Last year at this time I found myself in Houston, Texas along with tens of thousands of others for the 2025 Specialty Coffee Expo. One of the first things I did upon hearing that SCA was in Houston was make a list of where all the great specialty coffee shops were!
I was thrilled to find out that one of the main locations for Three Keys Coffee was just a few blocks from my hotel. So it quickly became a go-to spot for that morning coffee while on the way to the convention centre…where yes, I drank even more coffee!
I love my experience so much, I knew that I would have to tell their story. So here we are, a year later, and sharing the story of Three Keys Coffee as our Coffee Roaster of the Month for April 2026!
Enjoy the read y’all.
So great to get the chance to connect with you Kenzel! Help our audience get to know you a bit better… What’s your personal backstory in coffee? How did you get started? What keeps you going in coffee?
My husband, Tio, and I started Three Keys Coffee from a shared love of coffee, music, quality and culture. Tio is the visionary. He has a professional background in mechanical engineering but played the trumpet for over 20 years so that’s where Three Keys gets its name, from the 3 valves of the trumpet. He was intrigued by the science of roasting but also drawn to the art of creating coffee, reminiscent of the artistic freedom and creativity of creating music.
At the same time, I was coming from a background in finance, risk management, and consulting, so I helped to bring the structure, scalability, and long-term opportunities to Tio’s vision.
Before we go much further, share with our readers what you’re drinking/enjoying these days when it comes to coffee!
We have a new cold brew canned product called “Cool Struttin” as well as a canned cold brew lemonade called “Ear Candy Shandy”. I’m always on the go as CEO but also a mother of 3, so I’ve been getting high on my own supply and grabbing the cans for convenience lately.
I am always fascinated in the origin story of how a roaster/cafe selects their name/brand, so help our readers to get to know the story behind the choice of your name. Why Three Keys Coffee? Is there a significance or symbolism about this for you?
As mentioned above, the name is inspired by the valves of the trumpet which my husband, Tio, played for many years. But it’s also a bit deeper than that. The trumpet is an instrument of simplicity that uses just three keys to produce notes across a creative and complex range of tonal outputs. We want to offer something similar in terms of coffee whereby we can showcase complex and exciting flavors that are rooted in simplicity and care.
So, home for you is Houston TX. Share with our readers what you love about the specialty coffee culture in your home city.
Home for Three Keys Coffee is Houston, TX but I’m originally from Cincinnati, OH and Tio is from Atlanta, GA. We love having our company’s roots in Houston though. Centrally positioned, we have great access to coffees coming in through the Port of Houston. We also are a bit of an emerging market in terms of specialty coffee so it’s great to have a presence in an area that hasn’t completely reached the pinnacle of what it’s capable of. Lastly, we enjoy really solid relationships with other coffee shops and roasters in the area. There is a strong spirit of collaboration over competition here.
Last year at this time, Houston played host to the Specialty Coffee Expo. What was that experience like for Three Keys Coffee? How has that weekend helped to grow awareness of your city and its coffee community?
We’re honestly still recovering from last year, in a good way! We partnered with so many great companies and organizations over the course of 4 days, including CQI, Oatly, Bean Voyage, Roast Magazine, Fairtrade America, Sovda, Smithsonian Bird Friendly, African Fine Coffee Association (AFCA), Swiss Water, WoC 5K, Falcon Coffee, Ghost Town Oats, Odeko, La Marzocco, MiiR, PourTa, SanRemo, Ratio, Roastar and more. If I’ve forgotten anyone, charge it to my head and not my heart!
We knew it was a rare opportunity that we had to maximize and we did exactly that. It was an exhausting weekend but also so much fun. It was such a joy to deepen our existing relationships and create new industry friends during that time. And we capped off the weekend with a team hangout at an Astros game (courtesy of our friends at The Coffee Quality Institute!)
I feel like we all desire to bring about positive change when it comes to specialty coffee. What would you like to see change—either locally or globally—when it comes to the specialty coffee space? How is Three Keys moving the needle towards this change?
There are lots of ways that come to mind! From a sustainability perspective, we’re one of only a few known solar-powered coffee roasteries in the country which has harnessed over 25 Mega-Watts of energy from the sun to date (fun fact, that amount offsets the energy consumption of roughly 90 million ChatGPT queries).
To our employees, we offer benefits and other nontraditional types of support to our team (eg: interest-free loans, medical/dental/vision, PTO, and more.) But we also foster a culture where our team can speak up and be heard.
In terms of diversity, equity, and inclusion, we’re proud to be a Black-owned and woman-owned business and regularly source from vendors who come from underrepresented backgrounds themselves.
To summarize, we just want to do right by our team and our customers, by operating with integrity and a heart for community. And we want to fuel and inspire creativity.
You’ve received some pretty significant press in recent years. Like 2024 ROAST magazine Roaster of the Year Finalist, OATLY Big Idea Great (2021) and the Best Texas Coffee Roaster in 2022 by Food & Wine. What do those accolades mean to you? How does it spur you as a company towards even greater success?
They’re exciting and they offer a stamp of credibility however I am more grateful for the ways those awards opened the doors for us to build relationships and develop great partners and allies in the industry. More importantly, they allow us to create more opportunities for other people in our sphere of impact and influence.
Tio placed 5th in the US Roasting Championship before “retiring” from competitions and even though he still works a full-time job, he volunteered to help coach a competitor in this year’s finals. So we’re glad to have the recognition but mostly it’s about how we leverage them to expand our reach and have more positive impact in the industry.
In scrolling through your site, I see that the mission of Three Keys Coffee has Three Pillars: Quality, Community, Environment. How are you as a company championing these values locally & globally?
I touched on this a bit above (question 5) but there is a heart and soul behind everything we do. Every product we create, every interaction we have, is a chance to deliver excellence, to tell a story, and leave someone better than we found them.
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Contact Info:
web: www.threekeyscoffee.com
instagram: @threekeyscoffee
email: info@threekeyscoffee.com
Find their beans: If you’re looking to get your hands on some beans then definitely check out their web-store for what they’re currently roasting.
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I just wanted to say a huge thanks again to Kenzel at Three Keys Coffee for being a huge contributor to the specialty coffee community in Houston and for giving me the chance to share their story!
-Tyler
commonly coffee 