Sound Bites takes a sip with Grind City Coffee Xpo organizer Daniel Lynn
This weekend at Wiseacre Brewing’s Downtown location, a space for beer will make way for coffee.
On this week’s Sound Bites, Jennifer and I were joined by Daniel Lynn, an organizer of the now-annual Grind City Coffee Xpo, which will bring local and out-of-town vendors together for a highly caffeinated day of samples and demonstrations.
A few years ago, Lynn says, he was your typical frappuccino-ordering Starbucks customer — and there’s nothing wrong with that, he stresses — but got pulled into the city’s rapidly growing coffee culture.
“We want the guests to be able to come out of the Xpo more educated about coffee in general. That’s one of the goals.” he says. “When I would go to new coffee shops I started noticing around 2017 or 2018, I was intimidated by what was going on. I wanted to know more.”
If the Grind City Xpo is for both coffee buffs and the coffee curious, it’s also a gathering space for those within the coffee community, with this year’s vendors including local shops such as Downtown’s Comeback Coffee, the University District’s Belltower Coffeehouse, Whitehaven’s Muggin’ Coffee House and North Mississippi’s Central Coffee.
“The other thing behind the Xpo is bringing together all of these cool coffee people, and they’re so nice and passionate about what they do. It’s community over competition,” says Lynn.
“In bringing them all together under one roof, not only can they talk to guests and answer questions, but hang with each other. It’s a way to build an even bigger community, and grow it in a positive way.”
We also learn about some of Lynn’s personal coffee and coffee-shop preferences, and Jennifer and I talk about our relatively mundane home coffee routines.
The Grind City Expo is 9 a.m. until 3 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 4 at Wiseacre Brewing, 234 E. Butler Ave. Tiered tickets run $25-$35, with prices decreasing as the day goes on. Proceeds benefit Protect Our Aquifer. There’s also a free pre-Xpo party Friday night at Comeback Coffee. See here for more info.
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Chris Herrington
Chris Herrington has covered the Memphis Grizzlies, in one way or another, since the franchise’s second season in Memphis, while also writing about music, movies, food and civic life. As far as he knows, he’s the only member of the Professional Basketball Writers Association who is also a member of a film critics group and has also voted in national music critic polls for Rolling Stone and the Village Voice (RIP). He and his wife have two kids and, for reasons that sometimes elude him, three dogs.
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