Today we’d like to introduce you to Truman Severson.
Truman, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
Hopper & Burr started as a little pop-up coffee bar inside the now-closed bar and restaurant Little Sparrow. We open there in February 2015 and served coffee and got to know all our regulars there while we built out our brink and mortar space. We closed the pop-up in October 2016 and moved over to our new, permanent home a few weeks later. We’ve been slinging drinks there ever since.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc. – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
Oh man. As anyone who’s building out a kitchen will tell you, dealing with contractors can be a nightmare. It’s especially hard because I had been thinking about what I would want in my own cafe for almost 10 years. I had lots of little details and opinions which were all non-negotiable to me. Contractors don’t care about that stuff, so that always a battle.
We’d love to hear more about your business.
We’re a coffee shop, but we work pretty hard to make really excellent coffee really accessible. We brew coffee in batches as opposed to by the cup because try as one might, when you make a pour over you’re making a choice to either engage with a person or make a tasty, consistent coffee. We give all of the monotonous work(like pouring hot water onto coffee grounds) to the machines. which frees us to interact with people rather than interacting with coffees around people. we also focus on fun seasonal and specialty drinks, things like tiki drinks and slushies in the summer. I think we’re living in an era where specialty coffee doesn’t have to be pretentious and stuffy and I like to think that we’re helping make that a reality.
What were you like growing up?
I was a terrible student (I didn’t graduate high school) but I was an avid learner. I loved reading about and studying things that I was interested in, but was really undisciplined.
Contact Info:
- Address: 202 W 4th Street, Santa Ana, California
- Website: Hopperandburr.com
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: @hopperandburr
Image Credit:
Tim D Wright
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