Ugly Mug Coffee goes retail

Last Thursday night, Ugly Mug Coffee's open house for its new retail coffee shop at 4610 Poplar was packed. Granted, it doesn't take a great many people to fill the tiny building on the corner of Poplar and Perkins. Still, they came to sample and to learn about coffee from Ugly Mug's master roaster Nathan Wiemers, listen to some music, eat some decadent desserts and pastries and taste a bit of a small-run batch of coffee beer.

According to Ugly Mug President David Lambert, the retail shop quietly opened for business in December, but held off on having a official opening until "the bugs were worked out."

There has been a steady stream of customers ever since. Taking over the building that until recently was occupied by Poplar Perk'n, Ugly Mug's operations have provided a sense of continuity for the space. Originally started as a campus hangout in 1998, Ugly Mug closed its café to grow into a thriving local high-end coffee roaster. In 2009, the company was bought by regional coffee service Lambert's, which has been based in Memphis since Bill Lambert started the business in 1971. The acquisition of the Ugly Mug brand by Lambert's has put the commercial coffee service in the high-end market.
Ugly Mug's signature coffees
With such a small retail space, the flagship café will focus on drive-through service. In doing so, they are going up against coffee leviathan Starbucks. Rachel Baddorf, Head of Marketing for Lambert's, says that Ugly Mug wants to be the antidote to those long, morning drive-through queues at the established chains. "We want to provide better coffee, faster--a better experience," she says, with an updated version of the mission that Bill Lambert started the company with: "We sell happiness."

As a local company going toe-to-toe with established industry giants, Ugly Mug is working with some of Memphis' favorite local entrepreneurs. "We are the best coffee in Memphis, and we want to work with the best Memphis has to offer," says Baddorf.

At the moment, that includes La Baguette French pastry shop, with whom Ugly Mug has worked to celebrate some of its signature coffee flavors. La Baguette has turned Ugly Mug's Buttermoon coffee--a devilishly creamy butterscotch variant--into a pound cake only available at the flagship café location. It alone is worth a visit. The two local companies also work together on a Sweet & Ugly Roll, and on "Blue Suede" icing that complements other signature coffees.

What isn't for sale at the Poplar location--but can be found in a few restaurants and stores in limited release--is a rich, dark coffee beer that combines Ugly Mug's cold-pressed Memphis Blend with Ghost River Brewery's Midnight Magic, in small seasonal batches.
Buttermoon poundcake
In addition to continuing to sell its products in grocery stores and restaurants, Ugly Mug's forward plan is to test market the Poplar location before moving forward with cafés in larger retail shops and other minishop models. To do this, the company has lured to Memphis some impressive talent from the world of high-end coffee.

Master roaster and production manager Nathan Wiemers ran a café in Iowa before heading to Brazil to study coffee. Wiemers settled in Memphis about a year ago and recently was joined by his Brazilian wife. He will oversee the roasting of anywhere from one to five thousand pounds of coffee beans per day, for about 700,000 pounds a year. Compare that to most microroasters, which produce about 100,000 pounds per year. Herein lies the tricky balance that Ugly Mug is trying to strike: accessibility and high production, but not such high production high that quality suffers. According to Wiemers, all Ugly Mug coffee is fair trade, which the customer would have to pay a premium for at the larger outlets.
Nathan Wiemers with customers
On the retail end of the operation is Nicole Francis. She has eight years of experience growing the Minnesota-based Dunn Brothers Coffee, which has spread throughout the Midwest and even has a location in Nashville. Francis would like to see the same thing happen with Ugly Mug. She's taken well to her new home in Memphis, and her professional collaboration with La Baguette extends to the personal: the pastry shop whipped up a divine coconut cake for her wedding day.

While the operation's snacks and steaming cups of coffee have a decidedly local flavor, Ugly Mug is looking beyond Memphis. But it is wary of growing too quickly. For Lambert's, adaptability and flexibility are crucial elements to customer service.

When asked for details on future shops, David Lambert smiles and shrugs: "We’ll see."