Rain showers this evening with clearing overnight. Low 58F. Winds NNW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 60%..

Rain showers this evening with clearing overnight. Low 58F. Winds NNW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 60%.

Co-founder of Beans Coffee Company Eric Poppler makes an espresso drink out of their coffee trailer.

Beans Coffee Company now operates with three fluid-bed coffee roasters to keep up with the demand.

Co-founder of Beans Coffee Company Eric Poppler enjoys taking his coffee black with a shot of espresso.

Co-founder of Beans Coffee Company Eric Poppler makes an espresso drink out of their coffee trailer.

It started with two fresh college graduates, newly married young men who were bored enough to experiment with different ways to make good coffee in their garage.

It has since turned into a coffee shop on wheels.

For about a year now and almost a decade since the two began brewing and selling their own coffee, the founders of Beans Coffee Company have been serving fresh coffee to the Mankato area out of their coffee trailer.

“In 2021 when everything shut down due to the pandemic, we wanted to find a way to keep things going,” co-founder of Beans Coffee Eric Poppler said. “So we decided to buy a trailer and completely renovate the thing.”

The renovations transformed a trailer typically used for hauling and moving big furniture into something resembling a food truck, equipped with all the tools necessary to make their coffee.

Poppler and fellow co-founder of Beans Coffee Clay Sharkey park their trailer outside Best Buy every Saturday to participate in the Mankato Farmers’ Market, which Poppler considers to be their company’s roots.

“It’s where we’ve seen the most local support,” he said. “We have people we’ve known for 10 years stop by every time.”

It’s also where Poppler and Sharkey began distributing their coffee. But, back in 2014, Poppler said they were broke college grads who could barely afford to hitch a small canopy around their table.

“In the beginning, we just sold bags of coffee,” he said. “We didn’t have espresso machines or anything. So any profit we made from selling bags of coffee was put right back into our business.”

Their first big purchase was an airpot coffee brewer.

That allowed them to begin serving samples at the farmers’ market with hopes that after tasting how good their coffee is, customers would purchase more bags in order to brew their own.

“With that money, we were able to buy a couple of big coffee crafts so we could brew coffee and actually bring it with us to the market,” Poppler said.

They then began selling brewed coffee, and with more money earned from the farmers’ market, more equipment was bought to further their business.

What truly changed the game for them was the purchase of a commercial-grade coffee roaster.

What’s special about theirs is that rather than having the coffee beans move around above an open flame — leaving with it a smokey taste regardless of the beans used — their roaster uses the same heating elements of a washer and dryer.

“It’s called a fluid bed coffee roaster,” Poppler said. “There’s no open flame. Instead, it shoots up air around 800 F and it acts like a gigantic air-popped popcorn machine. That way you’re getting the flavor of the beans as opposed to that fire flavor.”

Beans Coffee Company now operates with three fluid-bed coffee roasters to keep up with the demand.

Their choice of roaster is — quite literally — an advanced version of what they began experimenting with in 2012 after being inspired to make good coffee after tasting a bad batch from their church.

“I didn’t even know how to make coffee then,” Poppler said. “We Googled it and found out you can use an air-popped popcorn machine, so we tried it out.”

The two were pleasantly surprised when it worked, but were bummed about only being able to make a half cup of roasted coffee beans at a time.

They also tripped breakers, set things on fire and caused the smoke alarms to go off in the process. But Poppler and Sharkey persevered.

“We ended up making a couple good cups of coffee,” Poppler said. “Then our friend wanted to buy a bag from us and it took us four hours to make a 16-ounce bag.”

They knew then that they needed to find a quicker way to make their coffee if they were actually going to have any luck selling it.

“We went online and we saw that somebody was able to convert a gas grill into a coffee roaster,” Poppler said. “We bought it from him for $400. That allowed us to make 6 pounds at that time. We took off from there, but it was fun having a little mad scientist lab in our garage. ”

The two self-proclaimed mad scientists have concocted good enough coffee over the years that customers keep coming back.

Co-founder of Beans Coffee Company Eric Poppler enjoys taking his coffee black with a shot of espresso.

Brandon Knudsvig and his wife have been purchasing from Beans Coffee since Poppler and Sharkey first began selling at the farmers’ market.

“It’s just really good coffee,” he said. “It’s so fresh, being locally roasted and grounded and all.”

When Knudsvig worked at Scheels, he said they even brought some into the breakroom for their employees as a special treat.

“We had that going for quite a while,” he said. “Scheels started their own brand of coffee, too, so I think they switched over to that instead.”

Regardless, the loyalty of Beans Coffee customers remains intact.

Poppler shared that one woman — who hates the taste of coffee but loves the scent — buys a bag from them every month just to throw in her car to use as an air freshener.

“I think our coffee is great, which is why it sells,” he said. “But I also think people would buy it even if it was terrible just to support us, which is awesome. Mankato has local pride. It’s so cool that people here get behind the local aspect of things.”

Community members continue to support Beans Coffee outside of the farmers’ market by stopping by their trailer parked across the street from the Children’s Museum downtown. Their hours are 7-12 p.m. Monday through Friday.

They also deliver bags of coffee grounds to Mankato locations for free if orders are placed through their website: coffeebybeans.com.

The bags are also available for purchase at the Hy-Vee locations in town, Neutral Groundz, Mom & Pops, and Wooden Spoon, among many others.

Beans Coffee now also serves fresh teas, lemonades and other drinks for the non-coffee drinkers.

“We like to do things organically,” Sharkey said. “It’s been fun being able to do this.”

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