at a coffeehouse. “Probably three or four years ago, Larry got a job here in Nashville,” Reeves recalls. “He had a job as a roaster at this coffee place in Franklin called Honest Coffee Roasters. I’ve always been interested in that, but I really got interested in it when the third wave of coffee started to kind of rear its head. And when I say third wave for people who might not understand, the first wave coffee would be the coffee you and I grew up on, like the coffee percolating in the pot on my grandfather’s stove. And then the second wave of coffee came along, which was Starbucks and Peet’s and The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf. And then a few years back, the specialty coffee world came into play, what they call third wave of coffee, which was when people started taking their time sourcing coffee beans from higher elevations because higher elevations are conducive to growing really amazing coffee. It’s roasted like maybe a high-end fine wine might be manufactured. There’s a lot of care taken in that small batch. This is really what the third wave of the coffee world is about.”
Reeves then immersed himself in the ins and outs of coffee production, learning everything he could about the creation process. “If I was going to do this, I wanted to do it the best that I could,” he explains. “I wanted to try to achieve the best coffee bean I could possibly achieve. And the fun part about it for me is it’s so detail-oriented. It’s like art. It’s like you’re pulling out your own profile that you love from a coffee
bean. And the crazy thing is, I didn’t know this, but every roaster who roasts coffee, his coffee beans are going to taste different. Once you get into this world, you’ll start going, ‘Oh wow, how did he pull out the chocolates or the citrus-y notes or those fruity flavors?’ It’s part of that whole roasting process.”
Once Reeves did his research, he enlisted the help of wife Melissa (Jennifer, DAYS) and daughter Emily for his new venture, Revival Roasting Company. “It’s been really, really fun to get to do it with the family,” Reeves smiles. “From the start to the finish, Emily and Missy are really hands-on. The houses we built and lived in, Missy has decorated them all. Everything is really white and pure and clean, and that’s why we went with stark white packaging with just a black logo. It’s been fun sourcing all of these materials and finding companies that would do exactly what we wanted them to do. And then, of course, Emily wanted to put her touch on it. She said, ‘Oh no, we need to wrap these like gifts. I don’t want people to just open a box and have a bag of coffee. I want people to open a box and see that there’s a Revival Roasting Company sticker that’s tissue-papered and tied with really cool vintage string.’ They’re awesome as far as all that stuff’s concerned. I get lost in the process of creating the perfect coffee bean and then they pick it up and do the packaging. Emily fulfills the orders and she takes so much care because she really loves to do that. She enjoys the whole hospitality aspect of it. She’s kind of our wholesale girl, out and about talking to various retail places, too.”
The Reeveses found a company in Nashville, Summer Triangle Pottery, to cre- ate the mugs bearing the company name. “We’re trying to keep everything from the standpoint of merchandise or anything affiliated with the coffee, as local as possible or within the United States,” he says. “It’s a husband and wife, they’re professors, and this has been their passion for about 10 years. Missy discovered them on Instagram. Over the past few years, they got plugged into providing a lot of highend restaurants around Nashville with their dinnerware. Missy said, ‘We need to get ahold of these people because they’re local artisans. Let’s support somebody here.’ And so they helped us. We collaborated on our coffee mug and we have two slightly different designs.”
For now, the family is operating out of their home in Tennessee. “We just moved into this house four months ago and we built it,” Reeves says. “If you walk out the door through the little breezeway, you’ll step into kind of what people might see as a detached garage. When we built the house, we built that space with the intention of it being a roastery. There’s kind of a seating area and a bar and a whole production area. It’s kind of a really cool place to be and experience coffee. But eventually we do want to have a storefront. We would love that.”
Quality is important to Reeves, and he says he strives every day to ensure that
they’re delivering the best coffee they can. “What we’ve always wanted — and I thank my wife for this because she really, really reinforces this daily — is to take our time with every aspect of what we’re doing, just really taking our time and keeping it very artisan and very hands-on. We don’t want it to grow too fast. If it exploded, that’s wonderful, but we want to retain the quality that we started with and the heart behind it. We don’t want to lose the heart behind it.”
And while the business is taking a lot of Reeves’s time, he is still pursuing music and acting gigs, and wouldn’t say no to a soap return. “While I’ve been back here, I’ve fortunately managed to stay busy to a degree while I’m doing all this stuff,” he notes. “I did a couple of seasons on NASHVILLE and then some movies and some other TV stuff here and there out of Atlanta. But you know what? If a soap came calling, I would entertain the idea very seriously, only because Missy is back and forth anyway. Every time I’m in L.A. and I’m visiting everybody or hanging out with the co-workers that I’ve been with over the years, I really miss it! That wouldn’t be out of the question for me because I know it’s doable at this point and I know our life; I know we can marry the two. I never say never anymore. As crazy as our life has been, who knows what’s next? Coffee and music will always be a part of who I am. We’re always up for anything.”