Night Swim Coffee deserves a quiet night.
This week we’re featuring Night Swim out of Charlotte, North Carolina, a collective of sorts born out of a chance meeting at a coffee trade show. Night Swim’s packaging is a delight, but moreover, we’re positively enamored with the name itself, and the emotions it evokes. For emotions outlast the memories that drive them, these things, they go away. We’re faced with every day.
To learn more, we spoke with the founders of Night Swim Coffee digitally.
Tell us about Night Swim Coffee and the collaboration between Not Just Coffee and Undercurrent Coffee!
Night Swim Coffee was created by James and Miracle Yoder, founders of Not Just Coffee, and Todd and Erin Huber, founders of Undercurrent Coffee. Todd and James met at the SCA Coffee Expo in Atlanta in 2016. They quickly became friends and also talked business on almost a daily basis. We first considered merging our brand in late 2018, and seriously resumed the conversation in late 2019. We realized that we operated in the same market with similar concepts and operating philosophies, and targeting the same demographic. We were often competing for the same spaces, and we had similar growth ambitions. We also recognized that our teams had complementary skill sets and that we would benefit by combining our ownership teams in order to manage and grow our increasingly complex businesses. We also thought it would be fun to create and grow something new together!
When did the packaging debut?
We debuted our packaging just before Christmas, on December 12th of 2021
Who designed it?
Tell us about the design!
The darker black bag with red accents is intended for our blends. While the more colorful bags are single-origin coffees.
What coffees are you currently excited about?
Weโre very excited about our most recent release from Tibed Yujra in Puno, Peru. Itโs a perfect representation of all of the incredible complexity and sweetness that Peruvian coffees can offer. Weโre also about to release our first Kenyan offering of the year, an AB lot from the Wamuguma factory.
Where are your coffees available?
Our coffees are available via our website. We have opened up our wholesale program, and are excited to be working with first partners. Rhino Market, Cohesive Coffee, Cup & Saucer, Black Magic Coffee,ย and of course at any of our own 11 locations throughout Charlotte.
How do you recommend we spend a perfect day in Charlotte?
A perfect day starts in Charlotteโs South End with a pour-over of our Floriberto ArenaโPink Bourbon and a house made biscuit at Not Just Coffee. Charlotte is known for its green spaces, so after breakfast we recommend a stroll through one of the parks, or one of our many greenways. One of our favorite Charlotte neighborhoods is Plaza Midwood. Here you can often catch local bands, find unique shopping experiences, and catch lunch at a new Charlotte hotspot: Calle de Sol. For dinner we are going to a local spot called Eight + Sand Kitchen. They just started offering pizza, and have a great cocktail menu to compliment all their food options.
After dinner we head Uptown to the Bank of America Stadium to watch Charlotte FC win a home game. Then, if youโre looking for a nightcap, we would suggest going up to NoDa to Idlewildย for a menu-less cocktail experience that is unforgettable.
…and in the evening where can we go for a night swim?
We recommend hopping the fence at one of the many new sprawling apartment complexes in the core of Charlotte, and enjoying a night swim in the midst of the hundreds of closed windows above.
Thank you!
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