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About Us
Part 1: Origins
A long, long time ago, in a city far, far away, a married couple was no longer able to go to their favorite coffee shop that they frequented multiple times every day. Because of the pandemic, Jason and Amy, the founders of Gotta Coffee, had to find their own means of getting their daily caffeine fix. Brew and brew they did, and eventually they were pleased with their amateur attempts. Little did they know that their daily coffee routine would turn into the ability to share the joy of coffee with others….
Gotta Coffee began as a 10 year anniversary present to each other— we had saved for the last couple years for a vacation but decided to try a new adventure instead, and gifted each other with the chance to start Gotta Coffee. We found a 1970s Chevy Step Van and gutted it.
We painted the inside (a couple times over again—thanks humidity) and out and bought all of our appliances. Our dream was becoming a reality.
Part 2: The Making of a Great Drink
Firstly, we’d like to thank everyone who has been sharing our posts, and liking and following our business page. We genuinely appreciate all your support. When our family moved here from California we hoped and prayed to be a part of a community and you all have shown yourselves to be a fabulous community to be a part of, and we feel so blessed to be accepted into this Northern Maine family. Thank you, truly.
When we first started making “fancy” coffee for ourselves, we were deep in the pandemic and had limited options for flavors. We even went as far as trying to make pumpkin spice flavoring from scratch. Picture us in the kitchen straining hot, I mean just-finished-boiling-but-at-least-it-smells-delicious-while-it-3rd-degree-burns-your-fingers, hot pumpkin with spices through cheesecloth into a bowl, only to get like 16 oz of flavoring. While it was good-tasting, it was not the same when your hands were redder than the Christmas ornaments on the tree. Plus, we were not even amateur baristas at that point.
Fast forward a couple years and we had lots of practice and access to better ingredients because the supply lines were almost back to the way it used to be. We made a few friends drinks and they enjoyed the coffee as well. Some even made jokes about us starting a business out of it. We started talking the logistics of how we’d even start a coffee-shop-type-business and started problem-solving. We ordered a cup sealer and our business seemed like it could actually be a reality.
We ordered cups, the lid sealer, and some flavoring and made drinks for friends. We asked for feedback on our drinks and honed our drinks to be the delightful experience they are now. We use quality ingredients like Nespresso, Peet’s Coffee, Ghirardelli, Hershey’s, and Torani because we know that quality really makes the difference.
The White Chocolate Mocha Latte is what started it all and now we have an expansive menu that we will be proud to offer.
Part 3: Buying the Truck
It was our 10 year wedding anniversary and we had saved up some money for a vacation—maybe a cruise, Disney, someplace with sun? We had not decided on anything and with work it was looking like our vacation was going to have to have a rain check. We were talking about the dream of starting a coffee truck for a while, and we started looking into different possibilities for one. We looked into a prebuilt but we like projects for some reason. We checked out trailers vs trucks, and we almost settled on getting a horse trailer but they were either too expensive or needed work beyond our YouTube skill set.
Weeks turn into months of internet searching, which was more so just window shopping as we hadn’t yet decided to take the plunge and make a purchase. But with pipe dreams in hand we scoured the internet and looked at Uncle Henry’s, FB marketplace, Craigslist (yes it’s still a thing lol), eBay, we searched in-state, out-of-state, outer space (only saw a Tesla and it had high mileage ). We couldn’t find anything that was either cheap enough and in good enough shape to match our budget, but just junky enough for us to be able to fix it with help from YouTube. Finally after all of our searching we found an old ‘76 Chevy Step van at Robbie Dionne’s online. We discussed taking a look at it, and one day we bumped into young Robbie. We said hello and talked for a minute, and then we mentioned his dad’s truck and asked if he still had it. Not only did Robbie answer our question, but he practically sold us sight unseen in that truck. He has a bright future in sales! That day we went and took a look at the truck and even though it is 6’3” inside and Jason is 6’4” outside, we fell in love with the potential. This moment made our decision to forgo our anniversary trip and instead purchase an anniversary truck. Before we knew it we had made an agreement, shaken hands on our deal, and were off into the sunset and stalled out at the peek of the hill looking into the sunset. This old girl had not been driven in a while but she made it home. The step van was only the beginning…now we had to make it a food truck!
