Check Out Quintin Robison’s Story

Today we’d like to introduce you to Quintin Robison.

Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
First, Lindsay Powell and I (Quintin) are the owners of Sips Espresso Cafe and Athens Coffee Holding & Roasting. We took over Sips Espresso Cafe in 2014 as a multi roaster. Which it is still is. I serve not only our coffee but 1000 Faces, and Jittery Joes. Sips is an old gas station that was built in 1920 and was a Standard Oil/Gulf station. It’s small, only 650ft inside and all our seating is on our patios. But we’re in a great location in an area called Normaltown and we are located directly across from the Medical Campus of UGA.
Then back in 2022 we started the Athens Coffee Holding & Roasting. We started the actual business on paper then, but it’s taken three years to go from that to our ribbon cutting.

The name. I came up with it. It comes from my idea for the roaster/company and my love of westerns. Westerns is where I first heard the “Holding” part of it, you always see “Such and Such Land Holding” in old west towns. Because of that, I looked up what a Holding Company actually meant and realized it was the idea of what I wanted in our coffee company. My original idea was that I never wanted to have one brand name. I don’t want a Sips Espresso Cafe on every corner like a Starbucks or Dutch Bros. I wanted something I could expand but have each location be its own stand alone with its own look, feel, and culture. So that’s what Athens Coffee Holding & Roasting is. It’s my umbrella. It’s the core of our supply chain, our wholesale business.

The Roasting facility is compact but we have lots of room to grow. It’s only a little over a 1000sf
We came across an old mill house for sale that was built around 1930 on the edge of the BLVD area of Athens. The building was ready for the bulldozer. The mill house used to house workers for a denim factory located at the end of our street. There are only three of these houses left. That factory itself now houses a local brewery creature comforts, and a really nice hotel called the Rivet House and a bunch of offices/businesses and a couple of restaurants.
So we made the decision to buy, remodel and made the change of use from a home to a commercial property (That’s where most of our time went from 2022 to now)
Like I said it was in rough shape. It was remodeled in the 1990s after it caught on fire, then it was a rental property until we took it over.
With the remodel we took the building back to its original footprint. There wasn’t much to save architecturally so we had a fresh slate inside.
We broke the house down to four equal areas. each around 250ft. We have 75% of space dedicated to coffee. The other 25% is our baking program. So we have a commercial baking kitchen onsite too. Then We have our cafe/lab area, the rest is storage and the roasting room.

We really didn’t start roasting at scale until last year, and only served it through our cafe. This allowed us to work on our profiles before we went live.

Ethan has been with us for a little over 10 years. I believe I hired him out of college or shortly after. So he’s been pulling coffee for a good while before we moved him to our roaster. Ethan is our Head Roaster.
Our Roaster is a 12 Kilo U.S. Roaster Corp. unit. She’s a beaut. I’ll make sure you get a shot of it. She’s clad in copper that’s all been hammered out by hand.

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
converting a 100 year old building into a roaster was a struggle. There were a lot of planning dept hurdles we had to jump through. We are having to upgrade our oven to keep up with our baked goods demand.

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
We have a passion for the business and our employees do too. Our customer service is something we pride ourselves on and of course our coffee is outstanding. Being able to roll with the punches and keep renewing ourselves every day to not get complacent and always expect more.

Risk taking is a topic that people have widely differing views on – we’d love to hear your thoughts.
Sometimes risks give you everything you want. We risked a lot when starting our own business. My wife and I both were able to quit our 9-5 jobs. You will never have what you want if you are not able to take some risks to get it.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://athenscoffeeholding.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/athenscoffeeholding/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61581406367085

Image Credits
Alisha Mullenax