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Evan Sledge, left, and Carson Becker in 2020.
What started out as a semester-long assignment for a TCU business course has blossomed into a growing North Texas coffee company.
Whiskey Morning Coffee, based in Tolar, has gained a successful word-of-mouth following over the past five years because of its unique flavor profiles and smoking technique, which sets it apart, according to co-founder Evan Sledge, who, along with cohorts Carson Becker and TJ Ryan, started this company in Professor Michael Sherrod’s classroom.
It starts with aging a sundry of green coffee beans inside of a series of used bourbon barrels for several months. After the beans have been aged, they are then roasted, which burns off the alcohol but leaves a hint of the bourbon flavor behind.
If this sounds like a process that took years to perfect, you’d be wrong.
“Surprisingly, our first batch actually turned out really good,” Sledge said. “This was a big part of how we got our confidence because we didn’t have any more money to do a second batch.”
Sledge said that he and his partners initially raised $320 to get their idea started, with the added benefit of helping him make the grade in his business course. Sledge said the idea came as part of an entrepreneurship class at TCU’s Neeley School of Business. Sherrod, the William M. Dickey Entrepreneur in Residence, has teams of students devise, plan, and launch a business by the end of each semester.
“I liked this class a lot,” he said. “There were no tests, no papers, we just had to come up with a business idea, some capital, and try not to get sued. It fit me perfectly.”
If Sledge had it to do over, he'd have made a smaller test batch in case the coffee didn’t taste great. The partners got lucky, however, that the coffee turned out well. They sold every drop of their first batch at several TCU-sanctioned events — all with positive feedback.
The used bourbon barrels the partners use are in essence his birthright because they come from his grandfather’s distillery, which sits on the Sledge family property at 8210 Paluxy Highway in Tolar.
It’s on this same plot of land that the coffee is made.
And on any given week, this trio of friends crank out about 1,800 pounds of coffee, which includes all five of their core flavors, plus one special new flavor made every month.
The flavor ideas come from the group as a whole, which include the jalapeno inspired “TX TNT,” the toasted pecan flavor of “Fall Creek Thrasher,” and the lemon and orange peel of “Let’s Get Tropical.”
“Our two most popular flavors are the ‘Bourbon Barrel,’ and a coffee we call the ‘Texian,’ which is my favorite,” Sledge said. “We throw it in a barbecue smoker and smoke those beans.” Sledge said the trio are still working on a bacon flavored coffee that hits the right flavor notes.
Of the class that spawned it all, Sledge said Whiskey Morning Coffee is one of only a handful of businesses that actually continued after graduation.
“A lot of the guys I was going to school with kept talking about finding real jobs after graduating, and I was like, ‘We have a good thing going. None of us are married or have kids, so why not just keep making coffee,’” he said.
It seems his instincts were correct.
This year, Sledge said, Whiskey Morning Coffee is poised to do more than $1 million in sales by December.
Not bad on a $320 initial investment.
If you are looking to find a brick-in-mortar locale, you’ll have to drive to Tolar and stop by the Sledge Distillery to find the team in action. Even so, this business is primarily an online store. But that doesn’t mean this eager team of caffeinated business moguls don’t have plans of expanding down the line. In fact, Sledge said his team had been in talks with some of the big-box stores but opted out when they found out how much they would have to compromise on flavor.
“One thing I want to get straight is, we’re not a bourbon company. We just offer a new way of supplying coffee flavors to coffee lovers,” he said. “We also take pride in how our product is made. We’re not in this to make a quick buck, but rather a quality coffee made with all-natural flavors.”