This story is part of WTOP’s Small Business September coverage. Each week, WTOP will be highlighting small businesses across the D.C. region, along with financial, government and other organizations that help our small business community thrive.
Looking for that caffeinated boost every morning but want it with a serving of weird? A small batch roaster in Northern Virginia is ready to take your order.
“We take our coffee seriously, but we never take ourselves too seriously,” said Paul Olsen, owner of Weird Brothers Coffee. “We wanted to create a coffee that stood apart from the regular, pretentious, kind of highfalutin coffeehouses. We wanted to make it more of a fun-loving vibe for all.”
The names of its packaged coffees and specialty drinks are clever nods to movies and music, including its bestselling “Beware The Dark Side” and “Weird and Fierce” coffee beans. While the former serves as an ode to the Star Wars franchise, the latter tips its hat to the Harry Potter series, complete with lightning bolt font and a cartoon Hagrid on a flying motorcycle.
The coffee house’s specialty drinks include the J.R.R. Tolkien-inspired “Elven Blade” and the “Dark Star,” a sweet and spicy dark chocolate and Azteca syrup concoction inspired by both Star Wars and The Grateful Dead.
“We’re always coming up with new, funky things, and I have found that adding those fun names to the drinks really gets people pumped up and excited about them as well,” Olsen said.
But the coffee itself is the main attraction. Weird Brothers imports beans from roughly a dozen countries and roasts them in-house to get that perfect balance. A 20-kilogram drum roaster takes about 30 minutes to fire up. Only after that can employees roast up to four batches of beans an hour.
“There’s a little more nuance than just the length of time. We actually have control over the air volume and the speed of the drum and the power of the heat,” Olsen said.
Olsen founded Weird Brothers Coffee with his brother, Kenny Olsen, around a decade ago after he retired from the U.S. Army as a noncommissioned officer. They sold their roasted coffee from a truck in office parks and at events.
The brothers found success and opened their first brick-and-mortar coffee shop and roasting location in the Sunset Business Park in Herndon, Virginia.
But tragedy struck a few months later: Kenny died of an overdose.
“It was devastating. It was very hard,” Olsen said. “He’s my only brother, and this was a lifelong dream we had together. It hurt tremendously.”
He added, “We were able to move forward because we knew that’s what he would have wanted.”
Olsen described his brother as one of the “biggest-hearted” people that he had ever known, with a generosity as hearty as the coffee he roasted.
In the spirit of his brother’s giving nature, Olsen and Weird Brother Coffee collaborate with many area businesses, schools and nonprofits, specifically focusing on mental health issues.
The business offers internships and work experiences to students through nearby high school special education programs. It also works closely with the Chris Atwood Foundation, a nonprofit focused on addiction awareness and recovery.
Connections and community are the key components for the Weird Brother Coffee team, according to Olsen.
“Not only do I get to create an environment and experience for people to come and not just enjoy great coffee, but to enjoy kinship and friendship and make connections with each other,” he said.
Like many small businesses, Weird Brothers entered a difficult and tumultuous time during the COVID-19 pandemic, but managed to stay afloat by launching curbside coffee delivery, then reopening its doors as soon as it was allowed. During that period, the decision to provide curbside service proved pivotal for several customers.
“One of them actually told us that she felt like we saved her life,” Olsen said, “because her and a lot of other customers had nobody else when everything shut down. They were kind of stuck in their house by themselves. They had family across the country, and they had nowhere else to go, nowhere else to be. And we became one of their only outlets they could go to actually connect with people and talk to people and have a conversation.”
While connecting with coffee-loving customers is important to Olsen, he also sees himself as a coach and mentor to Weird Brothers Coffee employees.
“All of our managers and all of our folks that have a lot more responsibility within the company have all come up from being baristas, all the way to what they’re doing now,” he said.
He credits his military background for his efforts to develop the team’s skills, which can mean tapping an employee’s creativity to design spunky pop culture-inspired labels or empowering the next generation of roasters.
“One of the things I pride myself on is having been able to not just build the business but build a team and build a process that is able to mentor and lift people up and develop,” he said.
Weird Brothers Coffee has two locations in Herndon, one in Leesburg, and a new store that opened last month in Vienna.
At the location WTOP visited, many of the customers were regulars who did not even need to announce their order before baristas fired up the espresso machine.
“I tell my people all the time that we always have to remember, ‘Yes, we make coffee, we’re in the coffee business, but the real secret is that we’re in the people business,’” Olsen said.
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