Part 4: Painting, Waiting, and Caffeinating
We completely took everything out of the 1976 Step Van we bought (tires, racks, and wooden walls), cleaned it a couple times over, pressure washed, sanded, wet sanded, power-washed, and made it new to us. Next, we had to look for paint… but what color, what type, do we roll on or spray on, cost, availability…I mean there are seriously a lot of things to consider when painting. We decided on roll on for a couple of reasons. Firstly, the body on this baby is definitely not bad for her age but she isn’t winning any body-smoothness contest anytime soon, so we figured roll on would help hide some of those memories. Back in the day we had an old camper that we repainted with roll on and it lasted well so we figured might as well! The second and more important reason is, we found it at Mardens. Now, if you’re from Maine you already know what that means, and we bought it when we saw it at Mardens. Not only that but it was the perfect paint. We found “Handicap Blue” stick-to-anything Rustoleum that is meant for painting parking spots and slapped that on the coffee truck. And it turned out perfect! She is bright and beautiful, and you can notice her from afar. You can still park close if you have a placard . While we were at mardens we had also found a chocolate colored primer for rust that we picked up for the undercarriage. We ended up using that on the grill, bumpers, and wheels, and it kind of stuck because it has a coffee/mocha/chocolate vibe to it and we didn’t want to buy more paint. We wanted it to be Rustoleum because “it’s Rustoleum, and it covers everything” but we also wanted durability and function. We believe in a clean truck and wanted something we could easily clean so we went with white and black protective Rustoleum on the inside walls and cabin.
When we got to the floors, we wanted those to stand out a little and wanted it to have some texture. We found a Krylon paint in this really nice red and we mixed texture sand in it. We finished painting the floor and the truck was looking pristine, now we just had to wait for it to dry and we were set! We waited ….. and waited….. and waited…. but the floor never dried. The top of the paint cured but even after a week, the underneath never solidified. It was terribly humid the days following our painting, we even found a paint brush that had been left out with the red paint on it and it was still wet, weeks later. We think it was a mixture of the sand in it and the humidity in the air, but nevertheless we needed to strip it.
And strip the floor paint we did…. We dawned rubber gloves and breathers, and laid out a think coat of Citristrip. This ended up being a PROCESS! We stripped it, then pressure washed it, which caused the non-cured paint to fly all over the freshly painted walls (Jason admits to this being his bad). After we pressure washed it, we took a wire wheel (well, several wire wheels) and really brought the floor back to bare. But that was the problem—we were back to bare and had no other paint for the floor. No need to guess where we went, but for those following the story and who like Wheel of Fortune it was M__d_ns.
Without fail what did we find? Some paint that could totally work! Ace Rust Fighter Fire Hydrant Paint in bright safety green! Oh boy, were we excited . The inside was black and white so it wasn’t a crazy idea for the floor to be green. We bought it and sprayed it and to be honest love it. It has proven to be super durable and not slippery, especially when wet.
We re-painted all the paint spots from pressure washing the floor and put a coat of rubber roof coating on the roof once we re-caulked. Now we have our Handicap Blue, Mocha Brown beast with the Safety Green floors and we love her.
Oh we forgot to add… yeah, there was a lot of caffeinating in between!​
Part 5: Tuning, Blue-ing & Shoeing
We knew our old blue 1976 Step Van needed some tuning up when we bought her. Where we live in Northern Maine is amazing and beautiful but with that comes the lack of copious stores, options, and availability. Luckily where we live also has a few amazing people who do amazing work. They’re all overworked which means that it usually takes a little longer to get into the shops and then you have to wait for parts to come in.
Sylvio Paradis & Son squeezed us into their schedule and we were lucky that they had the tools and ability to get the work done. The breaks fell out when they had to take the tire off after having to replace the brake cable that snapped. So glad we went to professionals instead of trying to do that as an at-home-DIY.
After a lot of hard work, the Gotta Coffee truck passed the vehicle inspection! Thank you Sylvio Paradis & Sons!
