Comeback Beverage Co. – Memphis Flyer

Comeback Beverage Co. is “up and running,” says Hayes McPherson. “We officially moved into our new space roughly May 29th, and we started operations June 5th. That is, brewing our coffee sodas and also roasting our own coffee, as well.”

The impressive facility in the Pinch district, with its 160-gallon temperature brewing tanks, is at 354 North Main Street, right next door to Comeback Coffee, the comfortable coffee shop that Hayes, 28, and his wife Amy, 28, opened four years ago.

Comeback Beverage Co. is “four things in one,” Hayes says. “It is our headquarters for Comeback. It is our roasters. It is our coffee brewery.”

It also shares space with Amy’s plant shop, Golden Hour, which is set to open June 17th. It features an all-glass greenhouse, which is the front entrance to Comeback Beverage Co. “If you’re walking down North Main, it’s this beautiful all-glass greenhouse filled with beautiful green plants.”

With the new beverage facility, Hayes says, “We are essentially quadrupling our space.”

They began producing canned coffee soda in 2021 during the pandemic. “We started off in our kitchen and we were doing 100 cans at a time. And we were selling out in 30 minutes or an hour.”

They then moved the beverage business to a garage behind the coffee shop. “That allowed us to do 600 cans at a time.”

The new space “allows us easily to do four times that with new equipment coming in and the scope in general.”

It also fulfills part of Comeback Coffee’s mission, which is to give people “an opportunity to grow with us.”

Ethan McGaughy, who has helped them “every step of the way,” is now their “right-hand man,” helping brew, roast, and create recipes.

Hannah Sisson and Kelsey Taylor will “help us push this thing to a different level,” says Hayes, who wants Comeback beverages to be available “on the national stage.”

Comeback Beverage Co. currently makes two canned Comeback Coffee Sodas: Southern Style, which is lemon and thyme, and Field Day, which is strawberry and lime.

“We’ve got one coming up — pineapple cinnamon coffee soda — and a few up our sleeve as well.”

They’re able to test their coffee beverage ideas in their coffee shop by putting a coffee beverage on their special menu and testing its popularity. “Memphis is literally creating these drinks with us, in a way.”

Hayes and Amy launched their coffee soda with their first two flavors at the 2018 Grind City Coffee Xpo and introduced the cans at last year’s event. “We threw it on the bar last year. They got a really good reception.”

They knew from the overwhelming response they’d start making those two flavors as soon as they got in their new space.

“Because of the space we’re in, we have the capacity to play how we want to. And get to be creative with our offerings. So, it allows us to be who we are at our core, which is coffee lovers and coffee professionals. What we’ll do is make fun, interesting, tasty coffee drinks for our coffee shop.”

And, Hayes says, “The space and equipment we’ve got will also enable us to have cold black coffee. We pride ourselves on our flash chill coffee — how we make our cold brew coffee. It’s a special method that we believe holds all the good things of cold coffee, and coffee in general. And we’ll be canning that.”

Comeback has also partnered with Grind City Brewing Co. “We’re roasting the coffee for them for their coffee beer.”

Future Comeback Beverage Co. plans include making their own “flavored sparkling waters.”

As for the big picture, Hayes says, “The past two years we spent shaping out what this will look like. And, ultimately, what we want to do is be the Wiseacre for the coffee of Memphis.”

Like Wiseacre Brewing Company, which “put its beer on a national stage,” Hayes wants to do the same thing “for the coffee industry. Whether coffee sodas or canned flash chill or roasted coffee, when people think about Memphis, I want them to think about our coffee industry.”

“Memphis is known for barbecue, beer. I want them to think Memphis is also known for high-quality coffee.”

You can now order Comeback Beverage Co. canned coffee sodas online at comebackbevco.com. That means you can enjoy the sweet taste of strawberry — and lime and lemon and thyme — coffee without leaving your house.

You can, of course, still stop by Comeback Coffee and get a can along with fresh coffee and house-made pastry.

“The plan has always been taking this product and breaking outside of Memphis city limits,” says Hayes McPherson, who, along with his wife Amy, owns Comeback Coffee. “They’re doing this with beer, where the name of ‘Memphis’ is being spread in the beverage industry. And we want to do that with coffee.”

The native Memphians opened their shop in March 2019. They wanted to get in “the movement of specialty coffee that was starting to exist here,” Hayes says.

They don’t brew coffee at their shop. “We’re a multi roaster,” Amy explains. “That means we bring in coffee from all over the world.”

Food & Wine magazine named them one of “The Best Coffee Shops in America” in 2019, about six months after they opened, Hayes says. Some of that is doubtless due to the coffee itself, but some credit must go to the coffee shop. They wanted to “create a unique space for people to come together,” Amy says, “make it comfortable.”

Coffee soda, which became a staple in the coffee industry four years ago, is a “cold coffee, oftentimes with some sort of flavoring, sometimes sweet, sometimes not,” Amy says. “Ours is sweet.”

After trying other brands of coffee soda, they thought, “I think we can make this and make it better.”

“We figured out a process where we could hold onto all the good parts of coffee,” Hayes said. “Cold brews a lot of times are bitter. The coffee tastes burned or old or kind of gross.”

Their coffee sodas have sweetness from the sugar and fruit juices along with a not-overpowering coffee taste. “You get those fun flavor combinations, but you still get the caffeine kick.”

Hayes, Amy, and Ethan McGaughy, who all work on the flavor combinations, launched their strawberry-lime flavored coffee soda at the first Grind City Coffee Xpo in 2019. People “dug it,” Hayes says.

They put it on tap when they opened the shop. “And sold 10 gallons of it that first day.”

The couple launched Comeback Beverage Co. last year and began selling small batches at the shop. They sold out all 100 cans in 30 minutes the first day, Hayes says.

Comeback Beverage Co. now sells only two mainstay canned coffee sodas: “Field Day,” the original strawberry-lime drink, and their No. 1 seller, the lemon and thyme “Southern Style.”

Memphis artist Macon Wilson designed the labels.

This past year, Hayes and Amy researched “how to create a system to make bigger batches and have full control over it instead of sending it out places to get it made or relying on other folks to do it,” he says.

Now it’s all done in house. “About six months ago I started a process of buying this equipment to do this in bulk.”

Comeback Beverage Co. is in “literally a garage” connected to their shop, Hayes says. They plan to physically build out the business, though, “and help build out this district, the Pinch, a district we’ve fallen in love with.”

The Comeback crew wants their coffee sodas to be “all over the country and all over the world,” Hayes says.

“This started out as a singular drink on a coffee menu over two-and-a-half years ago. We never anticipated it would be this well received,” Hayes says. “Well, our community has supported us in ways we are so thankful for and allowed us to jump into something like this and spread it out.”

And, he says, “If it wasn’t for the city of Memphis, we would not be able to do it.”

Comeback Coffee is at 358 North Main Street; (901) 860-4215.