‘The once humble can is making a comeback’: Nathanael Mehrens talks ‘Matchless Coffee Soda’

Kevin Assam
Aug 28, 2017 · 8 min read
(L to R) Sean Stewart (Partner), Nathanael Mehrens (Inventor + Partner), Jamie Cunningham (Partner)

Nathanael Mehrens is an entrepreneur and beverage inventor whose creation — ‘Matchless Coffee Soda’ — has gone on to be a success in the Nashville food and drink scene. Along with his core team, he recently decided expand the distribution of this new coffee experience.


Were there distinct experiences you recall growing up that made navigating the process of launching and formalizing your own idea any less daunting?

Nathanael: The funny thing is that I grew up homeschooled in an artistic family, so I never really got any business training. What I did gain from all that was initiative and self-reliance — as well as a certain comfort with being poor — so I have a pretty good combination of naïveté and optimism when it comes to starting new ventures. After launching a few businesses and recording some records, I’m finally getting the hang of things, but deep down, this is still all a creative endeavor. Coffee soda was a thing that existed in my brain, and once it existed in real life, I wanted to share it with everyone.

Coffee beans for ‘Matchless Coffee Soda’ | Carl Schulz

What sort of records and past businesses were you involved with? Did they reveal anything of note about food and drink trends that you would eventually use?

Nathanael: I made a solo record a few years ago that you can find online. Not too long after that, I began working at a great roaster called CREMA doing a lot of R&D and training. They are a major contributor to the coffee scene and helped raise the bar in Nashville. Rachel Lehman — the owner — is like Nashville’s matron of coffee and she set me and my business partner, Sean [Stewart], free to explore and innovate to our hearts’ content. I first put coffee soda on the menu at CREMA and later opened their satellite location in Pinewood where I collaborated with Matt Tocco on some really cool coffee cocktails. That came in handy a couple years later when we opened Steadfast in Germantown and our coffee and cocktail bar Steadfast Commons. I like to think we were able to broaden peoples’ expectations of what coffee can be.

Nathanael demonstrating the flash chill process | Matchless Coffee Soda

What are some of the major drawbacks and advantages of being in Nashville if you’re someone starting out relatively inexperienced but looking to innovate in food and drink?

Nathanael: There is a real excitement around all things culinary here. The food and drink scene has really exploded over the last several years and we’ve been fortunate to be a big part of that. Folks from all over visit Nashville looking for new and interesting things and we’re right there to hand them something delicious they’ve never tried. How cool is that?

Not having a beverage industry as established as a city like Atlanta can be challenging. Thankfully, we have some great contacts down there and we also have a really fantastic partnership with Fat Bottom Brewery here in Nashville. Thanks to our partner Ben Bredesen and Fat Bottom we have all the equipment and know-how to bring coffee soda to the national market.

What do you think caused Nashville’s food and drink scene to really take off?

Nathanael: I think it’s a multi-layered effect owed to increased tourism, a young, transient, and creative population, and the hard work of some very key people. Nashville has become a fantastic melting pot of talent over the past several years and, especially in the beginning, there was a lot of collaboration to move things forward.

‘Matchless Coffee Soda’ | Seiji

Timing is everything and sometimes beyond our control. Is there a particular moment or lucky break that made things click and helped you understand that you should pursue creating products like Matchless Coffee Soda?

Nathanael: We have just been doing our best to respond to demand. As soon as I put the soda on the menu at CREMA, I knew it would be a huge success. What followed over the next few years was really just problem solving for large scale brewing and more market testing at places like Steadfast. Steadfast was the first cafe to serve Matchless Coffee Soda on tap and it ended up being 25% of coffee sales there. Since everyone had been asking for cans, the last piece of the puzzle was Fat Bottom opening their new brewery. That allowed us to increase our production and start packaging in cans.

Matchless Coffee Soda | Mike Vinson

What was the initial testing experience like? Tell me about some of the iterations of Matchless Coffee Soda that we perhaps will never get to taste.

