For Knoxville resident Andrew Mrozkowski, his life is “kind of like a whirlwind” these days.
“I’m running around doing coffee and my regular job and trying to take care of my home life,” Mrozkowski explained.
By “doing coffee” he means crafting and selling coffee beverages from the mobile cart he pulls behind him on a bicycle.
“My coffee shop is about as big as the back seat of your car,” Mrozkowski said. “It’s three feet long and two feet wide and two feet high.”
It’s called Pedal Java, and from Mrozkowski’s cart you can find the same coffee drinks you’d expect to find at brick-and-mortar shops around town.
Mrozkowski, an Asheville, North Carolina, native, has a history with coffee that is rooted in his lineage.
He recalled a story his mother told him on when Mrozkowski’s grandmother asked her to clear the table, she would sip any remaining coffee left in the mugs on her way to the sink.
“She wanted more than anything to feel like an adult, I think, but also to try something that her parents loved so much and would enjoy after every meal,” Mrozkowski said.
His mother started letting him take sips of her coffee around the age of seven or eight.
“I grew up witnessing coffee being not just a drink, but more of a means of gathering together and communicating and sharing, over coffee, details about your life,” Mrozkowski said.
Aside from his earlier-than-most introduction to coffee and his ongoing obsession with it, Mrozkowski is admittedly an untrained barista. He obtained a B.A. in Music from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro before beginning his career of almost 25 years now as a programmer.
“I worked in the computer lab (during school) and got out during the tech boom,” Mrozkowski said. “Naturally, there were a lot more opportunities to work and make good money as a programmer than there were as a musician.”
And while it may seem an unlikely path to become a programmer before becoming a coffee peddler, such was the case for Mrozkowski.
“The one thing all those programming jobs had in common … They all had horrible coffee,” Mrozkowski said. “It just became insufferable after awhile. I was having to drink terrible coffee. So before long, I was just making my own almost exclusively.”
Mrozkowski would hone his craft over time, learning and teaching himself as he sought to enhance the mundane coffee drinking experiences that were all too common for him. Then he met and fell in love with his wife, and the two moved to Knoxville.
It would be on a trip back home to Asheville at the end of last summer that would inspire Mrozkowski to take his love for coffee and turn it into Pedal Java.
“I spotted a guy, downtown Asheville, on a coffee bike,” Mrozkowski said. “I thought, ‘I think Knoxville’s ready for something like this.’”
Knowing he would have a lot to learn to make this idea work, Mrozkowski thought the best method would be to just jump in and do it.
“I don’t take many chances, and, as sort of a pragmatic programmer type, I’ve never been one to just wing it until I built this cart,” Mrozkowski said.
But while being in the coffee business would be a new experience for Mrozkowski, crafting coffee itself was nothing new to him.
“The actual coffee I’m producing is from years of experimentation and years of perfecting the techniques and tools that I use to make the coffee,” Mrozkowski said. “These tools have been proven over and over in countless office break rooms and countless camping trips and vacations.”
As Mrozkowski sought to merge his hobby into a business, it was important that he kept things local. From the coffee beans to the milk, he set out to find Knoxville’s best.
“A lot of the coffee I was finding was coming from one certain roaster here in town,” Mrozkowski said. “The ones that I kept sampling and really loving were consistently coming from The Golden Roast.”
Don Payne, owner of The Golden Roast Coffee House & Roastery, said he was eager to partner with Mrozkowski when he reached out to him about becoming a supplier.
Enticed by the interesting concept of Pedal Java and by his own interest in biking, Payne was eager to connect with Mrozkowski — whom he could tell was really passionate about the venture.
“When you see a picture of him smiling, serving coffee to somebody, it’s sincere,” Payne said. “He’s not trying to market anything; he’s just doing what he likes to do. That pays off. People know when you’re truly passionate about what you’re doing.”
Payne thinks that Mrozkowski is smart to take Pedal Java to underserved coffee areas across town, and he thinks that this, paired with everything Mrozkowski brings to the experience, will ensure his success.
“I think he has positioned himself greatly for where coffee is trending and how the industry is changing,” Payne said. “I think he has a bright future.”
As for what’s next, Mrozkowski says he’s working on a second cart with nitrogen infused iced coffee. After that, who knows, but Pedal Java seems to be receiving a warm welcome into the community.
“Call it an addiction, call it an affliction, call it whatever you want … For me, coffee is a lot more wrapped into lots of different aspects of my life,” Mrozkowski said.
Andrew Mrozkowski serves customers outside of Mast General Store on Gay Street.