We were able to some of the work ourselves, thanks to Jason’s experience working on cars and Amy’s experience helping out. We changed out the belts, all of the fluids (except the rear differential, the plug was rusted out ). And after we got it back from the shop we changed out all of the plugs, wires, and cap and rotor because Jason was struggling getting her up the tiny hills in the way home. But once we changed out those plugs and ran some Seafoam Carb Cleaner through her she started to purr like a kitten with chronic fur balls .
Part 7: Classed, Passed, and Asked
Licensing for a food truck or any place that sells food is no joke and having gone through 70% of the process (we still need the inspection and approval to be able to open) we commend anyone who opens a food truck or restaurant. You put in a lot of work and should be proud of yourselves.
Some of the procedures for opening up a food truck are simple enough and don’t require much more than WiFi, but others are not as easy. One of the most important certifications for food preparation is a Serve Safe Managers certification. Amy already had a basic Serve Safe certificate and some experience so she volunteered to be the PIC (person in charge—I mean, she has experience with that in their relationship too ). This meant Amy had to take a Certified Food Protection Manager course. With the basic Serve Safe certification, Amy used ServSafe. It’s an entertaining course for $15 and it means you can be a safe employee when handling food for consumers. For the CFPM course, Amy chose to use 360Training, a thorough yet very dry course. The course typically takes about eight hours. Eight hours of slow, early 2000s PowerPoint videos and small quizzes throughout. Amy got it done over two days after work and then scheduled her proctored exam for the next day. Technology is sometimes a glorious thing and Amy was able to complete the proctored exam online, and at home.
To take a proctored exam online, the company that proctored the exam has a lot of red tape that has to be gone through. It makes sense because I’m sure there’s people out there that would take advantage. They tell you that you have to take the test in a quiet room by yourself with the window shades drawn, that you’ll have to show a form of identification, have a mirror, a list of seven of your worst fears, a signature from your child that you will not cheat, a hand drawn map of your childhood elementary school in crayon, and to show the proctor around your room. Cool, that was set up.
Once connected, Amy was asked for specifics and was told that the proctor may want to be shown places again if they’re unsure. After a tour of the room, Amy was asked to take a mirror and show them the computer, desk, etc. Don’t worry proctor people, Amy wasn’t going to cheat anyway, but she surely wasn’t going to try now. The last step to check to make sure that people are not going to cheat on their exam is for a person to empty their pockets. Now, Amy didn’t have anything in her pockets, but she also didn’t have the top button of her jeans shorts buttoned…(as one does when they’re about to sit for an hour to take a test at home) and she didn’t think anyone was going to ask about the clothes she was wearing. It’s a good thing she was wearing pants at all. Amy was wearing an oversized shirt that covered the button and zipper so she could show her pockets were empty. After about 45 minutes, Amy was done with the test and passed with an A!
Education is just the beginning of the beginning when starting a food-serving business. Now we had to implement what we learned to make the best coffee and service possible.
We’ve filed our paperwork for inspection of the Gotta Coffee food truck! One step closer to opening!
On a side note, we made an iced Butterscotch Macchiato today and it was delicious! All of our macchiatos come with a caramel bottom (unless otherwise requested) and with a dolce double Nespresso to top it off, we started our morning off right.
Part 8: How to Have a Coffee Truck with no Dishes
A few years ago, we traveled around the United States for 3 months in a slide-in truck camper that we upgraded and renovated ourselves. We even had to completely redo the floor of the overhanging queen bed because there was water damage we didn’t know about when we bought it. During that time we really learned the importance and value of clean and dirty water storage, and how much water you use for dishes, hand-washing, etc.
Because of our travels, one of the aspects we had to figure out before we could even discuss opening a coffee truck was the ability to make copious amounts of coffees without the need for the same copious amounts of dishes. I’m sure everyone wishes there was a magic spell that made dirty dishes start dancing, and clean and put themselves back away for you, too. (If it was dishes or laundry, though, I’d vote for no more laundry any day!) We started talking about ways to make a coffee without using or having dishes.
