In this new series, TCU Magazine visits with alumni in the food and beverage industry. Send recommendations to tcumagazine@tcu.edu.

Evan Sledge ’19 and colleagues started Whiskey Morning Coffee in August of 2018 with the goal of making a profitable business. By placing its headquarters in Tolar, Texas, on the ground with Sledge Distillery, founded in 2015 by Evan’s parents, Mark ’18 MLA and Susan Sledge ’18 MLA, the company had on-site the whiskey barrels needed for aging beans. The business partners now concoct a variety of coffee flavors and other coffee products while focusing on taking care of their consumers.

Can you take me back to the very beginning of Whiskey Morning Coffee?

It was all self-funded, so we had to look at the things that we had internally on our team. My family has a distillery making whiskey and bourbon. So, I was like, ‘I could get the leftover bourbon barrels.’ Then, we saw that the margins were super high on whiskey coffee. So, we bought our first round of beans to put in the barrels and try it out.

Evan Sledge, back, and three friends founded Whiskey Morning Coffee in 2018. Courtesy of Evan Sledge

Can you share a memory about your time working with your partners on either starting this business or while it’s been open?

The most recent memories would be all of us getting married and starting to have kids, the family side of it as a business.

When we started, we planned to make a lot of money, but once we got to making more money, instead of keeping the pedal down, our lives started changing. We started looking at our experiences on a daily basis and realized that we’d been living the dream the whole time.

We enjoy being together and spending time with our families and the freedom that comes with owning your own business. And I’d say that changed the way that we looked at growing [the business] and running it daily.

Whiskey Morning Coffee was born from a TCU class project. Courtesy of Evan Sledge

When you look across the market, how unique is the process of aging coffee beans in bourbon barrels?

I would say there are only a few people who are aging it in the barrels. A lot of people are making bourbon coffee with flavorings, but it’s still a pretty small community.

How long does it take for the coffee to age?

It takes about three months, depending on the weather.

What would you say has helped you grow your business the most?

Customer word of mouth and taking care of people. I’d say our No. 1 attribute is not about how great our coffee is or the cool flavors we’re coming up with. It’s our personal touch. We’re four dudes in a barn. We treat people pretty old-fashioned, which you don’t get as much from an e-commerce brand.

Is there something else you want readers to know about your business that we might not have covered?  

We’d love people to come out and see us or order online and keep in the loop with us online; we do a lot of different stuff. We have podcasts starting up and new coffee beans and other products coming out every month.

On Saturdays, you can come out: the distillery’s open, there’s music and food-tasting tours, coffee facility tours and you can even make your own roast.