Tavo Coffee Co.: A Small Business with Big Flavor

Article By: James McKissick, Staff Writer | BCS Chronicle

What You Need To Know:

• Cathy and Gustavo Román founded Tavo in May of 2021.

• Gustavo’s family has been in the coffee industry for five generations.

• What sets Tavo apart is their focus on coffee made to order, and sourcing quality ingredients.

• Tavo is currently a mobile business and their location can be found on their Instagram page.

Heatwaves rise from the pavement like water vapor screaming from a boiling kettle as I drive through Bryan-College Station on a sweltering Texas afternoon in late July. I notice that the town is showing more signs of life than I’d seen since the beginning of the pandemic, despite still being in the Summer semesters. Nearing the edge of town I turn off into a quiet neighborhood and pull up in front of a charming little house and park. I’m 15 minutes early, so I decide to wait in my car and enjoy some music and the air-conditioner before I step out into that humid South Texas Summer air and immediately start sweating. The quarter-hour goes by in a flash, and the time has come to leave the climate controlled bubble of my car. I approach the house and knock on the door. The door opens and I’m greeted by the smiling faces of Gustavo and Cathy Gracia Román, founders of Tavo Coffee Co.

Life in the House of the Brewing Coffee.

Stepping inside I can’t help but notice the Tavo Coffee Co. mobile brewing station sitting proudly right in the middle of the kitchen ready for action. Then, almost as if it was calling out to me, I looked to my left to find a collection of video-game consoles set up in the living space and I immediately felt at home.

We exchange greetings and Gustavo offers me a cup of coffee made to order, which I eagerly accept. Not being picky, I decide on a simple americano and the artist gets to work looking right at home behind the espresso maker; His canvas: my mug; his paint: the medium-roast coffee beans grown at Xejuyú, his family’s coffee plantation in Guatemala. While Gustavo works on his masterpiece, camera operator and friend of the Románs, Alysia Grudier, sets up her camera to record the interview for Cathy’s YouTube channel where she uploads coffee preparation tutorials. 

As Gustavo finishes his work of art, we all circle around the table. Through the back window, their two dogs can be seen playing; next to the window basking in the sun sits their coffee plant, which started with a bean from the family farm and spent six years growing in the office of Gustavo’s father prior to ending up in their kitchen. 

Before we get started I take a sip of what is possibly the best cup of coffee I’ve ever tasted. Very earthy, with a hint of fruitiness, not too acidic, and didn’t stick to my palate. This was a very easy drinking Americano and would be a great first cup for someone who had never tried coffee before.

The Brew Awakens: The Tavo Origin Story.

Now with all of us seated at the table, beverages in hand, the Románs begin recounting the story of how Tavo began, which really starts with how they began as a couple. Gustavo, who grew up in College Station, was destined to join the third generation of Aggies in his family.

“I applied to a whole bunch of different schools cause I was getting worried that I wouldn't be able to get to college,” he reminisces, “and then as soon as my A&M acceptance came in in January my parents clicked the button for me and they're like ‘no, we're paying for A&M, that's it,’ and I was like, ‘Hey, that's fine. Cool,’” he says with a chuckle. Once he got to A&M he studied Sports Conditioning, graduated in the Class of 2017, and was the 17th Aggie in their family to get a ring.  

Cathy took a slightly different route, waiting for her sister to graduate before transferring into Texas A&M in 2013 so they could go together. She studied Bilingual Education and Spanish, graduating with the Class of 2016.

One of the great things about Texas A&M is the abundance of opportunities to get involved in different communities, and this is what brought Cathy and Gustavo together. The two met at Aggie Awakening, a retreat put on by Saint Mary’s Catholic Center, where they both served in leadership. Eventually they started dating, got married, and now own a house together in Bryan. Funnily enough, prior to meeting Gustavo, Cathy had never really had any experience with coffee.

“So [Gustavo] kind of got me into coffee,” Cathy explains. “I didn’t even drink coffee at all,” she continues. “Only my grandparents had a coffee pot, but like my mom never had a coffee pot at home.”

