‘Cloud Forest Cortado’ part of celebration

By Chris and Andy Morgan

White Rock Coffee is a local icon today but, two decades ago, it was a fledgling enterprise operated by a young couple with an espresso machine, a coffee bean roaster and a lot of ambition.

This May 28, White Rock Coffee (WRC) will celebrate 20 years of roasting, brewing and “connecting the community over coffee,” said Spencer Gunnels, White Rock’s manager of personnel.

Nancy and Bob Baker opened the first White Rock Coffee in Lake Highlands on Northwest Hwy. It’s a distinctive building wrapped with white stone and corrugated metal siding.

“In 2005, what really set us apart was that we were roasting our own coffee,” Gunnels said. “Nancy would be pulling shots, working the espresso machine, while Bob was roasting the coffee just a few feet away.”

The couple sold brewed coffee, a few specialty drinks and bags of freshly roasted beans in paper bags labeled with a sticker or Sharpie scrawl.

White Rock’s second store, the drive-up at Mockingbird and Abrams, opened in 2010. Today, White Rock Coffee manages seven locations in central and East Dallas. The newest is in downtown Lakewood, in a space once occupied by an international coffee empire. 

WRC plans to open another location in the near future.

WRC also has about 90 full-time employees, including baristas, roasters, bakers and delivery drivers, all to keep its locations stocked with fresh coffee, baked goods and merchandise. WRC also runs a bakery and roastery in a nearby location not open to the public. 

White Rock Coffee also operates its own coffee brew lab in a former Jack in the Box next to its Lake Highlands store. The lab is certified by the global Specialty Coffee Association, one of the few labs with that distinction in Texas.

There, WRC employees test new coffee bean blends and coffee drinks to keep the store menu fresh and the customers coming back for more. And it’s here that classes are offered for both baristas and the public. 

On a recent Friday, Wes Ballard brewed up a sample of Columbian coffee fermented with strawberries from the same farm where the beans were picked. Ballard — an 11-year WRC employee — is director of education and creative operations. 

For the anniversary, WRC baristas will also concoct a Cloud Forest Cortado that was developed by Ballard and Patrick Cantu, the manager of education. 

Cloud Forest, Ballard said, is the nickname for the Ethiopian forest where arabica coffee is grown. The drink includes espresso or cold brew infused with cascara (skin of coffee beans) syrup, topped with cold foam (the cloud) and a spritz of jasmine.

In addition, White Rock Coffee is selling anniversary T-shirts, special mugs and, of course, special coffee drinks. And they created a special 20th anniversary blend (pictured) with a slogan on its bag: “Connecting Community Over Coffee.”

It’s that connection that resonates with Gunnels. He was a regular customer of WRC in Lake Highlands for a decade before hiring on as a barista. 

“I always enjoyed the coffee shop experience and just sharing life over a cup of coffee,” he said. “I knew how I’d been treated as a customer for so long. I was curious if that was the same on the other side of the bar. Connecting people through a common love of coffee has been a pretty strong ‘why’ of ours.” 

Gunnels worked as a WRC barista during the pandemic and said staying open during that time was a priority for the Bakers and the company. “We wanted to always be the kind of beacon of life for people to draw them back to community,” he said.

He recalled a nurse pulling up to the drive-thru window and thanking him for being open during that time.

“I said, ‘you all, nurses, doctors, you all are the heroes.’ And she replied back, ‘No, y’all are the heroes because I have to have my coffee to be able to do this.’”

“We’ve just tried to be authentically real humans trying to serve our neighborhood,” Ballard said. “And I think over time people really catch on it. Because you can sense when it’s not authentic.”

Ballard said all WRC employees are committed to serving up great customer service, but just as important, serving up a great product. The lab is an important part of that commitment, he said. 

“We started investing in the community, teaching classes, investing in our staff, elevating our training and then exposing ourselves to better and better coffee,” Ballard said. “It’s not a magical marketing scheme that we thought would fix our problem and competition. It was just simply being better at who we’ve already been.”

For years, the Bakers have traveled to coffee-growing countries — called “going to origin” — to find the best coffee beans. Ballard, too, has trekked to Costa Rica and Columbia for WRC.

“Go to the source, go find out where your products are coming from,” he said. “See the people that are making it and watch how it transforms the way you do work. Every time I put coffee in the grinder, there’s an understanding within me, like there was a lot of love and care that went into this.”