Nathanael: I made a couple versions with espresso and sparkling water that were good, but never really lived up to my expectations, which is why I started carbonating the coffee. I had some chef friends Josh Habiger — Catbird Seat and Bastion — and Erik Anderson — Catbird Seat and Grand Cafe — who I’d bounce different iterations off of. The penultimate recipe had orange juice for acidity but I was unhappy with how much it overpowered the individual flavors of the coffee. Josh actually deserves a lot of credit for getting me to deconstruct the recipe and just use citric acid. After trying that, I knew I had landed on something special.

One cool version we did a little later used sour cherry juice and cherry bitters and tasted like a coffee Cheerwine. My guess is we’ll bring that one back at some point, but we’d also love to do small batch releases that highlight special coffee varieties. Maybe someday you’ll be able to order a Gesha Matchless Coffee Soda.

Are there other flavors and ingredients you would love to try incorporating but just cannot use owing to the various balances of the coffee? Are there coffee pairing sins for instance that one should never commit?

Nathanael: I’m not one to say never, but gin is a pretty tough nut to crack when it comes to coffee. The flavor matrix just doesn’t seem to work well. I’d really love to keep exploring that coffee cocktail realm though and I think Matchless is a perfect way to do that. What’s not to love about sparkling coffee and booze?

Is it easier to convince non-coffee drinkers to get on board and try your beverage given that Matchless Coffee Soda isn’t coffee in an overtly traditional sense?

Nathanael: It can be. We certainly have had lots of people tell us that Matchless is the only way they like to drink coffee. I think because it’s more balanced and drinkable than a regular coffee it can be a lot more accessible for those folks.

Matchless Coffee Soda

You’ve undertaken a crowdfunding campaign to finance the transition to distributing Matchless through canned beverages. How did you know it was time to make the leap? Are you going off of purely financial data?

Nathanael: This transition is something we’ve been working toward for a while and lots of things have come together to make it possible. Serving Matchless at Steadfast the last couple years did give us great financial data, allowed us to work out some of the kinks, and gave us the opportunity to build a solid fan base. The crowdfunding campaign was born out of the folks constantly telling us they would do whatever it took to get coffee soda in their home, city or cafe. We figured it was a great way to get our fans involved in helping us grow to the point where that would be possible.

Have you had to prepare yourself to deal with the stereotype that high quality coffee rarely takes the form of a canned drink?

Nathanael: This is one instance where we are happy not to be the first to market. Fortunately, the specialty coffee industry has been playing with this model for a few years and folks can already buy products from Stumptown and La Colombe in cans. Craft beer has also paved the way for us and canning now seems to be the default packaging for a lot of quality breweries. The once humble can is making a comeback.

Matchless Coffee Soda

Do you believe that to get past an eventual plateau of sales it’s important that you begin marketing Matchless as a “lifestyle” — whatever you interpret that to mean?

Nathanael: It’s kind of hard to get away from that these days. Lifestyle marketing can be obnoxious, sure, but I do think it’s helpful to companies and consumers when brands establish an identity. Figuring out how we fit into people’s lives has been really intriguing. The whole reason we formed this company was in response to the sheer number of people who told us how much they loved our product and needed it in their lives.

Why do you think Matchless will ultimately survive what is typically an extremely competitive and saturated market?

Nathanael: I’m biased of course, but if coffee soda is indeed a viable category I think Matchless can establish itself as the gold standard. We have the best product and we’ve also been doing it for the longest, as far as I can tell. The branding from Dana Tanamachi is beautiful, our production is already rolling at a good clip, and the more people taste it, the more they love it. We have a good shot at defining this category and continuing to set the pace of quality and innovation.


Matchless Coffee Soda | Kickstarter | FB Page

Special thanks to Rachel Van Dolsen

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Interview has been edited and condensed for clarity

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