SM North student starts his own coffee business

Ben Cloud is always grinding.

The Shawnee Mission North junior keeps himself busy with academic and extracurricular pursuits. Cloud plays defensive back on the football team and recently joined his school's DECA.

More importantly, he started his own business this year, Clouds Coffee Company.

Cloud felt inspired by his various business courses he took as a sophomore at Shawnee Mission North. He knew he wanted to start his own business while taking the classes, but he was not quite sure where to start.

"I really just fell in love with the process," Cloud said. "I knew that I had wanted to start up my own business. I just didn't quite know where to start."

Cloud originally wanted to start a clothing brand, but with no designing or garment-making experience, he decided to go a different direction. He noticed how much his family drank coffee and started wondering about how to go about getting into that market. He was not a big coffee drinker himself, but he gave it a shot. He quickly started to like it.

Cloud elicited business advice from his grandfather Steve, who owns IBT Industrial Solutions out of Shawnee. Cloud said his grandfather has been his biggest inspiration, which was true even before he followed in his footsteps as an entrepreneur.

"He's honestly a mentor to me and we're also best friends," Cloud said. "He was my best friend even before I started doing this coffee thing."

Cloud runs the business on his own, but said his grandfather has been a big help giving advice and helping understand the process of running your own business.

"I would sometimes just get ahead of myself," Cloud said. "He just told me, 'Hey Ben, just slow down and stay grounded.'"

He took his grandpa's advice, spending the next year planning and refining his plans around starting with selling the coffee as an online retailer that launched in August 2021.

The company sources its coffee beans from Peru, Mexico and Indonesia before shipping those to a roaster in California. Clouds Coffee aims to deliver an organic and fresh specialty-grade coffee. A majority of his business is currently direct online orders delivering the bags of coffee to customers from California immediately after the roasting process.

But Cloud has quickly started to expand the business. He struck up a deal with his business teacher, Cody Fothergill, to sell his espresso beans to the school's student-run coffee shop, Brickhouse Coffee. The coffee shop runs from 7-7:30 a.m. Monday through Friday.

Cloud said he was already sold on the idea of starting his own coffee company before he realized the potential of partnering up with his school.

"It was all right in front of me and I never saw it," Cloud said. "I wasn't involved in that market and when I started to do the research, it just kind of all came together."

Brickhouse started a few years ago as part of those same marketing classes that inspired Cloud. Fothergill said he felt like working with an entrepreneurial student like Cloud made perfect sense.

"We had talked all along about 'Hey, it would be really great if we could sell your coffee in Brickhouse Coffee,'" Fothergill said.

That perfect match still required some back-and-forth business discussions. Since Brickhouse focuses on selling cheap drip coffee to mostly student clients, with a few extremely regular teachers needing their morning cup of coffee, Fothergill said he had about four or five discussions about price.

The two parties came to an agreement that worked for both sides. Fothergill said Brickhouse gets about 50% of its beans from Cloud Coffee Company, while still receiving the rest of its non-espresso beans from The Roasterie in Kansas City.

Cloud said that's just the start though.

He hopes to shift the roasting process from California to Kansas City. He's currently working on expanding his local reach by connecting with area high schools and local churches. He also plans to sell bags at the Broadmoor Bistro at the Center for Academic Achievement for a Thanksgiving special next month.

Clouds Coffee Company currently offers six different types of coffee, including a seasonal pumpkin spice blend during the fall. Cloud said a fan favorite is Bali Blue. He describes the blend as a medium roast with hints of dark chocolate, molasses and brown sugar.

"It's very rich, but it's not too bitter, not too sweet," Cloud said. "It's kind of that happy medium, that's kind of why people love it so much."

Cloud wants to eventually secure a retail space so he can grow his business in the Kansas City area. He said creating roots in the community where he grew up is very important to him.

He also donates a portion of his proceeds to the Society for the Prevention of Teen Suicide. Cloud said suicide has affected his family and he wants to give back to others facing the same problems and troubles he knows affects other teenagers.

Print Friendly Version