By Zach Jensen,
A new coffee shop has opened in downtown Calmar. Euphoria Coffee opened on Black Friday – offering a variety of coffees, teas, breakfast breads, pastries and snacks. The shop has expanded from the original West Union location. (Photos by Roz Weis)
Euphoria Coffee owner Nick Yost knows his joe. He admits he can easily venture into the proverbial weeds when it comes to coffee — from growing and roasting to grinding and brewing — but he’s also capable of pouring a simple cup of black coffee. Yet he and his business partner Trevin Jensen aim to provide their customers with something more.
“Our real push is to raise consumer awareness about quality coffee,” said Yost. “That’s our mission, and we hold ourselves to even a higher standard than our customers probably would. I’m in a pursuit of excellence, when it comes to quality. We compete nationally in roasting competitions, and for me, closing that feedback loop between the producer and the consumer is the best way to make better quality coffee.”
Euphoria Coffee opened a new cafe on Nov. 29 at 110 Maryville St. in Calmar and, while Yost admitted many small-town cafes across the country often claim to serve the best coffee, he feels Euphoria’s connection with its producers sets it apart.
“It’s one thing to say my coffee is good — something else to say we have personal relationships with all our farmers, and we work together to make a superior product,” Yost said. “Those are the conversations that I find are way more beneficial than to focus on certification and fair trade. Our commitment to quality is second to none.”
In addition to coffee drinks and other beverages, the Euphoria cafe also offers acai bowls, parfaits, frozen yogurt from Country View Dairy and breakfast burritos. Yost said much of the cafe’s ingredients are purchased from local producers. The granola in Euphoria’s parfaits is from 275th Bakery in Clermont, the cafe’s honey is from Fassbinder Apiaries in Elgin, its maple syrup from Turkey River Farm near Elkader, and its yogurt, frozen yogurt and milk are from Country View Dairy in Hawkeye.
‘Calmar just seemed like a natural spot’
Prior to starting Euphoria, Yost and his father owned a West Union trucking company, where Yost worked as a dispatcher. He eventually began roasting coffee between radio calls in order to fill time.
“Most people start out by roasting some coffee on their stovetop, and getting into it that way,” Yost said. “I just went out and bought a commercial roaster with money from my savings, because after doing the math, I figured that with the amount of coffee my family and I drink, that roaster would pay for itself after four years, so it was worth the investment. That was my only motivation at first.”
However, once he started roasting his own coffee, it took less than two years for Yost to decide he wanted to go into the coffee business. He and his wife, Jacey, founded Euphoria Coffee in 2018 in West Union — working with coffee growers, primarily in Guatemala, to roast and produce what Yost called one of the most award-winning coffees in the United States — the business’ flagship location sold its coffee both locally and nationwide.
Yost and Jensen considered opening a second cafe in a larger town, like Rochester, Minnesota, but they decided to focus on perfecting their tiny town market instead.
“We want to build what we can here,” Yost said, “and Calmar just seemed like a natural spot for us.”
And the company’s global connections carry through to their new location.
“My real passion lies in green coffee purchasing, working with farmers and bringing coffee from all over the world into our warehouse,” said Yost. “We work with farmers as much as we possibly can. Building those relationships and connecting those producers to our customers and vice versa is my mission.”
Making percolation personal
For example, Yost said he’s worked with a grower named Don Santiago in Guatemala for the last four years. Yost and Santiago met through a mutual friend, who connects Guatemalan growers with buyers in the United States. Yost began purchasing two types of coffee beans from Santiago, and they developed a friendship, which is important to Yost — he said he’s not merely interested in buying coffee but also in building relationships and improving peoples’ lives.
“When I buy from someone, I don’t want to just click ‘add to cart,’” Yost explained. “I want to ask questions and get to know the farmer.”
A year after Yost began buying from him, Santiago purchased his own machine to wash coffee cherries — the fruit of a coffee tree — and he was so excited about his purchase that he invited Yost and his family to a celebration in Guatemala to see the growing operation.
“That was a shift for me, because I was interested in these relationships, because that’s just who I am, and I enjoy it,” Yost said. “But, actually going and visiting him and seeing what he’s passionate about — that was a real mental shift for me, because now that we’ve met, I want to sell his coffee even more. He’s my friend, and I care about how he’s doing.”
Yost said he and Santiago work better together because of that relationship, and they continue improving Santiago’s coffee crops. Yost believes farmers like Santiago can both see and reap the benefits of working with Euphoria through a long-term relationship. He noted producers in Guatemala can also sell their coffee crop to local markets there for immediate cash, but likely at a lesser price than Euphoria would offer.
“There’s a lot of trust between my growers and I,” Yost said. “I pay a little later in the year, and I pay for quality, so on average, I’m paying double what their local markets offer, which is lucrative for everyone involved. Coffee is the second-most traded commodity in the world, so we’re not running out of coffee — just trying to find good coffee.”
And part of meeting that challenge is fostering grower awareness, according to Yost. He said he visited a co-op during his trip to Guatemala, and he was able to taste coffees from different producers — at least one of whom had never tasted coffee made from his own coffee cherry.
“It was very obvious that the farmer who cared the most about their crop produced the best-tasting coffee,” Yost said, adding that he also asked the farmers to taste each other’s coffee as well. “The whole group picked the coffee that was more manually-processed and less mechanically-processed as the best coffee.”
Yost said Euphoria mainly roasts its coffee on the light-to-medium end of the spectrum — and with good cause.
“We roast however we find highlights the best natural characteristics of the coffee,” he said “It’s a little bit like a steak. If you char a steak, you’re actually tasting the carbon buildup on the outside of the steak — not meat. With coffee, if you roast it too much, you’re losing the taste of the fruit — coffee is a fruit — so, we tend to keep our roast light to medium to retain that flavor.”
Lucas Sass, who’s worked for Euphoria for four months, said he wasn’t a coffee drinker before working for Yost — the only coffee he’d ever known was a mass-produced commercial brand. That has since changed, Sass said.
“Nick has had me attend a couple of his tasting sessions, and I’ve definitely noticed higher flavor notes, and I’ve become more of a coffee snob — a connoisseur.”
The Euphoria café also adds calcium and potassium to distilled water, which is then used in all its pour-overs.
“There is chemistry involved. There are minerals that matter,” Yost said. “It’s the same thing as putting salt on your mashed potatoes. No salt; and mashed potatoes aren’t that good. Salt those mashed potatoes, and they’re pretty yummy.”
Yost said Euphoria wants to be “sophisticated yet unpretentious” when talking with customers about coffee.
“It’s actually kind of ironic — the level of nonchalance some consumers have toward the producer, when it comes to coffee,” he said. “We think about it as a commodity — two scoops in the automatic coffee pot every morning, ‘I need to get this fluid in me, so I can start my day.’ I get it. It’s cultural. But, in reality, there are humans on the other side of the world making that possible for you. And, yes, there’s humans on the other side of the world making all kinds of stuff, but if we can connect the consumer to the producer, then it’s not just a commodity anymore — it’s a product that becomes more appreciated by everyone involved.”
Euphoria’s café in Calmar is open from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m., Monday through Friday and 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday.
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