How KARGA Helps the Espresso Flow at Yalecrest Coffee & Bakes

Starting a mobile coffee business is no small undertaking. You don’t know what you don’t know. Which is to be expected. You’re talking about a coffee shop on wheels that is set up and broken down every day you open. Which in my case, are weekends in my hometown of Salt Lake City.

This is a passion project.  My weekend “side hustle” if you will. I love good coffee and after 14 years in Utah and not being able to find an acceptable espresso, I decided to do it myself. This meant building out a custom cart, finding a coffee partner (thank you Brooklyn-based Devocion Coffee), training to be a barista in NYC, choosing where to post up and banking on the hunch that my neighborhood wanted this sort of community based, personal approach to meet their caffeine needs.

The other variable to this equation is getting everything packed up in my Tacoma for set up and as noted, break down. This is a bigger deal than I could have imagined. You’re talking about moving a $5600 expresso machine along with a generator, grinder, baked goods and all the accessories that accompany a coffee shop on wheels. Of which there are many. But nothing is more critical to the business than the La Marzocco Mini Espresso Machine.

These machines are fine tuned. They require daily care after each shift. Compared to what most of us use at home, this is high touch with a good number of moving parts. This means I need a stable platform in my truck on which to transport this each day. It also must help me optimize the space in the back of a Tacoma. Which is somewhat limited once you start packing things at 6:15 am on Saturday.

This is where the KARGA 40% Over the Seat has proven to be a god send. It fits perfectly into the back seat on the passenger side of the truck. And provides the stability needed to get this to and from with confidence. It’s like it was custom made not just for my truck, but for the espresso machine. Throw on a few Voile straps to help secure things and we’re off to get the day (and latte’s) rolling.

A few sidenotes that I assume anyone reading this may be curious about:

First, yes, assembly is easy. I’m not the most “mechanically” gifted person, but this is simple. I just watched the YouTube video and had it together in 8 minutes.

Second, it comes out easily when not needed. Like when my 20-year-old college kid needs to borrow my rig for he and a few friends to go hit one of our local skate parks.

To summarize, the KARGA has made my weekend coffee set up easy, fast and secure. Can’t ask for much more.