More than a week before the opening of Muggin’ Coffee House in Whitehaven, owners Mary and Ken Olds were teaching their team of five young women the ins and outs of making espressos and lattes.

Muggin’ Coffeehouse plans January opening

In the short term, the Olds are trying to open a new business that was delayed by the coronavirus world pandemic. But their long-term plans for themselves and their inaugural team goes far beyond a single small business.

The coffee house, at 1139 Brownlee, is scheduled to open at 6 a.m. Monday, July 6. The hours will be 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday and Saturdays from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Opening later than expected did require that Mary, the center director at the Whitehaven YMCA, and Ken, a loan officer with Farm Credit, keep the business going themselves longer than they’d expected.

The original plan was to open in January, which got pushed to April.

But opening later than planned has turned out to have its unexpected benefits.

“I’m actually thankful that we didn’t open before. We didn’t have to deal with the hard conversations of laying off staff and that sort of thing. That was a key thing that we were really thankful for,” Mary said.

And despite the later than planned opening, the business is turning out to be better than they anticipated, with community support on social media and customers on their website.

“We’ve had quite a few people that are buying our coffee and we’re shipping everywhere. We’re shipping to (Washington) D.C., Texas, Virginia, Florida, all over,” Ken said. “And now we’re starting to already see repeat customers who’ve purchased from us. So we haven’t open, but we’ve already got a head of steam going.”

The Olds met in eighth grade at John P. Freeman Middle School. Mary graduated from Whitehaven High School and Ken from Central High. They married while attending the University of Tennessee – Chattanooga. There, they also fell in love with coffee.

The name of their business is a tribute to their youth.

“We just wanted to do something to embody the spirit of Memphis. We were born in the ‘80s. We grew up in the ‘90s and one of the things was mean muggin’. The 'mean’ got dropped and it was muggin’. We were talking about coffee and the name was just right,” Mary said. (Mean muggin’ means to give someone a look that intimidates.)

Starbucks, the mammoth Seattle-based coffee chain, has plans to open a store in Whitehaven, but that has not deterred the Olds. They will be serving a specialty bean at Muggin’.

“In the coffee world, that (bean) makes up 7% of the coffee beans in the world. So what that translates to is, you get a really good cup of coffee when you come to Muggin’,” Mary said.

Competition is always good, said Charles Guy, the owner of Fresh Cut Barber, Muggin’s next-door neighbor.

“If it wasn’t, you wouldn’t see a Burger King beside a Wendy’s,” Guy said.

He believes the coffee house will be good for the shopping center and Whitehaven.

“They seem like really nice people. They’ve come a long way working with their business,” said Guy, who has been in his location since 2001. “A new business is always good. Unless it’s another barber shop.”

The young women who make up their new team learned on their first day how to use the equipment to make a good cup of specialty coffee and sanitizing procedures. Also, they should expect to hear the words Grande and Venti, but those sizes belong to Starbucks, Mary said.

Starbucks en route to Whitehaven

The store will sell pastries, T-shirts and cups with the Muggin’ logo.

Once they’re open, these parents of two will continue to work at their jobs, leaving their newest baby in the hands of others.

“Or you could look at it as a development opportunity for those that are here every day putting stock into building what the culture of Muggin is going to be,” Mary said. “So the experience that this first team is going to get, that’s going to be an experience that they can take with them and apply that to any venture, anything they want to do in life.”

This isn’t their only location, it’s their first, Ken said.

“At the end of the day, my kids are over there and I want to be able to look at them and let them know we took a risk on something we believe in. It’s about community and bringing everyone together and bringing something to Whitehaven that should have been here a long time ago,” he said.

“We’re from this neighborhood. There is pride in being able to look at our kids and say this is our family business. And hopefully some of the people working here will use it as a steppingstone to start their own business.”