7 years ago, Jason and Stephani Keeler weren’t the least bit interested in coffee.
But their oldest son, Josh, was. A student at Central Michigan at the time, Josh had brought his coffee habit home with him, and eventually, his dad, Jason, became hooked.
But Jason wasn’t just hooked on the caffeine. A science teacher by trade, Jason became hooked on the processes, and the flavors, and the way it all works together.
And eventually Three Birds Coffee and Tea was born. Three Birds Coffee and Tea is the Keeler family’s mobile coffee and tea business that can cater just about any event. It’s currently located at the old Dague Upholstery building at 109 W Main St. where they’ll be open this Saturday, August 19th, from 7 am until 2 pm. For more info, you can find them on Facebook or at 3BCoffeeTea.com
We caught up with Jason and Stephani recently to learn more about what’s brewing at Three Birds. We learned that this company – and that this family – happens to be much more than just faces in the crowd.
Marion Press: So when did you get involved with coffee? How’d this happen?
Stephani: We’ve been married almost 30 years – 30 in December – and he didn’t drink coffee at all for the first 25-ish years. Our oldest, Josh, when he went to Central [Michigan University], he started drinking coffee. We got him a little dorm room coffee pot, and he would bring it home on his vacations, and that’s when Jason started drinking it.
Jason: It was probably some time in 2016, 2017. I really can’t explain it, other than when I did start drinking coffee, I liked it. At first, I would try to find whatever beans I could [that were cheap]. But then, as I was looking more into coffee, I started realizing that there are a lot of different roasters, a lot of different brands; there’s a lot of different coffee. I don’t remember how, but at one point, I just came to the realization that I could actually buy green coffee beans online, and roast them on the stove, or in a little air popcorn popper. We did that for a little bit, and then she bought me a countertop drum roaster – specifically for roasting coffee. I’ve always kind of liked doing crafty kinds of things, and roasting it the way I liked it. It was a rabbit hole, and it was kind of fun.
Stephani: Josh went to Italy his senior year, and he started drinking espresso. And he really liked it, so when he came back we got him an espresso machine. So really, this is all Josh’s fault!
Jason: And then the building that we’re in, this is Josh’s building! So it is all Josh’s fault!
MP: I don’t know the first thing about coffee, even though I drink it. Where does coffee come from?
Jason: It’s a bush, it grows essentially at the tropic lines, and it grows best at elevation. It has these cherries, which have these seeds – and the seed is the coffee bean. There’s two of them in there, and there are a whole lot of different ways that you can go about taking the fruit – the husk – off and drying and prepping the coffee seed. The further you get into coffee, you start to realize the different methods of processing the coffee cherry to get the seed, produces different nuances and flavors in the coffees. Again, it’s a big rabbit hole. Most people probably don’t care about that stuff, but when they taste different coffees, they realize there are differences. Some they like, some they don’t like…
MP: And with you being a former science teacher, it sounds like there’s a lot of science to it…
Jason: There is something about the natural world that I’d like to think that I have a natural appreciation and respect for. Kind of our place in it, and our role in it. How we depend on it – and in a lot of ways – how it depends on us. There’s a big connection there, and I have a lot of respect for biology, and ecology, and environmental science. As I was learning about coffee, I learned about all these webbed connections ecologically, economically, and it just kind of spirals. When I taught, our goal was always kind of to help kids learn how to learn, not just pack them full of information, but how to ask questions and find information and discover things. To be a lifelong learner.
MP: Tell us a little bit about what people can expect with Three Birds – we know there’s more to it than just coffee… What kind of drinks can you get?
Jason: Steph’s love, is on the tea side of the company. I don’t want us to just be a coffee cart. And yeah, we have coffee, we have espresso drinks – happy to make them, obviously. But her thing is on the tea stuff, and we’ve got a few different tea type drinks – and not just hot tea or iced tea – that are really good. And we have a variety of hot chocolates that we can also ice, like the teas that we can ice. And they’re super kid friendly.
Stephani: We did a hot chocolate bar at the school for literacy night, and we tried to develop some fun, chocolate-based drinks.
Jason: Most of the extra drinks, the special teas, and the chocolates, Steph has developed a few of them in there that give us a good variety. We have the Caramel Me Crazy that’s pretty popular. It’s like a hot chocolate, but we use our caramel sauce instead of our chocolate sauce… Mr. Blue Skies is a fun one. It’s blue. It looks like blue milk. We use a white chocolate, and butterfly pea flower.
Stephani: Butterfly pea flower; it’s just a flower, a real flower that they grind into a fine blue powder. And it has very little flavor, but it gives it a [blue sky color]. It’s a lot of fun for the kids.
Jason: And you can put whip cream on it, and dust it with some powder and it makes it look like the sky and the clouds. The Orange You Happy drink, that’s one that I don’t think as many people are as brave to try, but it tastes a lot like orange creamsicle. It’s really good.
MP: So as long as you have the ingredients, even if something’s not on the menu, you can make it?
Stephani: We’ve had quite a few people who will take our hot cocoa offerings, and turn them into lattes. The Thin Mint has become a very popular latte.
Jason: I want to have some things on the menu that people are familiar with, but also some things that might expand their borders a little bit, give them the opportunity to try something new. Whether it’s a different espresso beverage, whether it’s a different origin of coffee, or a different processing so they get the different flavors out of it. I like the idea of, I guess, helping people learn more about this particular thing: Coffee.
MP: And there are a lot of health benefits to coffee and tea…
Stephani: What we do offer, we try to make as clean as possible. The butterfly pea flower, it’s a natural flower, ground into a powder, that gives it a beautiful color without any artificial colorings or dyes or anything like that. The chocolate that he chooses is a very clean chocolate…
Jason: There’s sugar in it, but it’s not a highly processed sugar. And the caramel, too. We looked at several different caramels, and some had a lot of stuff on the ingredient list that would make you scratch your head. But ours is, I think, pretty good.
MP: So if someone’s having an event, they can just get in touch with you and you’ll come on out with the cart?
Jason: Yep, we can. And there’s a couple of different ways that we can do that. [One way] is that people can purchase our services, and we’ll come in and serve for the number of people that they have planned. We pre-price all that. Or we can come into a space and do a “by-the-cup” event, like we did at Old Fashioned Days. And we’ve done “in-betweens”, where someone will pay a portion of the cost to have us come out, and at the event they’ll have a reduced price for the cups of coffee. People can contact us through the website [3BCoffeeTea.com] or Facebook, or call or text us at 231-743-6057.