Written by Haley Parnell, LINKnky reporter
Tami Trunick had a vision: she wanted to do something more meaningful for her community. After working at Procter & Gamble for decades, Trunick said she didn’t feel like she was improving lives the way she wanted.
Brass Key Coffee began when the Northern Kentucky native took a trip by herself to Wilmington, Ohio. She describes the area as a struggling town with much of its commerce leaving, and an opioid epidemic plaguing it. While visiting the town she went into a house of prayer where people could go in and read the prayers on the wall. She said there was always somebody in there praying over the wall and in the back of the room, there was a coffee pot brewing.
“Many people who I personally knew had family members who were going through addiction struggles, suicide issues, and it just continued to grow and grow. That was what was on my heart,” Trunick said. “From a perspective of loving others, the way that Christ loves us, how do we go out, and how do we be a part of the community in Alexandria to really love on families or anybody who is struggling in any way?”
Trunick said her intention for Brass Key Coffee was to mirror something like Wilmington had, to create a safe place for the community to visit. Trunick quit her job at P&G to run Brass Key Coffee full time.
The shop is located at 8109 Alexandria Pike.
When it came to sourcing coffee for the shop, Trunick said it was important to source with a purpose to help farmers in third world countries by being somebody who was interested in their coffee. Brass Key Coffee uses Cincinnati-based Pneuma Coffee Roasters which works with small farmers from countries like Ethiopia, Nicaragua, Guatemala, and Kenya.
Though the sign on its door says established in 2020, Brass Key Coffee didn’t officially open until April 2021, almost a year after the intended start date, due to setbacks from the pandemic.
“We’re 9 to 10 months into this and I am still drinking out of the firehose every single day, learning new things,” Trunick said.
In September the shop faced extremely low sales according to Trunick and she wasn’t sure what to expect, after hoping that sales would go up after summer. October, November and December rolled around and provided sales where she said she would never have to worry about September profits again.
“I mean I have been completely blown away by the amount of people who think to come in here and who want to keep coming back,” Trunick said. “It’s the most flattering thing. It’s just a wonderful blessing every single day.”
Trunick said she remembers when she was younger how the City of Alexandria had a sign that showed the population, which finally topped 1,000 in the 1960 census. The city now has ten times that many people living there.
“We have always been entrenched into the community growing up,” Trunick said. “It’s just interesting now although we have so many faces that we know coming in here, opening up the shop has just really expanded our, I call it my ‘coffee family’ but I really feel like the Lord has blessed me with this whole huge new, wonderful group of people in our lives that we get to see every day.”
Photo: Brass Key Coffee (Wesley Brown)
