Amy Brogden, owner of Southern Ground Coffee Shop in Mount Olive, says she strives to make her customers happy. ‘We try really hard to go according to our demand,’ she says. (Kathy Grant Westbrook|mountolivetribune.com)
Southern Ground Coffee Shop employees Amber McCarthy, left, and Azlynn Millard can easily whip up matcha frappes on their own, but sometimes teamwork is just more fun. (Kathy Grant Westbrook|mountolivetribune.com)
One of Southern Ground Coffee Shop’s newest employees, Victoria Outlaw, removes a danish from a case of goodies that also contains muffins, cookies and bagels. (Kathy Grant Westbrook|mountolivetribune.com)
Meme’s Frapp is popular with Southern Ground Coffee Shop customers who love the chocolate and salted caramel combination. (Kathy Grant Westbrook|mountolivetribune.com)
In the midst of holiday shopping, Southern Ground Coffee Shop offers a cozy spot to take a break and relax with a coffee, latte, frappe, apple cider or hot chocolate. (Kathy Grant Westbrook|mountolivetribune.com)
Southern Ground Coffee Shop has outdoor seating for those days when it’s not too chilly outside. (Kathy Grant Westbrook|mountolivetribune.com)
Amy Brogden was selling life insurance when advice from her then-manager on how to improve her sales had an unexpected result. “He said ‘Go to a coffee shop and work. People are nosy. They’ll ask you what you do for a living, and it’ll start conversations, so at least you’ll have contacts even if you don’t make a sale,’” Brogden recalls.
Her response? “’That’s a good thought, but we don’t have a coffee shop in town.’”
So instead of hanging out at a coffee shop, Brogden opened one — Southern Ground Coffee Shop, located in Mt. Olive Centre at the opposite end of the shopping center from Roses.
Prior to selling life insurance, she’d spent her professional life in the brokerage business, in both supervisory and compliance positions. Living and working in Wilmington, she loved her job and was successful. But when the Wayne County native married Mount Olive native Robbie Brogden and returned to the area, she discovered that job opportunities in her field were nonexistent. That’s when she began selling life insurance, a job she did not enjoy.
Driving home from the lunch meeting with her manager, she had two overriding thoughts: One, she wanted to be in another line of work, and two, she mused that someday it might be nice to own a coffee shop.
When she arrived home and shared these thoughts with her husband, he was immediately on board. “My husband’s the kind of person, you don’t mention something to him unless you mean it,” she says.
Indeed. Within three months, in June 2020, the pair opened Southern Ground Coffee Shop in its original location on Henderson Street. The three months between mentioning the idea and bringing it to fruition involved a very steep learning curve for Brogden who admits that she didn’t “know anything about running a business and [didn’t] know anything about coffee other than I like to drink it.”
She has since become well-versed in both.
In October 2021, Southern Ground moved to its current location. Why the move? In addition to more space, the shop also needed a drive-thru. “The drive-thru was a very big deal,” says Brogden. “It probably increased business at least 30 percent, probably closer to 40.”
In the new location, Amy and Robbie worked together to create a space that is comfortable and inviting, and filled with unique touches, such as the countertop they made from a layer of tightly packed coffee beans and epoxy. The shop has numerous seating nooks, as well as a glassed-in room that provides privacy for small get-togethers; it comfortably seats 12 and is available without charge, although groups should call ahead to reserve the space.
Brogden takes pride in the many different flavors customers can choose from when ordering a coffee or latte. “At this time, we probably have close to 60 flavors that we can add into coffees, and we probably have the largest selection, of sugar-free, hands-down, above any other coffee shop around,” says Brodgen.
“We try really hard to go according to our demand; if we have a particular customer that comes in and they’re a frequent customer, and they ask us to carry something in sugar-free or carry a syrup that we don’t normally carry, we do it just for them.”
One of the biggest misconceptions people have about her business is that it caters strictly to coffee drinkers. “If I had a dollar for every person that told me they haven’t come to my shop because they don’t drink coffee, I probably could have opened a second shop by now,” says Brogden. “But we have a lot of different drinks that don’t have coffee because there’s a lot of non-coffee drinkers, and they come to the shop with a coffee drinker just to sit and chat.”
Southern Ground’s frappes are made without coffee, unless otherwise requested by a customer. “We’re probably the only coffee shop that I know that doesn’t make them with coffee automatically, and we do that because we have so many people that like non-coffee drinks,” Brodgen says. The shop also offers hot chocolate, white hot chocolate, and close to 20 fruit-based smoothies. Available food items include muffins, danishes, cookies and bagels.
This time of year, customers are often looking for festive drinks in keeping with the season, and Southern Ground obliges by offering several, including Holiday Cheer (dark chocolate and peppermint), The Gingy (gingerbread and cheesecake), and Snowmiser (eggnog and chai).
Southern Ground Coffee Shop is located at 1037-A N. Breazeale Ave., in Mount Olive. Hours are 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., Monday-Friday, and 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Saturday. For more information, call 919-299-4485.
