Ray Horn likes his coffee strong and cold, just like his mama served it when he was growing up in New Orleans. She always had a coffee mixture as thick as mud in the fridge that she would heat on the stove. In fact, that’s all he knew.
“I was in my teens before I went over to somebody’s house and saw them using a coffee machine. I didn’t know what they were doing,” he said.
Horn, 56, moved to Palm Springs, Calif., to pursue life in the restaurant business — a profession already familiar to him through a family of restaurateurs — and he realized he couldn’t find cold drip coffee anywhere.
“I was a chef at the time, and I just started making it for the staff. With cold brew, the longer the beans are in the water, the stronger the caffeine. In the service industry, you work very long hours, so the more caffeine, the better for them,” he said.
It was a hit. So much so that he toyed with the idea of making cold-brewed coffee to sell at the area’s popular street fairs, but he never pursued it.
Five years later, he moved to Mississippi and started working at Table 100 in Flowood, where he again started making his cold brew for the staff. They even added a drink to the menu made from Horn’s coffee: the Ray au Lait.
In 2013, the Mississippi Legislature passed the Cottage Food Law, allowing low-risk foods to be prepared in home kitchens and sold for profit. Horn started making his cold brew and selling it at local farmers’ markets.
“I knew sampling was the key,” he said. “People want to know what it is you’re selling.”
After getting positive feedback at farmers’ markets, Horn was ready to take his business to the next level, but there was a problem. He still didn’t have the money required to rent his own kitchen space for mass production.
“So, I did the next best thing,” he said. “I found somebody who didn’t use his kitchen on the weekends where I could go in there and brew and bottle. I found Steve at Steve’s Deli in downtown Jackson. He only used it Monday through Friday, so I rented his place for Saturdays and Sundays.”
Suddenly, the owner of Mississippi Cold Drip Coffee & Tea Company has his products — coffee concentrate, Ray au Lait sweetener and Chai Tea concentrate — on the shelves of such Mississippi-based grocery stores as McDade’s, Ramey’s and Corner Market.
Business was growing, and through connections at Millsaps College, he partnered with ELSEWorks Entrepreneurship Program and in May he moved into The Hatch, a creative business incubator space in the up-and-coming Midtown area of Jackson.
“We changed the packaging to something much more appealing and started using these Prohibition-style liquor bottles. It’s already translated into increased sales at the stores,” he said.
Even now brewing and bottling 75 to 100 gallons a week, Horn is completely involved in the entire process.
He buys Colombian Excelso beans directly off the boat in New Orleans and takes them to Northshore Coffee in Brandon where they are roasted. Then he lets the beans steep in vats of water for 24 hours before bottling. Cold-brewing takes the acidity out of the coffee, which makes for a much smoother sip, Horn said.
His product is gaining fans and is expected to gain even more with the introduction to Whole Foods grocery this month.
“That’s our newest deal, and we couldn’t be more excited,” he said. “If we get one more store, we’ll be at our full capacity in this location, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get there.”
Horn continues to grow his business from the ground up, and burning the midnight oil to make it happen is just part of the job.
STORY Elizabeth Grey
PHOTOGRAPHY Melanie Thortis
