What’s in a name? A spro by any other name would taste just as sweet. In this 4-part series Sprudge staff writer Zac Cadwalader explores the fascinating back story behind some of specialty coffee’s best brand names. Don’t miss an installment, catch up with part 1 and part 2!
1. Lemonjello’s Coffee (Holland, Michigan)
Lemonjello’s owner Matthew Scott is a perennial barista competition competitor, and there’s typically a punk or punk-adjacent tune in his playlist. The meaning behind the name of his shop is no different: “In middle school I went on a Habitat for Humanity build trip and everyone was given nicknames by the leaders. Mine came from a Steve Taylor song. ‘Call me Lemonjello if I lack a little backbone. ’ Ultimately, using the name for my shop came out of wanting to prove that wrong—take a risk and whatnot.”
2. Monogram Coffee (Calgary, Canada)
“A monogram is a collection of unique symbols or motifs that come together to create a unique stamp or mark. That is how we want to approach coffee. For us, we want Monogram to be bigger than just the three of us who started it. We want it to be a collection of ideas, skills, and passion from everyone on our team, our partners across the supply chain, our customers, and people in the industry whom we are inspired by. Our goal is to take these ideas to create a unique mark on coffee that inspires wonder and warmth.” – Jeremy Ho, co-owner
3. ReAnimator Coffee (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania)
“I got the name ‘ReAnimator’ from the short story written by H.P. Lovecraft called ‘Herbert West: Reanimator’. I liked it as a name for a coffee company because of the obvious connections—coffee and being awake/reanimating—but also because I wanted a name that was very different from the other coffee names I was seeing at the time. A lot of coffee company names tended to evoke rustic images of burlap sacks or close up shots of hands holding mounds of coffee cherry…we weren’t shooting for that.” – Mark Corpus, co-owner
4. Saint Frank (San Francisco, California)
Saint Frank is a jocular nod to its home city, San Francisco, and to its namesake, Saint Francis of Assisi. As the Saint Frank website states, “Saint Francis who showed all things seemingly mundane and ordinary to be special… Saint Francis had a passion for life and connection with people and the world around him in a way that shapes our direction in coffee and service. He approached everything with a humble wide-eyed view of simplicity and courtesy.” Saint Frank translates into treating coffee as something more than just ”mundane or commodity, it isn’t ‘just coffee’.”
5. Slate Coffee Roasters (Seattle, Washington)
“The Slate Coffee Roasters moniker is derived from the term ‘clean slate’,” co-owner Keenan Walker explains. Their idea was to start over and re-approach everything anew. From producer interactions to roast profiles to glassware to even menu size, they wanted to look at established coffee trends and question them. “These questions have helped us build the philosophy and ethos of our company. We have yet to find all of the answers and sometimes I feel like we have barely scratched the surface of some of these most foundational questions.”
Zac Cadwalader is a Sprudge.com staff writer based in Dallas, Texas. Read more Zac Cadwalader on Sprudge.
