Staying grounded

Each morning, the 6 a.m. opening time at O’Henry’s Coffee is more or less the same as it’s always been: the gentle tap, tap, tap on the door, with one or a few long-time, sleepy-looking customers holding their empty coffee mugs out, waiting for the aroma of freshly-ground coffee to waft out into the street as the door opens.

“I love it,” O’Henry’s owner Randy Adamy said, smiling at the early-morning memories. “They’ll just point to their mug.”

As of November, O’Henry’s Coffee is celebrating 25 years in the coffee business with the Homewood store — its first location — which has since been followed by three other locations in the surrounding Birmingham area, in addition to one in Tuscaloosa. Oftentimes, locals think O’Henry’s Coffee is a lot bigger of a company than it actually is, Adamy said, when in fact, it’s still very much “a family affair.”

“We’ve just been here for so long … We are still pretty much a small company, mom and pop,” he said. “I think some people are wired for hospitality to serve others, and I think I found that to be true.”

For the anniversary, Adamy and his family have been sharing their story with O’Henry patrons, in addition to offering a specially-made anniversary brew, which can be bought in-store. 

Since the beginning, O’Henry’s has been the kind of place people find their way back to, he said.

‘ALL ABOUT RELATIONSHIPS’

When he first met the founder, Adamy said he knew Dr. Henry Bright as “a phenomenal southern gentlemen,” someone smart and completely fascinated with good coffee. 

In early 1992, Bright, a 30-year orthodontist, decided to start researching in order to open a specialty coffeehouse in Homewood.

“His wife and his family loved coffee, and he had a little espresso machine at home when nobody did,” Adamy said. “Dr. Bright was all about relationships with people. He wanted people to come to his coffeehouse and meet and talk.”

Back then, Adamy added, coffeeshops weren’t popular like they are today, and “there were no coffee houses in Birmingham.” 

“If you were to say, ‘Let’s go out for coffee,’ you would probably go to a diner like Waffle House or that sort of thing,” he said. “Starbucks was still 10 years away from coming to Birmingham.”

For more than a year as he continued as an orthodontist, Bright began reading and studying and taught himself how to make espresso drinks. Halfway through the process, he decided he wanted to roast his own coffee beans. 

“That was huge,” Adamy said. “…What we do here is essentially we are a coffee factory, and that is a part of the business people maybe don’t know, that we roast our own coffee.”

Bright then hired someone to teach him how to use a roaster and took extensive notes on the brewing — notes Adamy said he still uses today — as he tested coffee flavors and began to buy and roast beans from all over the world. Then Bright bought the building on 2831 18th St. S., which previously housed Shades Mountain Bank, and worked to renovate it into a coffeehouse setting. In November 1993, he officially opened the first O’Henry’s in Homewood.

Bright also came up with the original recipes for the coffee, most of which are still in use today because “it’s hard to improve on something that is already really good,” Adamy said.

O’Henry’s quickly became a local legend, Adamy said, drawing merchants on 18th Street for a cup of coffee before they opened up their shops each morning, as well as college students from UAB and Samford, then a larger audience from all over Birmingham.

“If you think about it, coffeehouses are one place you can go by yourself, and you don't feel funny. … You’ll have students, you’ll have business people and little Bible studies and some people with pierced body parts and tattoos all sitting next to each other and nobody cares, nobody cares. I think it’s just wonderful, and it’s quite an institution,” Adamy said. “It became a local gathering spot, and from day one, it was just about building relationships.”

Adamy originally moved from Texas with his wife and twin daughters to Birmingham to work for the grocery company Bruno’s, but less than a year into the job, the company filed for bankruptcy. Shortly after finding out the news, he ran into someone associated with O’Henry’s who told him that the owner was looking to sell the Homewood store, along with his roasting company, which had been open for five years. 

Even though Adamy had only been in the coffeeshop a couple of times, he talked to Bright and ended up buying it. Bright spent more than a year working meticulously with Adamy to show him how to run the company, and his wife also came on part-time.

“We quickly learned there is no part time when you own your own business,” Adamy said.

After their daughters started school, she became full-time, managing all the paperwork, pay-stubs, taxes, marketing function, human resources and other detail-oriented work, while he handled the rest. 

“Our two girls started working in the business when they were 6 years old,” Adamy said. “We had a VCR with Disney movies, and one of us would pick them up from kindergarten and bring them to the office and they’d watch movies and label bags.”

Adamy chuckles that even though they hated it back then, his daughters learned how to do more and more in the company and when they turned 17 years old, they were hired as baristas — which they ended up loving, he said. 

“They fit in, and they took more pride in it,” he said. 

As O’Henry’s has expanded and Adamy has brought more people in to help, he said having a small business remains tough at times, but for the most part “he has many, many more good days than bad.”

MAINTAINING INTEGRITY

Today, O’Henry’s Roasters also sells beans to about 90 company customers, mostly in Alabama and around the Southeast, Adamy said. 

The most important aspect of the company, though, Adamy said, “is to maintain the integrity of what O’Henry’s stands for” through slow and careful expansion, where the quality, environment and hospitality stay the same as they always have over the years.

“I feel like over 25 years, the atmosphere and sense of community and hospitality that we try to provide our guests is something to be proud of,” Director of Wholesale Mike McElwain said. 

McElwain said the quality is maintained because there’s been a lot of investment “from the ground up.”

“As we get bigger, it’s tough. A couple of years ago, I knew every employee by name and probably knew if they were in school or something, a detail of their life, and that has become more difficult,” Adamy said.

Despite that, McElwain and Adamy continue to bring every single new employee to their Homewood office to get to know them and make sure they understand the culture and foundation of the company. 

Since they took on the company, Adamy said one of his favorite aspects of the job is working with the younger barista employees as they navigate what is often their first job. O’Henry’s has had several employees get married who used to work together, and many who found their “real jobs” after developing relationships with their customers. Bright still visits the Homewood store and can occasionally be found testing roaster samples in the office, too.

“I think [Bright] is proud. He went from being the father to being the grandfather,” Adamy said

The local company has been sharing their story with their customers this year for the anniversary. Adamy and his wife still primarily run the company themselves, and though his daughters are now nurses, they still come in to bake homemade pastries for all the stores.

“It’s wonderful, I get to see them once a week,” Adamy said. “They take pride in what O’Henry’s is, and they want to be still involved.”

In 2019, O’Henry’s plans to open a storefront in Hoover, as well as return to Samford University, where they previously had a location before  Starbucks bought out that location.

To learn more, go to ohenryscoffees.com.