Story by Lacey Eibert Keigley
Photos by Jane Howard Photography
His history with coffee is much longer than his history with Bridge City – and that’s long too. Brandon Nelson has been rising up through the ranks of Bridge City for more than seven years. He might’ve started as part time and behind the counter, but now he’s full time and he’s Bridge City’s official coffee roaster. Not only that, Brandon Nelson is also the first black coffee roaster in Greenville County. Brandon’s years of working in the coffee industry number greater than the tattoos on his arms.
Some of his earliest coffee experiences came from learning with Tara Edens at the TR coffee icon of Leopard Forest. Both Brandon and Tara were students at North Greenville University.
Although his obsession and, in his words – geeking out, over coffee have been a part of his life for decades, becoming the first black coffee roaster in Greenville County was not his original mastermind. “It wasn’t planned,” Brandon jokes, soft spoken but comfortable in his element. We’re in the roasting space for Bridge City in Travelers Rest.
Brandon shares that when he first connected with the Bridge City team, he was shadowing another Upstate coffee icon – Will Shurtz. Will was roasting Methodical’s coffee back then when Methodical only had one store in Greenville.
Brandon starts the process of crafting a pour over while we chat and Jane snaps photos in the early evening, just after the work hours are ending for the day.
Actually, the meeting of Brandon and Greg Ward, Bridge City’s owner, began with a conversation about art and not coffee. “I was working on a piece featuring Dietrich Bonhoeffer,” Brandon shares. Greg stopped him, himself a big fan of Bonhoeffer, and wanted to hear Brandon’s story. By the end of the conversation, Brandon had an invitation to stop by Bridge City and that stop in led to a job offer and by the summer of 2018, Brandon was learning the roasting business.
By just the following summer, Brandon was fully invested, even down to the Bridge City tattoo.
The coffee smell is strong and Brandon pours Jane a cup as he reminisces about those early days. His history of both art and coffee is tangled in local roots and tangled in local coffee, at various levels. After graduating from North Greenville University for a second time (the first was an Associates Degree, but he returned later to secure a Bachelor’s Degree), he found his way in coffee to Starbucks – right in Cherrydale for a season. The years spent at Starbucks were a spring board to a deep dive into coffee and coffee culture and roasting and behind the scenes customer service.
Not unlike Brandon’s first conversation with Greg of Bridge City, I met Brandon over art in a coffee shop too. I was at a meeting and saw Brandon working on an incredible painting at one of the tables at Bridge City and we started chatting that day, which led to this interview and this story. (It all connects always, doesn’t it? I’m a solid believer in right time, right place.)
Brandon feels passionate about relaying excellence – straight to the consumer. It matters to him. As we talk, he confesses humbly that the words are hard to come by, but I assure him they’re coming out just fine. “I do this better than I talk,” Brandon says, gesturing to the pour over, the coffee grinder, the beans. “I found out recently that I’m neurodivergent,” he continues, opening up and sharing his story vulnerably and generously.
We talk over coffee in the Bridge warehouse and we stay awhile on the topic of art and coffee and their relationship to one another, how so often art is created in coffee shops and artists are drawn to these places of community. Life inspiring art. Art inspiring life.
“It’s all art, anyway, to me” Brandon says. “I have different ways of expressing it. It wasn’t my plan to be a coffee roaster, but it’s been a form of expression to me.”
He’s currently working on several art projects with his church and explains the challenges of the combining it all – his thoughts, his history, his art, his future, his goals, his hopes, his love of Jesus. Brandon uses art, poetry and coffee to pull all this together, and the combination is pretty stunning and incredibly unique.
Art opens doors. It can start hard conversations. Coffee is a universal love language. And sometimes – both art and love languages can make us uncomfortable. And discomfort is one of the ways we all learn to grow. “It’s easy to keep old habits – it’s hard to embrace news ones,” Brandon says, leaning against the counter. “It’s hard to believe in grace and forgiveness when things are repeated over and over by choice – I call it my wilderness journey. It feels alone, but I know it isn’t.”
“People need to do their homework – they can’t rely on people of color alone to do their work,” Brandon shares. And we delve into all sorts of topics, just like this one and it might sound heavy, but it really wasn’t.
It was a conversation in a coffee roastery and it was woven in with chatter about art and coffee and love and inclusion and these words that are buzz-y but have a meaning and a depth beyond this era.
“Everything that is already baked into our nation plays into the coffee shops too,” Brandon shares. And I know, because this is how life works. “We don’t have to say it – it’s just there.”
“I’ve got something to say – through my art, through my coffee.” Brandon wipes down the counter between us. “Being someone of color in this industry – I’m going to tell you like it is – it’s pretty colonized and has been that way for centuries. The first beans were stolen in the 1600s before Africans were stolen and put on slave ships. This work is a way for me to give my respects to where this coffee originates, to honor their resilience.”
He pauses to offer another cup. Our attention is locked in. “It’s easy to take this for granted. But for me – I get to be a part of the narrative by doing this and by doing this with excellence.”
Brandon is in it for the long haul. “I want to do this until I retire from it,” he says.
As Brandon points out, even his presence in the roasting world is a piece of a solution to bringing a bigger picture not only to the coffee industry, but also to our lives and to our perspectives. “I hope, even with these beans, that people are like – yes, coffee is amazing – and also coffee is hands in the soil and we’re all humans who are bleeding the same blood and we are all a part of all this.”
He expressed his hope that what he’s saying makes sense – and I affirm to him, it does.
His words are valuable – his work is too.
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