During our US travels we were able to go to Boba shops and a lot of other restaurants, coffee shops, fast food places, and visit food trucks. We always talked about opening our own eatery or drinkery one day so we observed, asked questions to those who would answer them, and tried to learn as much as possible from others’ successes and failures. We both worked retail for quite a few years in our youth and enjoyed the customer service aspect of the business.
Before we found the set up we have now, we made our drinks by mixing up the milk and flavoring in a protein shaker cup and then transferring that into our drink cup with nespresso and ice. It was good, but it would be unrealistic for flavor changes. One day Jason and Amy were sitting on the couch really trying to problem solve the problem of “How to Have a Coffee Truck with no Dishes” and they came to the conclusion that it was impossible to have no dishes at all, but they could get as close as possible!
Amy had the idea of using a cup sealer machine like the Boba shops used. Jason didn’t think it would work, that the coffee couldn’t be shaken in the cup without making a mess. We researched and tried to find videos of the machine working that showed its sturdiness but couldn’t find much online. Amy finally convinced Jason that we should at least try it—it could be the start of something big.
Jason and Amy ordered a cup sealer machine and started practicing how to make their favorite lattes using their new idea. Thus the idea of “Gotta Leave a Little Room to ,,Shake’’ It” came along. If we could leave the shaking to the cup, we could eliminate the need for washing the cup between shakes! Our iced lattes and macchiatos have come a long way since the beginning of this journey. Now, we have a wide array of flavors and drinks, all with the convenience of little to no dishes, and the coffee truck lifestyle.
Our cups have even shown their awesomeness at work. One of the product testers took their full iced coffee with them on the tractor and it didn’t spill a drop. It probably shook it up a little better!
Because the Gotta Coffee cups are sealed, transporting multiple drinks to friends, (plus one for yourself now, one for yourself later, and one for yourself when you’re sad it’s empty), coworkers and family is a breeze! They’re not drop-proof from waist high (that wasn’t tested on purpose ), but if they tip over in your front seat and they’re not strawed already, you should be all set! That’s why they’re ,,shaken’’ drinks!
We’ll have quite a few options for drinks on the menu! We’ll have frappes, hot chocolate, drip coffee, lattes, teas, iced coffee, macchiatos, Italian sodas, and other goodies, too! A lot of these do well with the cup sealer machine lids. There is one, however, we found that cannot be shaken up quite like the rest. Anyone care to guess which of these drinks doesn’t like to be ,,shaken’’? If you said “what is an Italian soda?” you earned 400 points! Our Italian sodas are a mixed drink that has freshly carbonated water and is flavored to choice. Delicious? Yes. Explosive in a cup sealed with a cup sealer and then shaken? Also yes. Was it hilarious and a huge mess? Also, very much yes. Do our Italian sodas use the same lid as our other drinks? Nope.
In our next installment we’ll talk about flavors.
Part 9: The One Where They Talk About Flavors
Flavor is what makes eating and drinking worth it. If something doesn’t taste good, most people are less likely to drink/eat the whole thing. Everyone has their own palate that makes them happy. We’ve tested and tried a lot of different brands and flavors, and we’ve found top brands that we’ll be using for our coffees and drinks. We hope that when you try Gotta Coffee you agree!
As we’ve mentioned in a previous part, during the dark ages when we had to make our own sauces and syrups because Covid had the supply chain shut down, we made our own pumpkin, but we also tried to make our own carmel (brittle depending on if Jason followed the timer). It was delicious but not consistent, and seemed more for ice cream than coffee. Once availability started to be less scarce we started trying white chocolate sauces (since the white chocolate latte was our go-to choice for years and years). It took us a couple of brands to land on Ghirardelli, and we’re super happy we did because we use Ghirardelli for our white chocolate, dark chocolate, and carmel sauces and it is simply the best. The caramel bottom on all of our macchiatos makes the drink a simply delightful experience. You can request white chocolate, dark chocolate, mocha, or caramel bottoms. (There’s sugar free caramel, white chocolate, dark chocolate, and mocha bottoms available as well).