 But while Cathy merely adopted the coffee, Gustavo was born into the dark roast; molded by it. He didn’t see creamer in coffee until he was already a man. As part of the fifth generation of his family involved in the coffee industry… coffee runs in his blood.

“So my family has been in coffee for five generations now,” Gustavo begins, detailing how his love for coffee developed. “My family has a coffee plantation in Guatemala near Chimaltenango where my uncle currently runs the farm, Xejuyú (pronounced ‘Shey-Who-You’),” which he explains means “At the Base of the Mountain.” “So there's like a nice little tourism area down at the bottom with a pool and like a nice little restaurant, AirBnB, farm-to-table, and then the entire mountain is the coffee plantation. So that's been in our family for that long.” And it’s tough to grow up that close to coffee without copping a craving for the cuppa. 

“You know, I've always enjoyed coffee at home. Like my first coffee maker was a little one cup black and Decker little thing that just poured your coffee. And then I started working for a coffee roaster in town and that's when I really fell in love with coffee.” And as time went on, that flame only grew.

 “When I first started college I got an AeroPress, which is a different kind of coffee maker, and slowly worked my way up to getting the different grinders, the kettles, and finally up to an espresso machine. I just found a passion for it. I mean, I've always loved coffee and messing with all the different variables of the coffee just at home, whether it's the water quality or the freshness of the roast or the quality of the roast, it's just all fun. And it was all passion driven.” Eventually he got to share that passion with Cathy.

One of the most unique things about Cathy’s coffee journey is that she didn’t start with the drink. Her first foray into the field of coffee began in a literal field of coffee.

“It was weird learning from A and not to Z, because usually people learn, you know, what coffee is in a cup, not in a farm. And my first experience was going to the farm for [a] family vacation.”

After that it was a slow but steady wading into the coffee, starting with learning to brew with Gustavo’s AeroPress, which you can see her explain how to operate here. After that she thought that becoming a barista would be a good idea, and in time got to the point where she had managed two different coffee shops and wanted to do something different. So she struck out on to the internet and launched her YouTube channel doing coffee brewing tutorials, and eventually had the brilliant thought “let's just run our own business.” And thus, Tavo Coffee Co. was born.

Personality, Quality, Community: What Sets Tavo Apart.

“‘Tavo’ means ‘for you’ in Lithuanian,” Cathy explains, saying that the idea behind Tavo is that the coffee is meant to be “for you”, made to order. “We have Chemex, we have AeroPress, we have a French press, we could obviously do any type of espresso drinks, V60 simple pour over pretty much anything,” she says with a smile.

“We started out Having the whole bar filled with all our gadgets and gizmos from inside the house including like everything [Cathy] just listed: the pour over the immersion brews, everything you could want, but everyone just wants a latte,” Gustavo adds with a laugh, “but we still have everything in our bins in case anybody ever asks, and it's always on the menu too, so we can provide anybody any kind of coffee they want.”

And Tavo isn’t just about coffee made your way. The Románs support family, community, and good business practices, but that doesn’t mean they have to sacrifice on quality.

“We've sourced from different roasters, Cat and Cloud based in California. They're a values-based organization. Super cool. They take care of their employees really well. They care really about the quality of the coffee and where it's coming from. Then a friend of ours, Carlos, in Guatemala, we use his coffee as well, Biarte Coffee. And now that we've figured out shipping, we're finally able to have our own farm’s, coffee on the cart and bring it to people directly,” Gustavo explains happily.

Though Tavo is only in its infancy, Cathy and Gustavo already have big goals for where they want it to end up.

“We wanted to start small so that we could, or so I can keep working full time and, you know, we can still keep it passion driven,” Gustavo begins, narrating the Tavo epic. “So we started with a cart,” he continued, “and we met a friend through one of her barista jobs who was a carpenter as well, and he offered to make us the cart handmade. He did it all himself and it's beautiful. We love the way it came out. And the whole thing collapses and fits in the back of the Honda civic. So, uh, it's perfect for our needs; fits where we need to go. And then from there, you know, we have our dreams of our brick and mortar and, you know, pancake house; whatever we want,” he says with a chuckle. 

