Inspiring Conversations with Gregory Brady of Anchor Coffee

Today we’d like to introduce you to Gregory Brady.  

Hi Gregory, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
Anchor started in 2014 when me and my friend Nate Griffin met and decided that we wanted to start a business focused around coffee roasting. I was extremely passionate about specialty coffee, and Nate was interested in starting multiple businesses in Wilkes County to grow the local economy. 

Some of our first roasts were in my kitchen, using a stovetop popcorn popper, and they were absolutely horrible. As we learned the intricacies of coffee roasting, we began building a business plan and started shipping our house-roasted (literally) coffee to our friends and family. 

From there, we built out our first production space in north Wilkesboro along with a small cafe. Our business grew from there, and we signed our lease on the Winston-Salem location at the beginning of 2020. It did take some time for us to build out our space and get in equipment due to the nightmare that was Covid, but we finally opened our doors in late 2021. 

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?
Leading up to the Covid19 pandemic, we had very little to deal with except for our growth. Our north Wilkesboro location was doing well, and our wholesale business was growing. So much so that we began planning our next location in Winston-Salem. However, when lockdown began, we were put in a very unfortunate situation where we had just signed the lease on a very expensive location in a new city to us, and we couldn’t really pivot. Thankfully we had negotiated our lease to not commence until we had gotten our certificate of occupancy. Which wasn’t until early 2021. 

Thanks – so, what else should our readers know about Anchor Coffee Co.?
Anchor Coffee Co. has grown into a very special business that is very focused on our local community(s) by providing high-quality coffees that are sourced in the most ethical way possible. We work with several farms and importers to make this happen and have found unique ways to engage with the supply chain which is truly international. 

The last few years, we have really set our eyes on creating spaces where life can happen. Both of our locations are unique to the area that they are in, with our Winston location being built out in an old coal fire power plant and our north Wilkesboro location planted at the entrance to an ever-expanding greenway system. 

We pride ourselves on our high-quality coffees that we source from wonderful farms all over the coffee belt. This gives us the opportunity to showcase the story of the coffee from origin to cup, which is how I fell in love with coffee in the first place. 

What’s next?
Over the next few years, we plan on growing our wholesale footprint across the triad, as well as the high country of north carolina. We also have online retail that we would like to see grow going into the second half of this year. Additionally, it would be awesome to build out more locations, but that is a ways off.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.anchorcoffeeeco.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/anchorcoffeeco
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/anchorcoffeeco