Summer Moon Coffee Offers Entrepreneurial Experience to Belton Family
By RACHEL STRICKLAND | Photos courtesy of SUMMER MOON COFFEE
If there’s one thing Texans truly love, it’s a good cup of coffee in the morning. Or really, any time of day. It seems that everywhere you turn, there’s another coffee shop popping up —from Starbucks and Dunkin’ to Dutch Bros. But there’s a coffee company out of Dripping Springs that’s been taking the state by storm for the last 20 years: Summer Moon Coffee. It’s made its way to Belton thanks to a local family.
Sisters McKenzie Fleming and McKenna Brumfield never thought their lives would take an entrepreneurial turn, but that’s exactly what happened in 2021 when they became franchisees with Summer Moon Coffee. The sisters and their husbands are equal-part owners of their Belton location with their parents, Jack and Jackie Ralston. The Ralstons and their daughters come from a long line of Belton-area natives, which influenced their desire to serve the community in any way they could.
“We’re just doing anything and everything we can to be successful — not for ourselves, but for our community,” Brumfield says. Fleming adds that they want to provide a family feel and a close-knit community for people to feel safe and welcome. “And, you know, for the fellowship that happens over coffee,” she adds.
On Jan. 29, the families jointly opened the Belton location in a small trailer on Sparta Road, one of only two Summer Moon franchises in a trailer. They have lots of outdoor seating, lighting and games, which makes the experience fun and unique. Fleming and Brumfield, along with their family, plan to open another Summer Moon location on West Adams Avenue in Temple by the end of 2022, and that location will be a fully-fledged storefront with a double drive-thru. They also hope to open a third location in Harker Heights, but there is no concrete timeline for that yet.
The original idea for Summer Moon Coffee began at a local auction in Dripping Springs in 2002, when the founding family placed the winning bid on a 19th century coffee roaster. This sparked their interest in coffee-making, and later that year, they opened their first shop. In 2005, Summer Moon Coffee Bar opened in a tiny space off South First Street in Austin. Since then, the founders began licensing franchises and now have around 40 locations across Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Tennessee and Wisconsin.
What makes Summer Moon’s roasting process unique is that beans are roasted over an open flame in brick ovens, which is a 19th century tradition. According to Fleming and Brumfield, many other coffee shops roast their beans over a hot plate, but Summer Moon’s wood-fired roasting process makes the coffee smoother and more balanced without a bitter aftertaste, and it’s what sets them apart from other coffee companies.
Summer Moon is likely just as well known for Moon Milk, its signature sweet cream, as it is for oak-roasted beans, though the Moon Milk recipe is a well-kept secret known only by the founders. According to Brumfield, the founding family wanted to find something that would pair perfectly with their smooth coffee. She says they stayed up all night drinking different concoctions of creamer to find the perfect blend.
“There are seven secret ingredients in it that are all vegan-friendly, gluten-friendly and allergen-free; however, they are all top secret,” Brumfield says. “We don’t even know the ingredients.”
Like many other coffee shops, Summer Moon offers beverages for non-coffee drinkers, such as tea-blend drinks and a new strawberry refresher. They also offer the typical coffee-shop pastries, but the unique thing about the food offered at Summer Moon is that each location offers items that are sourced locally. The Belton location gets pastries from Big Krumnows, a small donut shop in Holland.
Before opening their Summer Moon location, Fleming and Brumfield worked in the golf industry. While getting into the coffee business wasn’t something they’d planned, they always knew that they wanted to do something challenging. “The company knew that McKenzie and I weren’t entrepreneurs but that we wanted to go there,” Brumfield says. “And they allowed us to do that. They’ve allowed us to really show who we are in the community, how much we care about each other, and how much we care about everyone that comes to the coffee shop.”
Fleming adds that one of her favorite parts about their Summer Moon experience so far has been “seeing people come back and just say, ‘I really love it here because you made it special. You made my day.’ That’s our plan,” she says. “That’s our plan for any store that we open.”
It’s clear that the warm and welcoming environment is very important to the sisters and their family, and it’s something that they work very hard to cultivate every day at their location. “We’re very family-driven,” Fleming says. “My kids are always at the trailer because that’s the community we want. That’s the fellowship we want. This is a place for family. This is a place for people who don’t have a family. This is a place for us to be their family.”
IF YOU GO
Summer Moon Coffee
111 Sparta Road, Belton
Hours: 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday-Friday; 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. Saturday and Sunday
