Nov. 2, 2022

This paid piece is sponsored by Vanguard Hospitality.

Dine at Vanguard Hospitality restaurants, and your coffee will be anything but an afterthought.

The Sioux Falls group, which owns Grille 26, Minervas in downtown Sioux Falls and Morrie’s Steakhouse, has built a strong partnership with Sioux Falls-based Coffea Roasterie to provide carefully selected coffees for the three restaurants.

“I think what stands out about Coffea is they’ve always placed themselves in the market as quality and do their sourcing with real knowledge of the product,” Vanguard chief operating officer Tim Meagher said. “That’s what attracted us to approach them.”

At Coffea, 13 years in business have led the company to work with farmers in Guatemala, Colombia, Brazil and throughout Africa.

“We’ve been able to establish those relationships with farmers and communities that we’ve been able to work with again and again, year after year,” co-owner and CEO Darin Kaihoi said. “There’s a wide variety of origins we work with, but we’ve really had a lot of fun and success solidifying our relationships in Central and South America.”

The partnership with Vanguard to bring coffee into its restaurants is “a really special one for me,” said Dan Sinkgraven, Coffea’s wholesale director. “I get to see our coffees that we’ve worked really hard at sourcing and roasting brought to the final level to be served really well. I can have the confidence that the customer is going to have a great opportunity to enjoy that coffee how we intended it and how the producer intended it to be enjoyed.”

The dynamic, chef-driven menus at Vanguard restaurants are filled with local partnerships, which makes the relationship even more rewarding, he added.

For many people, coffee is seen as almost mechanical, Meagher said — a way to get a boost of energy.

“But we look at it in the same way we do with nuanced flavors and textures,” he said.

So coffee, which is frequently an afterthought, is very much an intentional part of the meal.

“They actually care,” Kaihoi said. “They just go the distance with what they’re pursuing. It’s energizing for us to have Tim, Ken, Josh, the rest of the team come in and be excited about what we’re doing. That gives us the energy to just pursue these things even harder because we know we have local partnerships that are right there alongside us.”

Coffea Roasterie is one of multiple relationships Vanguard Hospitality has established with local partners. For details, see below.

From farm to table, new Morrie’s menu additions lift up local producers

Restaurant group, egg producer partner to bring farm-fresh eggs to diners