Tamara Ellis on Leaving a VP Salary, Opening Grounds & Glory Coffee, and What 4.9 Stars Actually Takes

I spent 11 years building a career I was good at but never loved. I was competent. I was promoted. I checked every box on the list I thought I was supposed to check. And then one morning I was sitting in a Monday status meeting and I looked around the table and I thought — I cannot do this for another 20 years.

I had been roasting coffee at home as a hobby for three years. My friends kept telling me it was the best coffee they had ever had. I started researching the specialty coffee market in Forsyth County and realized there was a real gap. The national chains were everywhere. Independent specialty roasters were almost nonexistent.

I gave myself a year to plan it. I took a barista course. I toured six roasteries. I built a business plan. When I handed in my notice, I was terrified. But I was more afraid of the alternative.

Exhausting and exhilarating in equal measure. I had prepared well, but nothing fully prepares you for being the person responsible for everything simultaneously. I was roasting, brewing, serving, managing inventory, answering emails, and learning what I did not know — all at the same time.

The thing that kept me going was the customers. The regulars started showing up in week two. By week six I had people who were coming in every single morning. One guy told me he had been driving 20 minutes out of his way to come here because he could not find coffee this good closer to his office. That kind of feedback kept me going on the days when the espresso machine decided not to cooperate.

We roast everything in-house and we know every bean we buy. I can tell you where our Ethiopian single origin came from, what elevation it was grown at, what processing method was used, and why that affects how it tastes. That is not trivia — that is the foundation of what makes specialty coffee worth paying for.

But honestly, the bigger differentiator is how we treat people. I train my staff the same way I want to be treated when I am a customer somewhere. Remember names. Remember orders. Make people feel seen. That costs nothing and it means everything.

The chains can outspend us on marketing. They cannot outdo us on that.

A restaurant owner came in one day and asked if we would sell him beans in bulk because his chef had been raving about our medium roast. I said yes before I even knew what that would look like operationally.

That one conversation turned into six wholesale accounts within a year. Now we supply eight local restaurants and two offices in Forsyth County. It is still a small part of the overall business, but it is meaningful and it is growing.

I did not plan to become a wholesale roaster. I planned to open a coffee shop. But that is what I love about running your own thing — the business tells you where to go if you are paying attention.

People tell me it is their third place — not home, not work, but the place they go when they need to decompress or think or just be around other humans without any agenda. That is the most meaningful thing someone can say about a small business.

Cumming has grown so fast over the last decade. There is incredible energy here, but there is also a hunger for things that feel rooted and local rather than like they were dropped in from a strip mall somewhere else. I think we fill that need. And I think about that every morning when I am opening the door and the first customer walks in.