When you think quality, delicious, sweet chocolate milk, Hersheys is the best. Our mochas are Hersheys, and they can have any flavor combinations you’d like. The coolest thing about having so many flavors that are quality and mix so well together is the wide variety of options. If you’re a mocha lover at heart, maybe you just stick with a classic mocha latte. If you’re feeling wild but want to stick with the mocha base, you can ,,shake’’ it up and add some French vanilla, hazelnut, caramel, white chocolate, or lavender, etc. and truly make it an artisan drink, catered to your tastes. Heck, you could order an iced hazelnut mocha latte with splash of French vanilla, a dark roasted Nespresso double shot and a caramel bottom if you were feeling fancy that day! (Sub the French vanilla for sugar free vanilla and that whole drink can be offered as a sugar free option as well!)
Did you know that there are approximately 5,300,437.0265 Torani flavors? Well, we didn’t either until we started looking at options we can offer for the Gotta Coffee Truck. We knew there would be a few flavors, but phew! We started looking and 99.9% looked like viable, tasty syrups good for coffee, teas, and sodas. So we started small and ordered a couple flavors to perfect before we ordered more. Well perfect those we did, and ordered more we also did. While we plan on continuing to grow our flavor options, to date the flavors we will be offering are rather numerous and we are excited to bring them to you. Some of the favorites have been our ice caramel macchiato, pumpkin pie macchiato, a chocolate chip cookie dough hot chocolate, brown sugar cinnamon macchiato, (Amy has become a recent fan of our butterscotch macchiato—it has French vanilla and tastes like a candy drink!). We’ll also have cheesecake (and all the cheesecake options), hazelnut mochas, chocolate chip cookie dough, Irish cream, and many, many more! We plan on updating flavors with the seasons (when it’s cold, it’s gingerbread season!), but believe pumpkin pie should not be limited to one season, in pie or drink form. #gottapumpkinpieallyearround (As long as supply lasts).
We have well over 150 different drink choices and we are adding more all the time. (Amy hasn’t done the math because she’s still finishing the menu but it’s a lot of options!) We’ll be releasing our Gotta Coffee menu soon!
Part 10: Plumbing…Ugh! Plumbing!
Okay what’s the name of this one again? Oh that’s right plumbing. Makes sense we’d try to block that from memory. If you’ve had good experience with plumbing and finding the correct fittings from the one store then we probably can’t be friends or maybe we need to be best friends . But seriously where were you with your plumbing magic when Jason was pulling what little hair he has left out looking for the right stuff.
So the requirements for a food truck specifically talk about water heat and how long water can stay hot, water storage size, and sink size. We had to have sinks big enough to fit our largest implements that needed to be washed. The sinks were the easy part, and so was ordering the other main parts like the portable water heater, the fresh and grey water tanks, the faucets we found at….. you guessed it Mardens. The hard part though was connecting them all. Because when it comes to plumbing, it’s essentially like the song reminding us what bones connect to what except here the shin bone connects to the elbow, and the elbow connects to the rib bone but there aren’t any adapters that fit a rib bone and an elbow. The tank outlets were not threaded so that wasn’t the hardest part. After that, the connectors that we had to find to connect with each other ranged from 3/4 hose connection to 1/2 to 5/8 and 10/6 (you can see plumbing makes me mad as a hatter ). The point is there were a lot of sizes and we had to get super creative to get them connected but we did it! This time it was central building to the rescue. Chad at Central was very helpful and we were able to find everything we need. Now we had the final pieces to our puzzle, we were excited to put it finally together. Plumbing can be enjoyable if it comes as a complete kit. We put the pieces together and started up the pump and water for the first time, and guess what there were no leaks! Sorry, misspelled tons…there were TONS of leaks lol. Imagine that cartoon scene where water pipes start shooting water and with every one plugged another one springs up. Well that’s what happened. After about 2 hours of chasing leaks we got it done. Now we have sinks that can get hot enough to boil . Well maybe not, but definitely hot enough to clean our dishes very well, and wash our hands as many times as we need!
