Honey Moon Coffee Co. tackles new grounds at 4th Evansville-area location
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Evansville-based Honey Moon Coffee Co.—which serves coffee, bubble waffles, ice cream and more—opened a fourth shop on the city’s west side in November. The new location at 2903 Mt. Vernon Ave. is much more than a cafe. The building also encompasses a roastery, a warehouse and Honey Moon’s corporate offices.
Owners Zac and Jessica Parsons opened their first coffee shop at 612 S. Weinbach Ave. in 2016, followed by a second location at 1211 Tutor Ln. in 2019 and a third location at 20 W. Water St. in Newburgh in 2022.
The couple also hosts a podcast and engages with the business community. On Thursday, Zac will present “The Honey Moon Is Never Over: Building and Running a Growing Coffee Company” during Evansville Regional Economic Partnership’s Family Business Alliance Cocktail Hour from 4-6 p.m. at the Evansville Country Club.
East side start
Jessica was Zac’s accountant before the pair began their Honey Moon adventure. After they discovered a mutual love for coffee, Jessica shared her dream of opening a shop.
“I just was captivated by it and said, ‘This is great. If you ever need a partner to make this happen, I would love to help because our community needs it.’ And a few weeks or so later, we started exploring the idea, and then that turned into a romantic relationship,” Zac said.
Zac began talking with the Indiana Small Business Development Center in Evansville and got connected with business advisor Doug Claybourn.
“We had a couple of discussions about what to do next. I did like the idea that, unlike a lot of folks we talk to that say, ‘I want to do this yesterday,’ [Zac] was very concerted in wanting to plan and do it the right way,” said Claybourn. “He hit the nail on the head for what folks were looking for.”
Jessica discovered the first shop’s location when she was living near the University of Evansville.
“I decided to take my kids down to a little breakfast place called the Coffee Cottage,” she said. “I had a weird sense when I walked in, and it sounds prideful, but I felt like I was going to own the place someday.”
Zac and Jessica opened the first shop, Honey Dew Coffee Co., on Weinbach Ave. as an engaged couple. Later, they changed the business name to Honey Moon and Jessica’s last name to Parsons.
Jessica said having food made to order has been a unique aspect of their coffee business from the beginning.
“A lot of coffee shops just do a pastry case. It is an extra challenge for us. Neither one of us has a food service background, and so that was probably the hardest thing when we started,” she said.
Second and third shops
Zac said the idea for a second location came from a customer who wanted advice about opening a coffee shop. At this point, the Parsons had been in business for a couple of years.
“When the honeymoon period had worn off, pun intended. I said, ‘Don’t do it. It’s too hard,’” said Zac. “And then I was like, ‘Okay, never mind. That was a reflex. Tell me about your idea.’”
The customer, Caroline Fardig, joined Honey Moon Coffee Co. and ran the shop near Burkhardt Rd. and Vogel Rd. The couple eventually bought Fardig out of the business during the pandemic.
After being contacted about a potential third location in Newburgh that didn’t pan out, the Parsons started brainstorming downtown possibilities. Jessica, a Castle High School graduate, said her first choice was Ben and Penny’s, a riverfront ice cream shop that belonged to the owners of the nearby Café Arazu restaurant.
“I cold-emailed them and didn’t hear anything,” said Jessica. “They ended up emailing us a month or two later and said they were thinking about retiring.”
This time, the Parsons were able to buy the building instead of leasing it and make renovations. They turned the second-floor loft into an Airbnb that overlooks the Ohio River.
Zac said because the jump from one location to two was challenging, they assumed the move from two to three locations would be just as challenging—if not more.
“That turned out not to be the case. We had created some systems and you get some economies of scale and there’s an awareness in the market that allows these three locations to do better together,” he said.
West side story
While Jessica is a Newburgh native, Zac is fond of the west side because his children live there with their mom. When he heard the owner of Evansville Coffee Co. was looking to sell the business, Zac started exploring the area, including a 4,000 sq. ft. building next door to the roastery.
“I knew this building was available and we walked in it and I could see it right away. [Jessica] couldn’t quite see it initially. It was a big building,” he said.
The couple bought the roastery—and the big building—and moved Evansville Coffee Co. into its new location. The project’s renovations took nearly a year.
“[2023] was an overwhelming year because we basically started a new venture, which was coffee roasting. We had been buying our beans from a roaster called Black Lodge in New Harmony. And so we made that transition,” said Jessica.
Now, Evansville Coffee Co. supplies coffee for all four Honey Moon shops, and the Parsons offer roastery tours at the Mt. Vernon Ave. location.
“We have tried to step up the coffee education and knowledge in our area,” said Jessica.
“Letting people come in and see how the machines work, maybe roast their own beans, have something to take home with them,” added Zac.
While the Honey Moon coffee shops have similar menus, Jessica said each location is special.
“I’m very passionate about design and would never hire that out or have a cookie cutter style like, ‘This is how we open a new store. Everything looks the same.’ We make each shop have a different vibe and fit the neighborhood,” she said.
Small business resources
Besides owning four coffee shops and managing an Airbnb, the Parsons have recorded 13 episodes of The Honey Moon Coffee Co. Podcast. On the pod, which launched in the summer of 2023, the couple answers questions and shares stories about growing a business.
“These are the conversations we’re already having anyway. And so it was just figuring out some of the logistics of recording them,” said Zac.
As a huge podcast fan, Zac thought offering a peek behind the Honey Moon curtain would be a great way to give back to the business community.
“It’s like you take in somebody else’s creative energy, and it hopefully inspires some creativity in you,” said Zac. “I said, ‘Why don’t we just let people see how we make decisions and think through things and a little bit of a yin and yang dynamic?’”
Claybourn believes free resources are something small business owners should take advantage of when they’re available.
“[At ISBDC], advising is at no cost. That’s something you just can’t take for granted,” he said. “We are plugged in with Purdue University and Indiana University and able to pull [business industry] reports at no cost.”
The business advisor said getting people to grasp what they don’t know and then embrace that knowledge can be challenging.
“We’ve got a lot of different things and training that can help folks. You don’t know QuickBooks? Well, you need to know that. We have a class for that and other things and can walk alongside them and help with the areas where they’re short,” said Claybourn.
‘Know what your vision is’
Zac expects to launch a new product, Honey Moon Coffee Newlywed Gift Subscriptions, sometime this quarter. Customers may buy packages as wedding gifts to deliver coffee beans to a newlywed couple throughout their first year of marriage.
Though Jessica’s not ruling out a possible fifth location on the north side, future Honey Moon expansion will likely go beyond Evansville.
“To prove a concept, you have to be able to do it in more than one place,” she said. “We’re not interested at this point in franchising, but more along the lines of one of our managers deciding that they want to open their own store.”
The couple said they get advised on what they should do next from all kinds of sources. However, they try to stay focused on what’s best for them and the business.
“You have to take some time and remember why you did this in the first place,” said Jessica. “Know what your vision is because you’re going to get pulled into a lot of different things.”
Claybourn said he’s realistic with people about the chance of small business success from the start.
“The Small Business Administration puts out data that says about 80% of small businesses will fail. And there are a number of reasons,” he said. “I try to impress that on people.”
Claybourn thinks some small business owners get too caught up in creating a neat atmosphere, but, in reality, all the pieces have to come together in the end to succeed.
“The stuff that you consume needs to be good, but also it needs to be memorable to the point where you go away saying, ‘I’d like to come back here.’ And if people stop you in your workplace or elsewhere and say, ‘Have you been to this place? Yeah, you need to go.’ That’s what you want. And that’s what [Zac and Jessica have] been able to capture.”