SAN ANTONIO — Something new is brewing at a locally sourced food co-op on the east side that is going to give the public the opportunity to buy gourmet foods directly from the source for the first time.
“Crushed it!”exclaimed Pulp Coffee co-founder James Mireles after pouring a flawless design on the top of his latte creation.
Mireles has worked with coffee for years, but he hasn’t been serving it until now. Pulp has been operating as a coffee wholesaler since it joined LocalSprout Food Hub in 2016.
Pulp is one of 18 businesses that operate out of LocalSprout’s 16,000 square-foot warehouse. The co-op that has given businesses specializing in locally sourced foods just celebrated its tenth anniversary.
"For us, we take all of this day by day and it has been a really long journey to get here,” said LocalSprout founder Mitch Hagney.
“Having lots of different companies come through Local Sprout, having Pulp and other great producers be able to make their products for us kept us going through that time and before we knew it, a decade had passed,” Hagney said.
LocalSprout has been helping provide fresh, locally sourced foods to the San Antonio community for years through restaurants and high-end grocers but it wasn't open to the public until now thanks to Pulp Coffee’s new storefront.
But Pulp is not an ordinary coffee shop. Customers will have the chance to buy from all LocalSprout.
"The producers just passed these walls right behind where the coffee shop is, that's where these products are being made," Hagney said.
For the first time, many of those businesses are selling their products to the public from Pulp Coffee’s new storefront.
"We're just this quote unquote storefront. But there's a lot happening in the back of the warehouse," Mireles said.
One of them is Amber Goulden's gluten-free bakery, Sprinkles And Spoons. Goulden moved her business into LocalSprout in May to avoid the risk of cross contamination at shared baking spaces.
“I can’t have any contamination, because so many of customers are so sensitive,” “This is the only place I could find where I could get my own space without going to a whole brick and mortar.”
Goulden said most of her sales have been coming from pop-up markets on the weekends. But now she’ll be selling her baked goods out of Pulp Coffee.
"For my customers, having somewhere where they can go on a daily basis and grab some of their daily items is a really big deal," she said.
Hagney said the LocalSprout is home to businesses that touch several parts of the food economy, including ice cream makers, manufacturers of specialty sauces, hydroponic crops, and ranchers that sell gourmet restaurants.
“Primarily these ranchers are distributing directly to restaurants, places like Cured or Battalion or other high end locations,” Hagney said. “Being able to access it here means that you can turn your own kitchen into as gourmet as those spots.”
He said the change to Pulp Coffee means that the public will be able to buy those foods right from the source.
Mireles believes the fresh foods they are selling will speak for themselves.
"You can taste something that is stale and then you can taste something that was just made fresh out of the oven,” he said. “Those are two different taste profiles, and they stick with you."