Snowing In Space, Grit Coffee Merge Operations Under Bread & Table

Martín Caballero

Bread & Table, the parent company of Virginia-based roaster and retailer Grit Coffee, has acquired specialty coffee brewer Snowing In Space.

Who is Snowing In Space?

Since launching in 2016, Charlottesville, Virginia-based Snowing In Space has developed into a well-known regional player in the RTD refrigerated nitro cold brew market, known for its colorful packaging and highly caffeinated brews (close to 300mg per 12 oz. can). Prior to the pandemic, keg service for office and other food service accounts was a significant portion of the company’s business, which has since pivoted to packaged whole bean coffee directed at conventional grocery.

Anchored by a single cafe location in Charlottesville, Snowing In Space had made a push into regional grocery accounts, distributing its own products — as well as cold-chain items for fellow Mid-Atlantic beverage brands Wild Kombucha (Baltimore) and Sunomi Switchel (Washington, D.C.), as well as Whisked! Cookies and Pies — using its own fleet of trucks, both refrigerated and ambient. As of 2020, the brand had both cold brew and packaged coffee in over 1,000 retailers, including Whole Foods, Giant, Martin’s and The Fresh Market. The company recently moved to a new 10,000 sq. ft. production facility.

Who is Bread & Table?

Under the guise of parent company Bread & Table, University of Virginia alumni Brandon Wooten, Brad Uhl and Dan FitzHenry are seeking to establish a structured management group that can carry the company forward as its interests expand.

The company’s first venture — specialty roaster and retailer Grit Coffee, founded in 2014 — evolved from a side project while the group was running their creative service firm, ID Company, to a full-time business with six cafe locations, the most recent one opening in Richmond. With COVID-19 pushing the cafes to takeout-only, the company developed its e-commerce business during the past year, offering packaged beans direct-to-consumer and at retailers such as Whole Foods (Virginia) and other independent stores through Rainforest Distribution.

The group also owns The Wool Factory, a historic 19th century mill complex that is home to three businesses it also controls: Selvedge Brewing, The Workshop, and Broadcloth. Bread & Table also owns French patisserie Cou Cou Rachou.

Having run each business separately up until that point, the pandemic caused the group to reimagine a structure to best support its strategic aims: the result being Bread & Table, with Wooten as chief brand officer, FitzHenry as COO and Uhl as CEO.

How does this fit with Grit Coffee?

Placing Snowing In Space underneath the Grit Coffee umbrella is designed to fuel both companies’ ambitions to grow beyond their current respective regional footprints, according to the team at Bread & Table.

The two companies have worked together for years: Snowing in Space had been producing a cold brew made with Grit’s flagship blend for several years, and the founders of each come with a background in graphic design. With both scaling at a similar pace, there had been ongoing discussions about furthering their partnership prior to the pandemic.

While Snowing in Space and Grit have a presence in similar regions, merging the two brands helped plug gaps in their respective channel coverage, said Snowing in Space co-founder Paul Dierkes. His company brings cold brew manufacturing muscle and refrigerated trucks, while Grit will help put the brand in front of cafe customers to help pilot new product innovations. Dierkes hopes that aligning with Grit will bring efficiencies in its distribution: Rather than running three to four trucks from Charlottesville to Washington, D.C. twice a week, localized distribution could potentially be run out of a retail location in the city, he said.

“One of the really exciting things for me is that it’s really a parent company of diverse businesses that all make sense together,” Dierkes said. “They have a bakery and a brewery and the Grit locations — there’s a lot going on, and these things can all play well together.”

“That conversation with Snowing in Space came out of all of us collectively trying to figure out how to navigate the reality of COVID and what was happening with our coffee shops, what was happening with their office customers, and really wanting to put our heads together on running a more efficient business,” said Uhl. “There’s a lot of good overlap in terms of operations and logistics that we were already doing on the roasting side with things they were already doing on the production and brewing and canning and kegging and distribution side.”

With Grit taking a more traditional aesthetic approach to Snowing In Space’s loud, loopy style, Dierkes said he’s confident that each can establish its own lane and customer base.

“We are still in the early days of figuring out what does the collaboration look like — is it something where they are more tied together?,” said Uhl. “That’s yet to be figured out, and kind of the fun aspect of this whole process.”