Shreveport / Louisiana / United States
Jelks Gourmet Coffee Roasters began as a family business in 1896 in the small town of Ruston, LA by the F. E. Morgan family. Mr. Frank Morgan roasted coffee for his friends in the area for many years. He knew then that the fresher the coffee the better. His family fresh roasted the coffee daily and delivered this coffee to the area stores everyday. In 1972 Jelks Inc. began as an office coffee service by Harvey Jelks serving the Ruston area offices with coffee and coffee brewing equipment. Office coffee service was a new type of business back then. Offices used the old 100-cup percolator to brew coffee, this system would take up to 45 minutes to brew a pot and then it was keep hot for hours. Not the freshest it could be. With the new coffee brewers, it only took 4 minutes to brew a pot of 12 cups. Jelks also new that fresh coffee was the best and being able to brew a small pot of coffee in a short time was a great way to have fresh coffee all the time. In 1978 Jelks ( which had moved to Shreveport ) and Morgan merged and changed the name to Jelks Coffee Roasters carrying on the tradition of fresh roast premium coffee delivered to the North Louisiana area. The same year Jelks purchased a larger roaster to keep up with the demand of fresh roasted coffee for its customers. Between 1979 and 1980 Jelks was seeing the demand for flavored coffee and began with about 5 flavors. Since then Jelks has added a few flavors every year until now we fresh roast more that 200 flavored coffees. One thing that makes our coffee stand out is that we use a gourmet blend of coffees to produce our flavored coffee instead of a single origin. Our belief is just like a cup of coffee is mostly water ; you have to use good tasting water. Since flavored coffee is mostly coffee you should only use the best coffee possible to produce flavored coffee.
