- Starter Coffee, originally created by Braxton Brewing Co., has been revived as the in-house coffee brand at SparkHaus, Northern Kentucky’s new entrepreneurial hub in Covington.
- The relaunch, led by Blue North Executive Director Dave Knox, aims to make Starter Coffee the unofficial brand of entrepreneurial progress in the region.
- Starter Coffee is roasted locally at Mom ‘n ‘Em Coffee & Wine and available exclusively at the Better Blend café inside SparkHaus.
Blue North Executive Director Dave Knox wants Starter Coffee to become the unofficial brand of entrepreneurial progress in Northern Kentucky.
Knox, who leads Blue North, the region’s primary resource and advocacy organization for entrepreneurs, spearheaded an effort to revive the dormant coffee brand, reintroducing it as an asset for SparkHaus, the newly opened hub of Northern Kentucky’s entrepreneurial community.
Located in Covington’s central business district, SparkHaus allows founders, investors and support organizations to collaborate under one roof in a centralized location.
SparkHaus features a cafe situated at the corner of 8th Street and Madison Avenue. Its main tenant is Better Blend, a smoothie franchise from Northern Kentucky, but it also offers its own in-house coffee brand to customers.
Starter Coffee started in 2015 as a product of Braxton Brewing Company to launch alongside the opening of the brewery’s Covington Taproom co-working space. However, as Braxton expanded, Starter Coffee was sidelined in favor of other priorities. The brand appeared at select special events over the years, Knox said, but was not a regularly offered product at their main locations.
After lying dormant for years, Knox and Jake Rouse, co-founder of Braxton, batted around the idea of reviving the brand as an exclusive product for SparkHaus. Before the rebrand, the coffee’s branding resembled aspects of Garage Beer, one of Braxton’s most successful products. Knox and Rouse wanted the redesign to better align with SparkHaus.
“Braxton was willing to donate the brand to Blue North to relaunch it,” Knox told LINK nky. “We contacted Keith (designer Keith Neltner) to help us relaunch this and pay homage to the history of the brand with Starter, but modernize it to fit more with a theme that’s more related to SparkHaus.”
In a Kenton County press release, Rouse expressed his enthusiasm for the brand’s relaunch.
“Seeing Starter Coffee revived at SparkHaus, with a mission to inspire and support the next generation of entrepreneurs, feels like the perfect continuation of that story,” Rouse said. “It’s exciting to watch Starter once again serve as a spark for big ideas in Covington.”
The brand’s motto, “We rise in the morning to greet the sun, ready to build, to invent, to improve, to flip the switch on something better,” was coined by designer Keith Neltner of Neltner Small Batch, who is an entrepreneur himself.
Nelter said he wanted the brand to evoke the idea of someone beginning their day with coffee, enabling them to pursue their ambitious goals.
“Starting with big ideas, starting with collaboration – the tagline is, ‘we rise,’ so collectively, idea makers, and people crafting in the space, Starter would be at the center of that,” he said.
Currently, Starter Coffee is free for all SparkHaus members and available for purchase at Better Blend on the ground floor. The beans are roasted locally at Mom ‘n ‘Em Coffee & Wine in Cincinnati. Customers can see Starter’s new logo and workmark displayed on the wall near the serving counter.
As of now, Starter will only be available at the Better Blend cafe in SparkHaus, not as a standalone product. Knox, however, said that there are many possibilities for the brand’s growth and is exploring creative marketing strategies. One of his goals is to allocate a portion of the brand’s sales to support Blue North’s NKY Entrepreneurship Fund.
“If you think of just the entrepreneurial journeys, so much of it starts with a mentor, an investor, a co-founder – all of those, a lot of times revolve around grabbing a cup of coffee and what happens from that moment and where it goes from there,” Knox said.
