Graduation was approaching for Nolan Hall, an engineering student at Georgia Tech. Though he originally joined the school for a mechanical engineer degree, he left doing something completely different: running a coffee roaster startup.
Through a grant program at Georgia Tech called "Idea to Prototype," Hall was able to start the initial stages of his coffee brand and roaster company, TopTime Coffee, with fellow classmates.
"I was really getting into home coffee at the time, so I decided to use that grant money to fund a coffee roaster invention and after I built it, I started roasting on it, selling bags to friends and family," he said.
As graduation crept closer, Hall decided to join the CREATE-X program at Georgia Tech, which matches student startups with teaching staff to aid and mentor them, which launched the company to a larger scale.
"TopTime was basically a research project that turned into a company," he said.
Since then, Hall has opened TopTime Coffee's first shop on Georgia Tech's campus and partnering to form another brand, called Docent Coffee.
"We’re very excited about it," he said. "It’s just going to be a higher scale version of what we’ve already been doing."
A typical coffee roaster sizes up to a large box truck and costs upwards of $50,000, Hall said. Most roasters will apply a constant temperature to coffee beans throughout a roast, which is where TopTime switches things up. The team of roasters change the temperature profile during a roast, in addition to changing the amount of conduction vs. convection applied to the beans.
"We also changed the amount of heat that’s applied to the beans, and that way we can really dial in to what temperature curve is going to give us the best tasting coffee for a certain origin, a certain moisture content, a certain density and the elevation that the coffee is grown at so we can enhance the flavor of the coffee without adding any flavor to it," he said.
What started as popup stands with a self-contained coffee shop on wheels quickly turned into two shops on Georgia Tech's campus and another cafe planned for the Cafe & Velo space on Edgewood Avenue. TopTime Coffee has a permanent location in the mechanical engineering school at Georgia Tech and will open a second location on campus within the next month or so.
Cafe & Velo will be closing later this month to reopen in late October, early November as the rebranded Docent Coffee, TopTime's partnership brand. There, Hall hopes to create an open roastery where patrons can come learn about the roasting process and entertain them with curated local Atlanta artists events.
"It'll basically be a place to get a coffee, get a breakfast sandwich and actually learn about the coffee roasting process," he said. "Our roaster will be right in front of people and you’ll be able to watch the coffee roast while you're sitting enjoying a sandwich and a coffee."
TopTime Coffee has raised a total of $50,000 and recently canceled their KickStarter campaign because a private investor reached out to the business, Hall said. He mostly tries to keep the company self-funded, and credits a large portion of the startup's success to the CREATE-X program.
"It's just something you don't find at a lot of universities out there," he said.
Though it was never in the college playbook, Hall said roasting coffee turned out to be his passion and seemed exciting above all other possible ventures.
"It kind of happened by accident but definitely very happy with it, so far it’s been an adventure, but I love it," he said.
