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By jill Nagy
Just past her one-year anniversary, Leslie Swedish is finding Moxxi Coffee Co., her new coffee business, “nothing short of a pleasure.”
The company sells its own blends of coffee online and through retail outlets and “business is going really well.”
Swedish designs the blends—there are six so far—in cooperation with Chris’ Coffee Service in Latham. Chris’ imports the coffees and roasts and mixes the blends to her order. Coffees are organic and fair-traded.
Typically, there are between two and four varieties to a blend. The three basic blends are blond ambition, a four-bean blend of lightly roasted coffees; bold ambition, a dark roast blend of monsoon and Malabar coffees; and wild ambition, an “almost espresso” blend of extra dark Peruvian and Indian coffees.
In addition, Swedish has concocted three varieties of herbal and botanical infused coffee blends: relax, refocus, and revive. A winter blend is under development. Swedish also offers a variety of coffee mugs.
For every item sold, the company donates $1 to the Moxxi Women’s Foundation that makes grants “to support ambitious women in the Capital region.” The foundation, nonprofit charitable corporation, has been active since last March. Grantees include a local woman who sells soaps and candles and will use the grant money to buy a tumbler for polishing stones.
So far, all retail sales are online. However, a small brick and mortar outlet is under construction in Stillwater near Swedish’s home at 1005 Route 32. It will house the company and foundation headquarters and a small retail outlet.
Will she sell coffee by the cup? “Absolutely not,” she said, “I watch my husband (Scott Swedish, owner of Saratoga Coffee Traders) and I don’t want that.”
Moxxi’s coffee blends are on the shelves of about a dozen retail outlets in the Capital Region, including Crafters Gallery in Saratoga Springs, Candy Cottage in Latham, the Open Door Bookstore in Schenectady, and Cardona’s Italian market in Saratoga Springs.
“The feedback has been fantastic. We’ve gotten a pretty good success rate,” she said.
Swedish got into the coffee business when a late-life pregnancy interrupted a former career as a hair stylist. The combination of working with harsh chemicals and standing on her feet all day, along with the pandemic-related restrictions on the beauty business, made it impractical to continue in that line of work, she decided.
The baby will be two years old in November and Swedish marvels at how different being a new mother is now than it was 20 years ago when her older children were born. The youngest, at 20, recently left home.
So far, Moxxi is a one-woman show.
“I am very busy,” she said. As soon as financially feasible she plans to hire help and, eventually, concentrate on the foundation while someone else runs the coffee business.
You can reach Swedish at moxxicoffee@gmail.com or at 518 226-5982.