But their goals aren’t just about business or brewing coffee. Eventually they want to be involved in all aspects of the process, and use Tavo as a platform to help young people grow as individuals.

“We're trying to bring everything into one spot,” Gustavo explains. “‘Cause my uncle runs the coffee plantation, we do the cart here, and then my wife's eventually gonna learn how to roast, and we want to come full circle and learn everything. But we really, really take into consideration the quality of everything. We want to bring respect to the whole process and all the people involved in it, whether it's the farmers making the coffee or the roasters who are roasting it obviously, all the way to the baristas. Like once we start having employees we want to really help them with their creative or professional development as well,” he continues, unfolding their vision before me. “We just want to give coffee the respect it deserves basically, and we're doing that through making sure all the variables are as good as they can be to bring out the best that the coffee can give to our customers.”

Unfortunately, admirable goals don’t guarantee a smooth takeoff, but much to the delight of the Románs they haven’t encountered any significant obstacles to getting their business off the ground.

“I really like the intimacy that we have, like with our customers. It's just something that I've always really wanted, to just not be a number to somebody, and I think that's what kind of makes it different,” Cathy suggests.

“We get the opportunity to talk to our customers and things like that,” Gustavo chimes in. “And as opposed to like a Starbucks, or anything like that, we get to form these relationships and find this community that we’ve found really like unbridled support. Like it's been universal all across the board,” he added happily. “People say ‘don't listen to the haters,’ but we haven't had any,” he says laughing.

Another major thing that sets Tavo apart from your typical coffee shop is that they can go to the customers, they don’t have to wait for the customers to come to them.

“Our first ever venue was our commercial prep kitchen at Aquatic Greens Farm over here on Tabor road. They do a little farmer's market every Friday and we started, or I started there, we just had our tent and our big old signs,” Gustavo remembers. “And then we started cold calling a whole bunch of different places.”

Fortunately for the Románs, the Bryan community is a welcoming and close-knit community, and they found their next location without much hassle.

 “We ended up at the 101 bar, which is off of Texas and 26th,” Gustavo says. “We met with the owner Jeremy and he was super cool. He let us set up.”

Cathy can’t help but laugh at the memory, adding that the encounter is burned in her mind, getting really nervous about meeting with Jeremy, and then realizing it was much ado about nothing. “It was not even like two minutes. He's like, ‘sure.’ That's it.” She goes on, saying how nice it’s been getting to know the Bryan community and how helpful everyone has been.

“So many people have just walked up to us and been like, oh yeah, we'd love to have you out for an event,” Gustavo adds, mentioning that Tavo catered an event for the First United Methodist Church in Bryan after being approached by someone at the church while they were stationed in front of “The 101” just up the street, and that day was their best day so far. “We were thanking them for letting us be part of this really cool community, and they were like, ‘thank you for being part of it too.’”

But they don’t solely rely on in-person interaction and word-of-mouth to get the news out about Tavo. Cathy touts the efficacy of social media as a means of reaching out to the community.

“Instagram is kind of like- it’s like black magic,” Cathy jokes, saying that they’ll have new customers show up saying they heard about Tavo on Instagram. Instagram is also their preferred platform for updating customers on where they’ll be in the coming week as the cart gets set up in different locations around Bryan.

Hustle, Grind, Grow: The Future of Tavo Coffee.

Though big dreams lie on the horizon, all roads lead to hustling right now. Currently Gustavo still works as a project manager and Cathy works two jobs in addition to operating Tavo – as an artisanal cookie baker for “What’s Good Ice Cream” and as a prep chef for a pizza catering service called “The Wild Garlic.” As for Tavo, they’re looking to host more events, and in the Fall after students return, Gustavo wants to further bring passion and work together and start a coffee and running club to continue to grow that community that already has a great start. Regardless of what they do, I think they have an A+ recipe for success, and very well may be the next big thing out of Bryan-College Station.