Third-grader Miguel Cardona was sitting in class when the shy, puppy-eyed Jose Nieves walked in without knowing a word of English.
But language wasn’t a barrier for them as the two bonded over their mutual start in a new country.
Cardona is from Colombia and Nieves is from Puerto Rico. About 1,000 miles apart, the friends immigrated to Ocala where they met.
Now, nearly 20 years later, they’re business partners for brio! Cold Brew, a bottled cold brew coffee company that has more than 60 partners in Gainesville, including Lucky’s Market, Hurricane BTW, Grill Fresh, Leonardo’s 706 and more.
Nieves got his start with coffee when his grandmother made coffee in a Moka pot every day. Nieves sipped on coffee as he grew up.
However, he said he didn’t become a true caffeine fiend until he went to school at the Culinary Institute of America in New York.
While living in New York, Nieves worked at Starbucks for a few months and began to appreciate coffee as an ingredient and as a business. He said he wanted to make a career out of it and learned everything he could through YouTube videos, working for a coffee roaster and going to coffee tastings.
Cardona started to appreciate coffee while growing up in Colombia. He said it was a large part of his childhood and culture. But he said he found a new passion for coffee because of the long nights he spent studying at the UF School of Architecture.
Although Nieves and Cardona went through different phases in their lives, they both always wanted to start a business together. They didn’t know what they wanted to do for a long time, but they knew they wanted to build an empire together.
After graduating from UF in 2015, Cardona said he felt like he was in limbo. Nieves came up with an idea to start a cold brew company named brio! while in New York, and Cardona convinced Nieves to move down to Gainesville for the culture and affordable rent.
But Nieves was hesitant at first. For the first few weeks, Nieves left his suitcases in the corner of his room just in case things in Florida didn’t work out.
While at home, Cardona finalized the came up the logo for the cold brew bottles. He immediately called Nieves at his job in the Dragonfly Sushi & Sake Company in downtown Gainesville to break the news.
“We finally felt on the right track,” Cardona said.
Over a two-year span, Nieves and Cardona invested more than $15,000 together. They started with only one batch of coffee per month when they began the company three years ago, with the product hitting shelves in April this year. Now, they’ve tripled in volume.
The brand, brio!, is unique because it’s a single-origin coffee that sources from the jungles of Cañon de las Hermosas in Colombia, according to the company’s website. It takes 21 days for the coffee beans to be harvested and then created into a hand-bottled cold brew coffee on store shelves. Harvesting coffee beans from a roaster in Colombia ensures a fresh harvest all year.
“Our catchphrase is ‘wake up, the world needs you,’” Cardona said. “It’s a self-empowered idea. We want this coffee to be a boost for people to get up and do whatever it is they’re aspiring to do.”
The company name came from Nieves’ father, who said it often while growing up on a horse farm in Ocala. As the oldest male in his family besides his dad, Nieves said he had a lot of responsibility and had to support his family.
“My dad always said whenever you work, you work with brio,” Nieves said. “You work like you mean it — with purpose, with energy, like you care. It’s a word I always took with me.”
Correction: This story has been updated to reflect that although the creators of brio! started working on the business three years ago, the product didn’t hit the market until April. The Alligator regrets this error.
Jose Nieves, 28, who graduated from the Culinary Institute of America in New York, and Miguel Cardona, 27, who graduated from the UF School of Architecture.
