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When it comes to coffee, Everett, Washington has earned the dubious distinction of being home to some newsworthy bikini-barista stands. But the city 30 miles north of Seattle welcomed a new option of the high-end-cart variety when Narrative Coffee Co., the project from veteranย barista competitor Maxwell Mooney, opened on July 4 in the heart of the cityโ€™s small downtown core.

Narrative is hedging its bets on Everett, a still-affordable Pacific Northwest city that Mooney hopes will attract coffee enthusiasts from near and farther afield. โ€œI definitely see the democratization of specialty coffee happening for a variety of reasons,โ€ heย says. He theorizes that as big cities with thriving coffee scenes produce more and more professional baristas, some who came to the city from small towns will want to move back and start something new. Like Mooney, โ€œthey see more opportunity in places no one else has touched.โ€

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For a growing population, Mooney noticed that there was no โ€œnew wave-styleโ€ coffee companies in Everett and very few options in the entirety of Snohomish County. โ€œYou have this incredible concentration of brilliant coffee companies in Seattle. Then you go outside the Seattle city limits and you canโ€™t find hardly anything. So itโ€™s been a major point of mine to try to be that for people outside of Seattle,โ€ he explains.

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Everett began as a mill town and houses both the largest public marina on the West Coast and the biggest building in the world by volumeโ€”Boeingโ€™s airplane factory. Still, the small town โ€œgets referred to as grungy and kind of dingy. Itโ€™s the brunt of many jokes,โ€ Mooney says. โ€œBut itโ€™s got a really thriving music scene, and a lot of really cool stuff thatโ€™s happening.โ€

narratvie coffee cart everett washington spotted cow coffee company sprudge
Maxwell Mooney

Everett is currently more affordable than Seattle, a city with quickly changing demographics that, thanks to the rise of tech, is in the middle of a housing shortage and affordability crisis for renters and homebuyers. โ€œ[Everett] is getting more expensive but itโ€™s radically more affordable,โ€ Mooney says, citing the average home price in Everett as less than $350,000, compared withย more than $650,000 in Seattle. A few new apartment buildings with retail space on their ground floors are being built in the blocks surrounding Narrative, including a market-style project headed up by Steve Carlin, the guy behind several upscale markets in California such as the Ferry Building Marketplace and Oakville Grocery.

Mooney has been sitting on the Narrative nameโ€”a nod to the story behind coffee and the connections it can createโ€”since he was at Caffe Ladro. He wrote the companyโ€™s business plan a year and a half ago and pitched the idea to Spotted Cow Coffee Company, โ€œbut a lot of people are scared to take a chance on [Everett],โ€ he says. โ€œMy boss was not as thrilled about the idea as I was, and I said, โ€˜Okay, if you wonโ€™t do it thereโ€™s a huge possibility here and Iโ€™d like to take it on.โ€™โ€

narratvie coffee cart everett washington spotted cow coffee company sprudge

Mooney has lived in Snohomish County, of which Everett is the county seat, for the past seven years. On his first official day of his first-ever barista job at Caffe Ladro, he competed in-house and was selected to represent the roaster at the North West Regional Barista Championship 2013. He left coffee to finish school and worked as a pest control specialist in California, then headed back north to work at Mill Creek, Washington-based Spotted Cow, where he still helps out from time to time. He competed for Spotted Cow in the NWRBC in 2014, 2015, and 2016, earning third place in the Northwest in 2015. He made United States Barista Competition appearances in 2015 and 2016.

In addition to lifting Narrative off the ground, Mooney intends to train for competition. An amicable, down-to-earth guy, he turns serious when asked about plans to compete in the future. โ€œCompeting is in my DNA. I intend to compete until I win,โ€ he says, or until itโ€™s time to pass the baton to a burgeoning Narrative barista.

narratvie coffee cart everett washington spotted cow coffee company sprudge

So does Mooney see Narrative as a risk or an opportunity? โ€œItโ€™s both,โ€ he says. After searching for a brick-and-mortar space and settling (for now) on a cart in downtown’s Wetmore Plaza, Mooney was able to keep startup costs low. He rebuilt a machine and refurbished a cart donated to him from a local church. But starting any business involves risk, especially in an emerging town with lighter pedestrian traffic than Seattle and that is less acclimated to a milk-and-espresso menu.

Mooney says the biggest challenge with his cart is the focus on hospitality thatย he would want to prioritize in a future brick-and-mortar space. Narrative rotates through a trio of roasters: one chosen from Snohomish County, a second from the Pacific Northwest, and a third based outside the regionย or internationally. In addition to educating customers about roasters viaย Narrativeโ€™s menu and helping them find a drink they love, Mooneyย says that โ€œin a to-go setting, one of the most hospitable things you can do is get someone their coffee relatively quickly and see them about their day.โ€

Narrative Coffee is located atย 2730 Wetmore Avenue, Everett, Washington. Visit their official website and follow them on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Sara Billups (@hellobillups)ย is a freelance journalist based in Seattle.ย Read more Sara Billups on Sprudge.

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