Southwest Perk: New Mexico Piñon Coffee celebrates 30 years

A blend of the Southwest is what New Mexico Piñon Coffee brings to the table.

What began in 1994 as a meld of high-quality Arabica coffee beans and piñon pine nuts roasted in a small roaster transformed into the largest coffee roaster in New Mexico.

“Thirty years ago, a gentleman by the name of Jim Franco, started roasting coffee out of the back of his 1950s pickup truck,” said Madison Rumbaugh, director of business development at New Mexico Piñon Coffee. “He was down by (the University of New Mexico) and he had the idea to take the piñon pine nut and throw it in with the coffee. People really loved it and took well to it. So as the company grew, that’s something that he continued to do, and then added flavored coffee on top of that.”

New Mexico Piñon Coffee is made with Arabica coffee beans from Brazil and its decaffeinated coffee is made with beans from Mexico. The company currently offers 10 flavors, with three being piñon. It also offers different roast profiles: light, medium and dark.

The flavored coffee roasts include Adobe Morning, Biscochito, Dulce de Leche, Mexican Spice Chocolate, Piñon Fudge and Vanilla Bourbon, which has toasty and smooth flavors of oak-aged bourbon and notes of vanilla. Adobe Morning is a medium roast Arabica coffee with mild flavors of traditional baking spices with a hint of hazelnut and an aroma of warm cinnamon rolls. The Dulce de Leche emulates the flavors of the popular Latin American dessert of the same name. The medium roast Arabica coffee features subtle hints of creamy caramel and sweet vanilla.

“A lot of it was also really inspired by New Mexico heritage and the Southwest, which is really where you get some unique stuff like piñon fudge and biscochito,” Rumbaugh said.

New Mexico Piñon Coffee is celebrating 30 years of operation with a special release called Birthday Cake. The limited edition coffee has notes of rich buttercream and cake butter with a subtle hint of a vanilla. Birthday Cake is available in bags and single-serve pods at New Mexico Piñon Coffee locations as well as online at nmpinoncoffee.com.

“We really love our lineup,” Rumbaugh said. “We used to have over 50 different flavors, which is just really insane and unmanageable. And so, over the years, we have cut way back. This allows us to do what we do very well. And we can do collaborations and limited time flavors.”

The company boasts about 100 employees across its production warehouse and its coffeehouses. As it continued to grow, custom flavoring was developed for its products, mainly due to U.S. Food and Drug Administration regulations.

“As it’s grown, we came under the watch of the FDA,” Rumbaugh said. “They do not like wild harvest ingredients, which is piñon. There’s no piñon farms that we can source piñón from and so there’s no traceability. We had a custom flavoring developed for us and so that is what’s added. There is no piñon nut in the coffee because of that.”

Rumbaugh said about five years ago the coffee company switched from artificially flavored to naturally flavored coffee. She said all of the coffees are now made with natural ingredients but could not elaborate on the details.

“A lot of this is proprietary to our flavoring company,” she said. “They emulate the flavor and come up with that flavoring.”

New Mexico Piñon Coffee’s reach has extended across state lines. The coffee company’s products are available in grocery stores throughout New Mexico as well as Costco locations in Colorado, Central Market and United Supermarkets in Texas, and Cost Plus World Markets nationwide.

“(The company is) slowly growing out from there,” Rumbaugh said. “We have a ton of random grocery stores in Arizona who order from us and various wholesalers throughout the country. And then we also ship from our website to all 50 states nationwide.”

New Mexico Piñon Coffee will be adding a fourth coffeehouse location in July. It will be off 57th St. and Quail NW on Albuquerque’s West Side.

“We’re really excited,” Rumbaugh said. “It’s been a long time coming so we’re about to open up a new one.”

The company also will be opening a coffeehouse inside the Albuquerque International Sunport in the near future. It is working with Fresquez Companies on the project.

“It’s going to be beautiful,” she said. “I think it’s a really strong lineup of local people that they’ve got on board. We’re really excited. And we’re hoping to open sometime this fall.”

The company will be part of some collaboration releases this year. It has teamed up with Canteen Brewhouse for a special beer release commemorating the brewery’s 30th year of operation. The collaboration beer is expected to be released in late September. New Mexico Piñon Coffee is also teaming up with Zozobra organizers for a special release.

“It’s their centennial this year,” Rumbaugh said of Zozobra. “So that’s really fun and exciting. And we’ll have a special coffee coming out probably towards the end of July for that.”