Hi, I'm Jodi

I was fifteen, working my first job in a diner kitchen in Indiana, and I could not figure out how everybody around me was still standing by hour six. So I asked. COFFEE, they said — all of them, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. That was 2001, and let me tell you, it has not left me since.

Back then it was a splash of French vanilla creamer over an ice cube — not too hot, not too cold, just right. And it always went cold anyway, because nobody sits and enjoys a fresh cup in a scrap kitchen unless they can flip an omelet with one hand and sip with the other. Which raises a question I've never settled: did my coffee habit start at fifteen, or did my ability to multitask?

These days it's an iced latte, drunk out of whatever clear plastic cup is closest, with two little girls doing their best to keep me from finishing a sentence, let alone a drink. I don't finish a cup and move on — I sip on it all day, wherever I end up, which is how you get half-full mugs parked on every surface of my house. That's not an accident. Good coffee holds a moment open even when the moment keeps getting interrupted. And the coffee that does that is coffee that hasn't been sitting — beans picked ripe, roasted in small batches, out the door before they go stale. That's why I roast the way I do, and why I buy Fair Trade Organic.

My husband bought me a Nesco bean roaster in 2017. From there I moved to roasting in a pan, then a 500-gram electric machine, and now a tabletop profile roaster that does two pounds at a time. But you don't really care which roaster I'm using right now — what you care about is what's in the bag.

Cup of Jo started because I wanted to hand someone that same feeling I get from a good cup of coffee. There was never a moment I decided to start a business — it just stopped being only mine. Nikki was the first — I gave her a bag at church, where she and my husband work on staff together. Mindy bought twice under the same conditions. Logan was the first person to buy through this website.

Moxie lives up to her name and packs a punch. Daily Grind gets you going. Pour Me Amore is more than a play on words — sweet, rounded, and worth begging for. Delicate Decaf exists because I had to give up coffee when I was pregnant, and I wanted something worth drinking for the friends who are there now.

Plenty of people call me Jo. A few call me Jojo. There's a Jo in my name and a Joe in the cup. I didn't fight it.