If you know Enderly Coffee Co., then you know a good cup o’ coffee.  Behind the steaming brews are Tony and Becky Satoro, former school teachers who “fell in love over coffee and have relied on it daily to keep them going through their former days in the classroom and their life with their young children.”  Grounded in lifting others up, from coffee farmers to a neighborhood, Enderly roots itself in people, generosity, relationships, and quality.  We caught up with Tony about the beginnings of Enderly, where their coffee comes from, what they’ve got brewing, and why they partner with Recover.

Great to talk with you Tony! How did Enderly Coffee Co. start?

Well, I was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan and Becky and I moved down to Charlotte in 2007 to work in the school system here.  We started growing a family and for us, we realized it’s unfortunate but we couldn’t afford to remain teachers, be parents, and progress on our personal financial goals.  I had a hobby of roasting coffee in the backyard.  The start of Enderly Coffee was in 2012 when we started to share it with friends and neighbors.  It’s named after Enderly Park, which is just about a mile from the Recover office in Charlotte.

From roasting coffee in your backyard, how did you take the next step with Enderly?

Early on and to this day, we were and are really focused on consistent and quality service and product.  We considered that if we could maintain that, over time, we would see growth.  I was still working as a teacher when in 2014, one of my friends asked if I wanted to work part-time for his consulting company, with the goal of allowing space to focus on Endelry. I took him up on the offer and that allowed me to quit but still have initially 32 hours (which phased down over the year) of work a week to pay bills, and after about 13 months of working with him, I felt comfortable making the full time jump and going 100% in on Enderly.  Our consistent quality service and commitment to making sure experiences with us and our products are good made us grow.  It’s also about being a good person and a good neighbor.  We really couldn’t have done it without that little push from my friend and that part-time job; he created the comfort zone to allow me to take that jump into the business.

Tell us about the Enderly Coffee journey- where does it come from?

Our longest relationship is with a Guatemalan farmer.  In 2013, the same friend who helped me out with the job brought back some Guatemalan beans from a trip he was on.  They were really good and I found a way to contact the growers, the Leivas family.  Their son imports coffee beans from their farm in Guatemala to Arkansas.  We got to visit the grandparents, Norma and Armando, when we went to visit the farm.  They were literally there to pick us up at the airport and gave us a tour of their city and home.  This year, we contracted about 3800 lbs of coffee with them.  The family does a lot to re-invest the money they earn from their business into their community, particularly in clean water projects and education.

We also buy from another family in Honduras.  We are now buying 80-90% of the crop they produce.  We met one of the family members, a 23 year old named Joel, and when we met him he expressed so much gratitude.  His family’s farm creates jobs for 15 full-time employees and another 30 jobs for seasonal employees.  Joel said before Enderly such job opportunities were not possible in his community.  We source the rest of our coffee through wholesalers that we trust, and who have ethical relationships and practices from the work they’ve been doing through the past number of decades.

What does Enderly have brewing right now?

We are a wholesaler primarily, and we enjoy working locally with businesses, apartment buildings, and restaurants.  We provide coffee supplier equipment needs, as well as some training, and we are an SCA certified roaster and barista.  If someone needs to get a coffee program going, they give us a call. In 2021, we picked up Harris Teeter, and now Enderly coffee is sold through 190 of their stores.  Locally, we sell to a couple of Fresh Markets, and last month we launched with 37 local Walmart stores.  These bigger accounts create a lot of volume, and not as much profit, but it means we can give our employees more work, and buy more beans from farmers, which gets more money to their communities as well.

Why does Enderly choose to partner with Recover?

We partnered early on with Recover, in about 2015; they are local and literally right down the road.  We’re very local focused and supporting as many local and small businesses as possible is important to us.  That’s how it started, but as we got to know Recover and learn more about them and the whole sustainability factor, it was and continues to be really inspiring- that a company can choose to do things a little differently and leave the world a little better.