Vendor Profile: Honest Coffee Roasters

In the decade since its founding, Honest Coffee has grown from a small importer to a company working directly with farmers in order to offer a transparent take on America’s favorite hot beverage. Based in Franklin, Tennessee, just south of Nashville, Honest Coffee supplies the Bobby Nashville with its java. That includes room service, banquets, bars and the first-floor coffee shop, which offers prime people-watching in addition to great coffee.

Ray Palumbo, head of coffee for Honest Coffee, was particularly impressed with the Cafe at Bobby baristas when Honest trained the staff earlier this year. “They’re super knowledgeable about the drinks that they’re making. You can tell that they all have a passion for it.”
Honest Coffee traveled to Brazil in the past year to visit some of the farms that grow their fruit. The team wanted to be hands-on and see how much work it takes to actually produce one pound of beans. “It’s insane,” Palumbo says. “It takes a really long time and a lot of effort and a lot of people to do that well.”

Many coffee shops prepare their drinks in a way that covers up a lot of the tasting notes and the characteristics of the beans that the farmers have worked so hard to cultivate. But at Bobby Nashville, Palumbo says, baristas are working in tandem with the bean. “Having wholesale clients who can do that is really awesome,” he says.

Bobby Nashville offers a number of Honest Coffee products, including a Brazilian bean called the Rio. That’s from the farm Honest Coffee visited. “It’s just a really tasty cup of coffee, super chocolatey. It’s got some fruit to it, on the bag we put ‘Nutella’ as one of the tasting notes. It’s got this kind of hazelnutty flavor.”

Lauren McHugh, director of creative and marketing, appreciates that Bobby Nashville has created a coffee shop where people feel welcome, but also feel different from other shops in town (including three Honest Coffee shops in Nashville and Franklin). “You don’t want to just conform to what everybody else is doing.”

For Palumbo and McHugh, though, of most import is the mission of the company and the reason it was named “Honest Coffee.” “A lot of people don’t realize that your average cup of coffee probably isn’t doing good in the world. It’s actually probably doing bad in the world,” McHugh says. Working with farmers who consider the elevation and other growing circumstances of their plantings, who help build homes, schools, churches and playgrounds in their communities, help make coffee “equitable and good for everybody,” is part of what she and the rest of the team at Honest Coffee take pride in, she says.

So, go, grab a cup, talk to the barista, and savor the Honest Coffee essence at Bobby Nashville.