Domestique Coffee is grounded in Alabama but has a far-reaching purpose brewing
Domestique Coffee has a different approach to getting you the perfect cup of joe. (Michael Tomberlin / Alabama News Center)
There’s a saying on the Domestique Coffee website: Beyond the mountains, more mountains. It’s a Haitian proverb about perseverance, resiliency and hope in the face of challenges – no matter how many challenges arise.
Nathan and Michael Pocus are not intimidated by mountains of any sort. In fact, the brothers and co-founders of Birmingham-based Domestique Coffee company were filming a cycling-centric television pilot called “Pedal Earth” in the mountains of Haiti in 2013 when they got the idea to start their own business. The cups and cups of fresh Haitian coffee they consumed helped fuel the idea. So did the warmth and generosity of the coffee growers and others they met along the way.
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They knew then that this is where they would source their first beans. Nathan, the company’s CEO, says, the idea was to “play a part in growing the industry for the country.” Even today, 15% of every Haitian coffee purchase will be donated directly to the farms they work with so those farmers can reinvest in their futures.
This is specialty coffee from single-origin beans. The way it’s grown, harvested and fermented matters. Customers are paying for the craft of the farmer and the manufacturer, Nathan says, much like paying for a quality wine.
Here’s why that’s important: “It’s a specialty product, and it builds an industry that is sustainable over the long term, and that, hopefully, builds an industry in that country that starts to stabilize community,” Nathan says, “so that people don’t have to leave their homes to find work. Because if you have an industry that’s based on quality – not charity – it creates longevity.”
Way before the brothers rode their mountain bikes across Haiti, they grew up riding two-wheeled things – dirt bikes, BMX, cyclocross bikes, road bikes. They named their company Domestique after the French term for a road bike racer who works for the benefit of the team – ferrying food and water from team cars to teammates, shielding those teammates from challenges like opponents and strong winds.
“We like the idea of celebrating the person doing the hard work, the people who don’t usually get the glory,” says Nathan. “Let’s celebrate the people who are growing this product that we drink on a daily basis.”
Domestique, whose founders are cyclists, takes its name from a cycling term. (contributed)
Founding Domestique together in 2015 was a big career change for both Nathan and Michael, who figured out how to roast coffee beans using a popcorn popper in a backyard shed. These days, they use a fluid-bed roaster, which maintains the integrity and nuanced flavor of the beans, Michael says, allowing them to produce delicious nitro cold brew (they were the first in Alabama to do that), and a wide variety of other coffee drinks as well as whole-bean coffee.
In less than a decade, Domestique has become a multipronged coffee, hospitality and lifestyle brand serving B2B and B2C markets across the U.S. with their retail and wholesale business from a roasting facility in Lakeview. They have three Birmingham-area cafés, a presence on grocery store shelves (Piggly Wiggly and Whole Foods Market), and they provide whole bean and kegged products to a network of partner restaurants like Hero Doughnuts & Buns. There’s also a direct-to-consumer business that brings their beans right to your door.
The goal is to offer a “coffee-based cultural experience,” and their own cafés are the perfect place for that. Each café – Panache by Domestique at Five Points South; Dawn Patrol in Cahaba Cycles in Homewood; and Domestique Satellite, located inside Saturn, a space-themed music venue in Avondale – offers similar drinks but different vibes.
Michael Pocus, the company’s head of operations and coffee development, says: “We want the quality and the customer service to always be the same at any location. But Satellite, being in Avondale, has a little more of a casual, fun atmosphere with the video games and the board games, the (Substrate) radio station and being in a venue – it’s a kind of multifaceted neighborhood spot. And then Panache in Five Points South has a little bit more nuanced, European feel – more attention-to-detail kind of craft. And then we have Dawn Patrol, which is in Homewood, connected to the bike shop. It’s a little bit more casual, again, but has … a ‘California-y’ kind of coffee shop vibe, while still being very Birmingham.”
People come in for cappuccinos (“very traditional, very classic,” Michael says) and batch-brew coffee; chai; matcha; espresso; teas; and a delicious, creamy turmeric-laced “golden milk” latte. “Our iced lattes are very popular,” he says. “We make all our syrups in house, all made from scratch. People love our honey lavender and our caramel syrups. We sell a lot of those.”
Domestique takes pride in its coffee offerings. (contributed)
And they come for the nitro cold brews. “All of our cold brews are on draft, but our Haitian nitro cold brew was the first product we created – that was what we were roasting for when we were first trying out things in the shed,” Michael says. “That is served kind of like a Guinness, on a stout faucet, served on a higher PSI. And so it gives you that cascade effect with the micro foam on top. It really affects the mouth feel, more velvety soft, but it’s still very smooth with a chocolate flavor as well. And that’s because of the coffee we use. Our Haitian coffee – single-origin Haitian.”
This global company also sources locally and regionally.
Their dairy products come from Working Cows Dairy out of Slocomb, Alabama, Nathan says. “It’s about building this idea of sustainable agriculture in everything that we do. So now we can say that ‘this milk was created in Alabama by healthy, grass-fed cows.’ You can’t ask for more than having this idea of respect and sustainability built into the supply chain.” They’ve partnered with Birmingham’s Savoie Catering to create beautiful baked goods exclusive to the Domestique cafés: things like Conecuh Sausage, white cheddar and chive scones; apple bread with cinnamon-maple glaze; and salted chocolate chunk cookies.
