Go to the cold case of many Memphis grocery stores and you’ll see something you wouldn’t have seen a decade ago: Lots of local beers sharing space with other regional and major national brands. 

Local distillers have followed, putting Memphis whiskey, vodka and more on the shelf. 

First beer. Then spirits. Is coffee next?

Coffee Shop Hoppers found their Memphis, one cup at a time

Hayes and Amy McPherson want it to be. 

The McPhersons, a young couple who are both native Memphians, opened Comeback Coffee in 2019.

Tucked between Bass Pro Shops at the Pyramid to the west and St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital to the east, on a still-quiet stretch of North Main Street, Comeback has conquered a lack of foot traffic to become a destination coffee shop, among the city’s most popular. 

You might think the McPhersons would want to repeat the concept elsewhere.

You would be wrong.

“We’ll never open another Comeback Coffee,” said Hayes McPherson. 

One more cup: Final thoughts on a month-long Memphis coffee-shop tour

What they have done is extend their footprint on Main with the goal of taking one of the shop’s staples into more of Memphis and beyond: Their canned coffee sodas. 

“We’ve modeled ourselves after the brewery industry, almost to a tee.”

Hayes McPherson
Comeback Coffee

What began as a small-batch pandemic project will shift into a new phase next month, as Comeback Beverage Co. expands, rebrands and relaunches, dramatically increasing its production in a newly built facility adjacent to the shop. 

In doing so, Comeback will face a less-crowded market than their Memphis beer peers. That’s an opportunity. They’ll also do so with a less familiar product. That’s a challenge. 

“We’ve modeled ourselves after the brewery industry, almost to a tee,” said McPherson. “We don’t use the same ingredients, but the equipment, how we’re structured. Wiseacre’s a good example of that. Literally, how they’ve scaled, that’s what we talked about in meetings. We tip our hat to Wiseacre, because they’ve done it really well. Grind City Brewery is another that’s done it really well.”

Comeback had in-house coffee sodas available on tap when the shop opened, but canning them started with COVID, a way to get product out when no one was coming in. 

Memphis Coffee Shop Guide: East Memphis and beyond

At first, the small batches were done by hand in the shop’s kitchen.

“We started out filling from our tap head into 12-ounce cans, using a manual can sealer,” said Hayes McPherson. “We would do 100 cans in three hours and sell them all the next day. We knew that we had a product people liked and there was something to this.”

After a while, they upgraded to a somewhat more elaborate operation out of the garage of a building behind the shop. (You’ve heard of garage bands? These were garage sodas.)

The canned sodas have been available in two flavors, the strawberry-lime Field Day and the lemon-thyme Southern Style, in the shop and at a few other places around town, such as Joe’s Wines, Sugar Ghost ice cream shop and The Hub coffee shop.

Now, the sodas have mostly been pulled back for June, to prepare for a July relaunch that will feature new branding and expanded distribution, with new products to follow. 

Memphis Coffee Shop Guide: Downtown

New digs

Working with local architects at cnct. design, the McPhersons built a 10,000-square-foot, two-story building on what had previously been a vacant lot two doors south of the shop.

There, the McPhersons and Comeback chief operations officer Ethan McGaughy will oversee a manufacturing facility that will brew coffee (“like a giant French press,” said Hayes McPherson) and carry it through a flash chiller, bringing it from 205 degrees to 32 degrees in a three-hour process, into tanks where it can be mixed with Comeback’s homemade syrups and then (lightly) carbonated, then carried to a canning station. 

What were once 40-gallon batches will increase to a capacity for 300-gallon batches. 

Further streamlining the operation, the space’s second story will include a roastery, where Comeback will now roast all of the coffee used in their canned drinks, with beans from South Carolina’s Methodical Coffee.

The roastery will also partly serve the shop, which will now balance house roasts with the shop’s previous practice of spotlighting other roasts from small-batch providers. And the house roasts will be sold in the shop and at the Downtown Farmer’s Market in reusable and recyclable tins, being introduced this month.

In-between the public Comeback Coffee shop and the private Comeback Beverage Co. is Golden Hour, a small specialty plant shop co-owned by Amy McPherson, which inspired a way to give this manufacturing facility some curb appeal.

“There are enough buildings (people) can’t access down here,” said Amy McPherson. “We needed more space, but thought, how can we both beautify and have retail access, so … greenhouse.” 

The entire front of the new building is a glassed greenhouse that serves as a Golden Hour expansion. You can see into the greenhouse from the street. Once inside the greenhouse, you can see into the Comeback Beverage operation. 

Golden Hour will open the greenhouse to the public on Saturday, June 17. 

