Meet Kimhak Em and Eugenia Tai of Pair Cupworks in Tempe

Today we’d like to introduce you to Kimhak Em and Eugenia Tai.

So, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
Hello, we are Pair: Kimhak Em – the coffee guy, and Eugenia Tai – the tea enthusiast! We originally moved from the Bay Area, California to the Phoenix Area to help some relatives open up a coffee shop in Tempe. Kimhak has had a lifelong background in culinary and the foodservice industry, and Eugenia has had a past life doing design work. It was a blast to work together and use our strengths to make something new. We eventually parted ways from that first coffee shop, and Kimhak found a great job working at Peixoto Coffee and became further immersed in the specialty coffee world while Eugenia continued her engineering career and took up pottery as a creative outlet. We continued like this for several years, but we always knew we would want to start something of our own again because it was SO fun. After a while, Eugenia started selling some pottery and other drinkware items online. Then, Kimhak began roasting at home and decided to hijack her brand to sell his coffee as well. After a year or so, we came across a great opportunity to start doing pop-ups and now we’re looking forward to getting a permanent establishment soon!

Has it been a smooth road?
We were really bummed that the first shop didn’t pan out for us. But after things settled down, it was a struggle to get our own project started because we were so comfortable in our daily jobs. Over the past several years, we’ve both been working full-time while getting our company off the ground. We’ve always felt lucky and extremely grateful to have found jobs that we love.

One definite challenge was finding a balance on becoming more independent without crossing any boundaries, but Kimhak’s previous employers have always been supportive, and we share their belief that a rising tide raises all ships. We’re really hoping not to incite or perpetuate any animosity with other local coffee shops. Our hope is for the community over competition!

We’re starting super small, and taking very small steps but we are growing steadily. Sometimes we get really great ideas for products but we can’t execute yet because we don’t have the equipment to do so yet, or there will be a great coffee or tea that we want to purchase but need to wait for the financial timing to be right.

One struggle probably all new businesses can relate to is getting people to find out that you exist. Word-of-mouth and exist. Word-of-mouth really helps.

So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the Pair Cupworks story. Tell us more about the business.
We specialize in handmade drinkware and micro-roast coffee, but recently we’ve been doing pop-ups and are slowly transitioning into becoming a full-fledged cafe. Since the company is just the pair of us, we are very lucky that we don’t have any external pressure to put profits over principles, and our top focus can be on quality. Our hope is to be able to bring in interesting coffees and teas and offer them at fair prices. For our drinkware, we try to keep it very minimalist to highlight the beverage and elevate the overall experience.

Because of Kimhak’s culinary background, he has a knack for putting flavors together in a way that is balanced. He’s been able to come up with really unexpected cold brew flavors such as banana cream pie, or mango-pineapple habanero. (Eugenia is constantly victimized by Kimhak’s of “I-told-you-so’s” because he will propose the most outlandish sounding combinations and they ALWAYS turn out so good.) We try not to make things overly sweet and use sweeteners as a way to enhance the drink, not to hide the quality of ingredients, and we try to make as much as possible from scratch. Kimhak is known by his regulars as being extremely approachable and knowledgeable in his craft while keeping it real. All his regular customers know that his secret ingredient is sass. Eugenia tries to give the branding and packaging a more personal touch by creating original artwork and presenting the products in an approachable way while providing the technical information that specialty nerds are looking for.

How do you think the industry will change over the next decade?
We try not to look at trends, we try to take it one day at a time and make our own trends.

I do see the specialty coffee industry growing and being more accepted by the general public, specialty market will eventually normalize.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.paircupworks.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pair.cupworks/

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