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Your drink at Domestique’s cafés will be crafted by people who are fully part of the Domestique team. The company has 19 employees, Michael says, and prides itself not only on being a socially responsible coffee importer, dedicated to sourcing sustainably grown coffees, but also ensuring a fair-wage supply chain from production to distribution.
For most of the baristas, this is their real job – not just a waystation to something else.
“We’ve tried to create a workplace environment that people want to be a part of,” Nathan says. “There’s lots of room to grow within our company, lots of roles that are being defined. … We’ve structured our business in a way that we have a yearly wage for our baristas. We have a health insurance stipend. And we have paid company time off.”
Domestique is a “humanist” business, Nathan says. “That means we want to celebrate people in the here and now and build a world that’s better for the next generation. … We started from the ground up. We’re building direct trade connections, and within that, we can find the margins to pay the right wage to farmers, to our employees and offer a good retail price point for our end user.”
For the employees, this translates not only to good pay and good hours but also to unusual perks – like an “adventure stipend.”
“It’s a $500-a-year company credit to promote our employees going out and experiencing the world,” Nathan says. “So, if you want to do a triathlon or you want to go hike the Appalachian Trail, you can submit your cost of that trip to our company and be reimbursed up to $500 to go have a life experience. Because that’s really what we want to promote in our businesses – understanding the world around us and being a part of it.”
Michael says: “I’m proud of the team we’ve been able to grow and the impacts we’ve had on coffee-growing regions that we work with directly. Just knowing that we’re able to contribute on an international level but also still give back to our community, like with our coffee shops and being able to create jobs for people. … A high tide raises all boats. We’re trying to grow this with the people that choose to invest in us. We want to invest back into them. And we want to do the best we can to serve (our customers) the best quality coffee, and also serve the farmers we buy the coffee from.”
Domestique was named one of the Top 10 Best Coffee Brands in the country by Food & Wine magazine. Southern Living highlighted Domestique in an article about the reinvention of Birmingham. And recently, the company won big ($50,000 big) in the early-seed stage competition of Alabama Launchpad, the longtime pitch competition supported by the Economic Development Partnership of Alabama.
The Launchpad win “allows us to invest in our mobile user app, which is something we’ve been working on for a while now,” Nathan says. The goal is to create a kind of “tech-integrated hospitality” to “bring all the company’s sales channels into one, easy-to-use platform.” It will make online ordering – for a single cup of coffee in a café or the weekly subscription service – easier. There’s an automatic digital rewards function for these customers, too.
But, ultimately, it will allow Domestique to absolutely set themselves apart in the hospitality space, build a better community and do something significant for our world.
Domestique wants to establish a series of EV charging destinations (not just stations), with coffee, of course, along Alabama’s major highways.
“Right now, with our three existing brick-and-mortar stores, we’re building our first micro network,” Nathan says. “This is going to allow people to charge their e-bikes, their e-scooters and charge their small-format autos at our stores in the Birmingham metro area. This is our first micro network. If we’re fortunate enough to be accepted into Techstars, we’re going to start developing our next station, which can do 60 cars per hour. This is an off-the-interstate location that bridges the large municipalities in Alabama and the Southeast,” he says.
The app is crucial to these next steps, allowing Domestique’s charging stations to have charging bays and refreshments ready and waiting for customers.
The idea is to provide a seamless experience for these customers traveling around the Southeast, Nathan says, “providing high-quality, locally sourced agricultural products that will reinforce our agricultural sector in Alabama, that fights climate change through sustainability, and builds a high-quality user experience for people in Alabama and across Alabama and across the Southeast who want to visit our tourist destinations.
“We can utilize this as a sales funnel for the state,” he adds, “because you have the highest concentration of EV drivers living in Nashville and Atlanta. So, where do we want them to go? We want them to go to Gulf Shores, Orange Beach and Birmingham. So, if we build this high-quality network here first, we can start to bring in those users to our state before they choose to go somewhere else.”
It all comes back to the idea of growing the community through real connections.
“You know,” Nathan says, “coffee is a product that people drink every single day; 60% of Americans drink coffee on a daily basis. And so, you start to imagine, we are really a part of people’s lives, right? And we’re building a company that is essentially, hopefully, enhancing your day-to-day life, bringing joy to the morning of your day.
“By being a global company, like we are, we have direct trade with our partners in Guatemala, Dominican Republic, Haiti. We want to … showcase these cultures that we work in; we want to understand where products come from, and we want to understand the world in a global sense. … This idea of a fair trade, understanding our neighbors, being a community partner, that’s what we mean by ‘lifestyle.’ It’s not just about driving through a drive-through as fast as you can to get this product that has a utility. It’s about building community and knowing your neighbors and getting back to the roots of what we all like about being human, right? It’s that communication. It’s that connection. It’s the friendship that you can find with people in a physical way.”
Domestique Coffee Roasters
3017 6th Ave. S.
Birmingham, Alabama 35233
Monday – Friday: 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.
On Facebook and Instagram
Panache by Domestique Coffee
1024 20th St. S., Suite 103
Birmingham, Alabama 35205
Sunday – Thursday: 7 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Friday – Saturday: 7 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Domestique Satellite
Located inside Saturn:
200 41st St. S.
Birmingham, Alabama 35222
Monday: 7 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Tuesday – Saturday: 7 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Sunday: 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Dawn Patrol by Domestique Coffee
Located inside Cahaba Cycles
1724 27th Ct. S.
Homewood, Alabama 35209
Monday – Saturday: 6:30 a.m. to 4 p.m.
