Jimmy Rourk at Lucky Goat Coffee, 3349 University Dr. E, Bryan.
🎤 Owner Spotlight: Lucky Goat Coffee, Bryan
Howdy, BCS. Every issue I sit down with one local owner and ask the same three questions. This week it's coffee.
Lucky Goat Coffee opened its doors at 3349 University Drive East in Bryan on August 20, and the line out the door that day wasn't an accident. Owner Jimmy Rourk and his wife have spent the last 21 years in ministry with Valor, a local outreach to cadets, and a big part of that work has always been hospitality. They host a home-cooked dinner for cadets the first Wednesday of every month. At one point they had 147 cadets in their house.
"So all that to say, we love hospitality," Jimmy told me. "And we love coffee."
I stopped in this week, ordered a regular hot coffee (very good, by the way), and asked Jimmy my three questions.
What made you take the leap?
The coffee shop was a running family joke for years, going back to two years the Rourks spent in London. It turned real when their son went to work at the Lucky Goat over at Jones Crossing in College Station. Jimmy was sitting there one day, saw a "Franchise with us" tag on the door, and scanned it "just to kind of look."
"We just jumped down that rabbit hole. And then here we are today." That was May of last year.
Two things sold him. First, the coffee. "I'm a coffee snob. I'm very picky. So the coffee won me over." Second, the vision. Lucky Goat doesn't do drive-throughs. They want you to come in and sit down. A latte takes three to five minutes because the espresso gets pulled fresh, the milk gets steamed, and every milk drink gets latte art. "There's a lot of love and effort that pours into each of those cups of coffee."
What was the hardest part?
This is Jimmy's first business, and he's honest that the jump from ministry to the commercial world was a shock. He spent two decades working with people who were also his best friends. Corporate emails don't work that way. "They don't care you're out of money. You're gonna spend this amount of money whether you like it or not."
Then there was construction. Delay after delay, city permitting, contracts he felt weren't clear. "It's the patience I didn't have and I didn't know I needed." Looking back, he wishes he'd had a mentor who'd already been through the permitting and contract side of opening a storefront.
One roadblock turned out to be a gift. The Rourks originally wanted double the space and didn't get it. "I'm really glad we didn't get double the space. It would've been a lot to manage." As Jimmy puts it, nobody gets into coffee thinking they'll be a millionaire. "For us, it was never about money. It was always about the community and the outreach."
What would you tell another Bryan–College Station owner?
Jimmy didn't hesitate on this one.
"Expect everything's gonna be a lot more expensive than anybody tells you. I would even budget twenty percent more."
His example: at the last minute, the city required a 500-gallon grease trap. That was $33,500 nobody had budgeted for. "In the commercial world, the surprises are a lot more expensive."
His second piece of advice is the one I'd underline. Seek out other business owners who've already done it. Get into the Chamber early. And don't assume the bad stuff won't happen to you, because some of it will. "Having good expectations and the right expectations is huge."
When Jimmy hired his staff, he told them one of the shop's core values is to be a learner for a lifetime. Sounds like the owner is holding himself to it too.
Go see them. Lucky Goat Coffee, 3349 University Drive E., Bryan (Hudson Oaks). Skip the drive-through, sit down, and try the latte. Tell Jimmy the Brief sent you.