By Sharon Verbeten
Mike Sugden used to pull up his Army boots. But in 2019, the 23-year veteran of the U.S. Army and Army Reserves bootstrapped his way to owning his own business: JSA Coffee Roasting in Seymour.
“When we first started, we had no idea what to expect,” says Sugden, who owns the business with his wife, Nanci.
Sugden retired from the military in 2013 and soon after was diagnosed with fibromyalgia. Not certain he could work a typical job, he and Nanci started roasting coffee beans at home in a cast-iron skillet and then a Whirley Pop popcorn maker, then on a grill with a drum and a motor.
As Sugden refined his self-taught skills, he decided to make coffee roasting his full-time job, setting up in a 2,000-square-foot shop in downtown Seymour in 2020.
“All I had was the grill setup, some bags, some coffee and a whole lot of hope,” Sugden says.
Even though JSA Roasting — named for Sugden’s kids — launched three weeks before pandemic restrictions hit, Sugden stayed afloat with curbside pickup, bagged coffee sales, private label beans and free home delivery.
“I pretty much took the business plan I was working off and threw it out the door,” he says.
In addition to operating a small coffee shop, JSA also wholesales its beans to local vendors like Oshkosh Food Co-op.
Sugden — who starts his own day with about four cups of freshly-ground Joe — sure knows his beans, which are sourced from Central and South America. “Like any ingredient,” he says, “the fresher, the better it’s going to be.”
And while he admits that running the business was “definitely more difficult than I thought,” Sugden has no regrets.
“If we would go back and start over again, I think I’d do it the same way.”