Cup after cup: From Otherlands to Comeback to the Anti Gentrification Coffee Club

New Market

If store shelves are crowded with craft beers, the coffee soda market is sparse. 

Visits to Fresh Market and Whole Foods in East Memphis this week showed only one true coffee soda: Slingshot, a company out of Raleigh, North Carolina. 

“That’s really our only competitor,” said Amy McPherson. 

The available Slingshot flavors are Citrus Vanilla Cream Soda and Black Cherry Cola, heavier drinks sold in smaller 8 ounce cans. 

“Vanilla,” “cream” and “cola” are typical of most coffee soda attempts, the kind of things people widely associate with two common drinks being combined into a less common one. 

Comeback Coffee contributes to Pinch District revival

And while the word isn’t there, both of the Slingshot sodas bring out another flavor associated with coffee: Chocolate.

These are also generally the directions Coca-Cola and Pepsi went with their so-far-failed attempts at coffee soda. 

Comeback is going for something a little different, lighter and more fruit-forward, mostly eschewing cream and cola elements.

“What we do with our flavor profiles is take coffee back to its root,” said Hayes McPherson. “That’s how coffee starts, as a cherry. When we started creating these, we wanted to stay away from the flavor profiles like caramel, chocolate, creamy. We knew that coffee works well with more citrus, fruity flavors. And it’s something that people hadn’t really tried before. We tested it with strawberry-lime, lemon-thyme.”

A third Comeback soda flavor, a pineapple-cinnamon, debuted at last year’s Grind City Coffee Xpo. To this point, it’s only been available on tap, but Comeback hopes to introduce it as a third canned variety (name TBA) later in the summer. 

At Kinfolk breakfast, big biscuits are only the beginning

“The coffee drinks that are on the market now, whether locally or nationally, have a heavier coffee flavor. And you feel it in your stomach once you’re done drinking it,” Hayes McPherson said. “You can chug these, and you don’t feel that heavy feeling that you get with lots of cold brew drinks.” 

Rather than getting lost between two drink worlds, Comeback hopes its sodas can bridge them. 

The refreshing crispness of sodas with the more natural caffeine jolt of coffee. 

“You’re getting the caffeine, but we’re not introducing the caffeine,” said Amy McPherson. “We’re getting that from the original source.” 

“We’re definitely healthier than any soda on the market,” said Hayes McPherson. “Lower sugar. We don’t fill it with a lot of junk. Most sodas have so much extra in it. We have figured out a way that we have like five ingredients, and that’s it. It’s a great alternative to other kinds of sodas, and for people who want energy but don’t want an energy drink.” 

Pinch District Artist Market has rich tradition at Westy’s

When the sodas hit the shelves again next month, they’ll look different, with a full rebrand conceived by Amy McPherson, whose college degree is in graphic design.

The cans will have larger type and bolder colors, with the tagline “Refreshingly Familiar.”

“We loved our old branding, but we needed something we could scale easily as we come up with new flavors,” said Amy McPherson. “I was excited to take that on. I spent a long time trying to find that perfect blend of refreshing and modern and clean but also merging that with gritty and nostalgic and familiar.” 

The words “Comeback” and “coffee soda” will be more prominent at the top of the cans, with individual flavor names and descriptions below, designed to more effectively communicate what the product is and who it’s from for consumers outside of Memphis.

“Everyone thought it was a beer or some kind of alcoholic beverage, so we definitely needed to make ‘coffee soda’ a lot more in-your-face,” said Amy McPherson. 

First phase of Intrator’s Pinch District gets closing deadline modification

If “coffee soda” remains a novel concept for most consumers, canned cold brew or flash-chill coffee no longer is. The cold cases at more upscale grocers are packed with different brands, and Comeback hopes to get in on that action, as well.

“(The new facility) is going to let us do what we want to do with coffee soda as the primary product, but it’s also going to give us the ability to expand into cold black coffee,” said Hayes McPherson. 

The flash-chill coffee that will serve as the coffee soda base eventually will also be canned separately. Comeback is also contemplating producing flavored carbonated waters. 

“We have the equipment to do it and we have the knowledge and know-how to make tasty drinks,” said Hayes McPherson. 

But first the sodas, the strawberry-lime Field Day and lemon-thyme Southern Style, in individual cans and boxed four-packs.

“Nashville is the next step,” said Hayes McPherson. 

Then other regional markets. 

“Little Rock, New Orleans, places like that in the next six months or so,” said Hayes McPherson. “Then, in 2024, farther and farther and wider and wider.” 

“The hope is in the next year or so, we are at Fresh Market, we are at Publix and Whole Foods or Kroger or Target. That’s the goal. We’re coming for Slingshot. Our product is just as good if not better.”