Narrative Coffee Writes a New Chapter in Everett

It was the “pop up” that could.

Maxwell Mooney started selling gourmet coffee at Wetmore Plaza last summer. He stood in front of the yellow tile walls of the Cope Gillette Theatre wearing a leather apron. Max and his employees worked from a mobile cart mounted with a sea foam green espresso machine. They offered a rotating pour over coffee menu and a relaxed open air atmosphere.

For three months, the stand was a local summer hangout spot. It was the cart in the shade by the fountain. Nice people worked there. By summer’s end, Narrative had earned a devoted following via word of mouth and social media.

Max closed the stand for the season on October 1st. On that day, there was a line of customers that stretched across the plaza. Dozens of people waited in blustery weather while Max meticulously handcrafted back to back fall-flavored drinks, hosting one customer at a time until supplies ran out. Then he closed shop and called it a day.

So it goes. What pops up must pop down.

But that was the beginning of the story.

Maxwell Mooney has just signed a five-year lease on a storefront in North Everett that will serve as the flagship for Narrative Coffee. The shop is scheduled to open in early 2017, with plans to expand the company to three sites in Snohomish County by 2021.

The storefront is located at 2927 Wetmore Avenue, two blocks south of Wetmore Plaza. It’s strategically placed near county buildings, new hotels, and the walkable downtown core. I stopped by the new Narrative location on a windy, gray Monday afternoon to check it out.

The place has tall brick walls. The interior is a bright and welcoming area even on a rainy day. I looked up and saw four giant skylights and exposed ceiling beams. Classy joint.

The floor is covered in rectangles of blue masking tape, the outlines of future counters and other fixtures.

In the middle of the empty space, Max had set up a small improvised coffee bar made out of a pallet balanced on two sawhorses (I guess the guy can pop up anywhere). Max poured Kenyan coffee into blue enameled camping mugs.

We sat on folding chairs in the empty space and talked shop.

Brick-and-mortar Narrative will serve breakfast and lunch. “I don’t want the food to be an afterthought,” Max said of the menu he‘s planning. Everything will be made in-house. There will be a rotating selection of seasonally-focused hand pies as well as savory liege waffles. His wife Julia, an experienced baker, is developing recipes. She is currently testing chocolate chip cookie recipes on Max. I want to volunteer to test cookies.

The company’s dedication to quality coffee will remain the same. All varieties served are single-origin and are selected by a cupping process in which samples are sipped, scored, and ranked by flavor profiles.

This seems to be Max’s modus operandi; no detail is too small to escape his attention.

He is a man deep into coffee. Deep. Like that one time he went to Nicaragua for twelve days to live on a coffee farm. He was learning about the production end of his industry. He is a man who can talk about crop blight with the best of them.

Narrative’s reputation is built on a dedication to high-quality products: from a direct relationship with a local dairy farm, to customers’ choices in gourmet chocolates.

“Quality implicitly promotes sustainability, not just for the company but also for the grower,” Max told me. “A delicious cup of coffee speaks for itself.”

Maxwell Mooney wants to be here. He sees Everett as a thriving community, particularly for young families looking for an urban context (but not necessarily Seattle prices). He wants to offer his hospitality and product to an underserved city.

Who would have thought the little cart in the plaza would grow up so fast? Every good story has a plot twist.