Stay tuned for Part 11: Cutting a Giant Hole in the Side of the Truck
Part 6: We Bought it When we Saw it
What?? We have over 200 followers?? Wow! We appreciate you all so much! We can’t wait to open and continue sharing this adventure with all of you. Thank you for liking, sharing, commenting, and following Gotta Coffee! Thank you very kindly
Moving from out of state, we had never heard of Marden's before. But now it has become a favorite pastime for our whole family. It’s so fun to try and find a treasure you never knew you always wanted. Plus, surplus and salvage? Sold. Mardens was a big reason why we thought opening a coffee truck would even be an option. Who knew that Mardens would provide three-quarters of what we would need for the appliances for the Gotta Coffee truck? When you’re a regular at Mardens you really understand their slogan “Should’ve Bought it When You Saw it at Mardens!” and we’re regulars. Luckily, we saw it and bought it, and now we have a substantial, yet introductory, (and awesome if you ask us, but we’re biased), coffee truck! Thanks, Marden's!
A lot goes into building a food truck. We’re determined people who are willing to put in the work, but damn. One of the most important, yet terrifying aspects of creating a coffee truck out of a 1970s Step Van is the need to install a window to serve customers their coffee and treats. We honestly put that off until one of the last things, but that will be a whole story of its own for another day. We started out finding a set of free windows on Facebook. We’ll explain that in more detail in another tale, but basically, it didn’t go well.
The most important thing, yet less terrifying aspects needed in a food truck is a 4-bay sink (3 designated for dishes, 1 designated as a hand washing sink). We were able to find sinks on Facebook marketplace for a great price and then Jason built a sink stand that we were able to attach the to truck. We left the plumbing for the very last project but at least we had sinks! We had paint, sinks, and appliances—we were feeling confident but it was just the beginning.
Part 11: Cutting a Giant Hole in the Side of the Truck
While scouring Facebook for goodies on Marketplace, as one one does late at night, we happened upon some free windows. We needed a window for the food truck and thought “can we just put in a house window to the food truck?” YouTube said maybe and these were free so we said why not? You definitely get what you pay for. Sometimes free or cheap is the best deal ever and it works out. Other times, you end up having to take care of someone else’s actual trash. On the way home from picking up the free windows (there ended up being three free ones), Jason almost drove off the road home because a spider jumped out of one of said windows. Turns out the windows were being replaced with new ones for a good reason, and it wasn’t just the spiders.
We ended up ordering an actual food truck concessions window online and watched a YouTube video and used math to trace out and then cut out the hole in the side of the truck. We genuinely appreciate our mail and delivery men, by the way. There’s so many stairs, on every house. One of our amazing delivery people brought our huge metal food truck window up the stairs like it was a bag of groceries.
Amy used quilting rulers and math to trace out and make a cut line for Jason. Then it was Jason’s turn to cut out a giant hole in the side of the truck. Because it’s an aluminum body, we used a diamond blade instead of a normal angle grinder blade because the aluminum will make a normal angle grinder blade explode. We learned this on YouTube, not in real life lol. Amy stood watch with a hose at hand. When Jason first started cutting through the truck, the blade caught and kicked back. It scared Jason and Amy almost sprayed him. Once there was enough of a hole, Jason used a sawzall to cut the rest of the way through the straights of the window. It went through like butter…well, realllly thick butter…more like dense, dense cheese. A huge, mostly straight, 3 foot, square hole was in the side of the truck!
Luckily we chose a day with clear skies because if we cut the window out the day before or after, we would have been cutting and putting in a window with plugged in power tools in the rain. It even rained about 2 hours after we were done putting in the window. Also lucky (and with experience) we chose materials meant to cure in humid conditions. We’re not bitter.
Hanging the window in the truck was a little stressful. I would say it’s similar to trying to guide someone into backing up a 16 foot trailer, up a driveway that has a serious sudden incline and it always scrapes and catches, but it has to be backed up as close to the garage as possible so that ramps can be put under the front tires and then the driver has to go forward only enough to not get stuck. But after some extra grinding of tight places and some “nope, you need to move more to the left….pivot this way….I think it’s at an angle…..please hurry this is heavy….does it fit?….no….I’ll hold it up and you come inside so you can see….*swaps places and Amy’s holding the window and Jason grinds some more*…you good?….yup…*more grinding*….okay…wanna try it?….*tries, fits*…Yay!…*quickly screws it in.*”
Now we have a concessions window!