Ethiopia Hambela Alaka Natural

It was some years ago that we Jon and Andrea, began to dream of serving a sweet, black cup of coffee to our customers in Arkansas. This coffee, the mythical bridge between the blended chocolate drink and a strong black cup, needed to combine the delicate flavors only present when coffee is grown and processed with love and care, roasted to enhance but not mask flavor, and brewed to highlight those flavors. This is how Onyx Coffee Lab was born in October of 2012.

Our mission is pretty simple: to source and serve the best coffees in the world. Perhaps this is really ambitious, but we believe it’s pretty simple. Customers want to taste differences in coffee, not only on the black coffee level, but also when espresso and milk are poured together, and on another level, when coffee is treated as a culinary item and paired with beverages and food items that you wouldn’t expect.    

The best business practice that Onyx Coffee Lab has and strives to continue is to be an owner-driven business. The difference between an owner run café, restaurant, roaster, retail shop, and so on is almost always evident in customer service, quality of product and atmosphere. It’s no easy task to translate passion for award winning coffee into a well-run business. We think it’s a carefully constructed balance of demand for excellence, passion, heart, and recognizing when we need someone to step into a leadership role. Every cup of freshly roasted coffee from Onyx has been carefully curated by us- from the very beginning with the farmer, through the roastery and to our customers. Without all of those hands, we are nothing, and we are there over each step in the process, demanding, sipping, loving, encouraging, instructing. We are Onyx Coffee Lab.