Hey y'all - Roaster Brian here...
I first heard about RAYGUN when I still lived in the Des Moines area back in the ought's. I believe it may have been the ought-six or -seven. Anyway, my sister-in-law who works downtown and has her finger on all the cool DSM happenings told me about this new t-shirt company that had started up and was making hilarious and awesome tee's with inside jokes about Des Moines and Iowa.
Their punny, snarky aesthetic was right up my alley, so there's been a stack of RAYGUN tee's in my family's closets ever since.
So earlier this year when my biz partner, Steve Shriver, said "Let's talk to RAYGUN about selling coffee!," I was immediately all in. Emails were exchanged. Ideas were pitched. Excitement ensued. A really tasty coffee was born:
Meow That's What I Call Light Roast!
Here's how RAYGUN founder, Mike Draper, tells it: "We told Brian, ‘Take a look at this store, and make a blended coffee that tastes like the store looks.’ A couple weeks later, Brian came back with this blend. We tasted it and said, ‘Yes, exactly. This tastes just like the store looks: amazing.’”
As for the product name itself, here's how the fictional cat Gary adorning the front label remembers it: “I’ve always preferred Chivas Regal to coffee. I’ve also been known to experiment with mescaline — though it’s been a while. But when I tasted Brian’s coffee I said, ‘Meow That’s What I Call Light Roast!’ I drink it straight, or with a little bit of Chivas Regal and mescaline. Tastes great either way.”
There you have it, folks: The origin story of a great pairing of two Iowa companies that make claw-some stuff, teaming up to make even claw-somer stuff together. And we now have a coffee with cat-itude. We love it. We hope you do, too.