Starting Line: Native Coffee's Matt and Anna Flinn Launch Soapbox Coffee Roasters
Soapbox is a new specialty coffee roasting brand out of Jackson, Mississippi — and if you know the story behind it, the name makes perfect sense.
It's not a reference to grandstanding. It's a soapbox racer: the kind you build yourself, point downhill, and drive with everything you've got.
The brand comes from Matt and Anna Flinn, the husband-and-wife team behind Native Coffee, the Belhaven café that Food & Wine magazine named the best coffee shop in Mississippi. Six years of earning that reputation was always part of the plan, a foundation to build something bigger on.
The Long Road to the Roaster
The origin goes back further than most people know. Before Native, Matt and Anna were in her father's shed with a small sample roaster, learning the craft and dreaming about what a roasting program of their own might look like. They shelved it — deliberately. The smarter move, they decided, was to build a customer base through the café first, earn a reputation for exceptional coffee, and launch roasting once they had the foundation to do it right.
That moment arrived when Kyle Ramage of Black & White Coffee, the North Carolina roaster whose partnership put Native on the map, texted Matt about a machine. The Stronghold S8X, manufactured in South Korea, uses technology so precise it's been selected for use in World Roasting Championships. Matt and Anna drove to Houston to pick one up, one of the first in the United States.
What's in the Bag
Now Soapbox is roasting. Sourcing green coffee through Black & White's network, their debut offerings include a washed Ethiopian Yirgacheff and a Colombian co-ferment called Red Fruits from producer Sebastian Ramirez, anaerobically processed for 120 hours with freeze-dried strawberries, wine yeast, and fruit pectin, producing flavors of strawberry, cherry, and chocolate that shift depending on how far you take the roast.
Their first blend is called Starting Line.
For two people who began in a backyard shed six years ago, that name means exactly what it sounds like.
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Quality Coffee + Breakfast
1800 N. State St.
Jackson, Mississippi 39202
(601) 519-7867
Website
Native Coffee Co.1800 N. State St.
Jackson, Mississippi 39202