One Of New Mexico's Largest Coffee Roasters Started In A Pickup Truck

New Mexico's food scene is legendary among gourmets near the Southwest and afar. From Tex-Mex cuisine to the fabulous Santa Fe restaurants that inspired a whole musical number in the Pulitzer Prize and Tony-award-winning "Rent," there's much to sing about. But, one perhaps-overlooked gem of the state's culinary prowess is its coffee roasters — namely New Mexico Piñon Coffee. 

New Mexico Piñon Coffee began in 1994 by roasting and selling its coffee out of the back of a red pickup truck. It's all about entrepreneurial drive and moxie — not unlike fellow now-giant Van Leeuwen ice cream, which got its start selling cones out of the back of a repurposed yellow truck on the streets of New York City. Now, just over 30 years later, Piñon has emerged as one of the largest coffee roasters in the state of New Mexico, roasting more than a million pounds of beans every single year and curating an active Instagram account with tens of thousands of followers.

Today, the bags of Piñon coffee are printed with illustrations of the red pickup truck that started it all. In its merch shop, Piñon Coffee even sells a baseball cap embroidered with a red pickup truck as a nod to its roots. In fact, Piñon Coffee's entire branding follows a signature, recognizable red and yellow color palette, which is as comforting as it might be an homage to that first red pickup truck and New Mexico's sandy desert landscape.

The roaster takes its name from the piñon nut (aka the pine nut), a nod to the pronounced nutty roasted flavor tones of the brand's coffees. Traditional Piñon, for instance, is a rich, smooth medium roast with buttery, nutty-tasting notes made from 100% arabica beans. Its official website promises a distinctive, "uniquely New Mexican" taste, and indeed, Piñon makes regional flair the star of the show. Beyond Traditional, dark roast, and blonde, Piñon's portfolio of Southwest-inspired flavors also includes more non-traditional offerings like Dulce de Leche, Mexican Spiced Chocolate, Vanilla Bourbon, Piñon Fudge, Adobe Morning, and Biscochito with cinnamon, anise, and sugar — a java-fied take on New Mexico's state cookie.

Notably, New Mexico Piñon Coffee is highly rated for its decaf coffee, an infamously tough offering to get right and make taste good. The company's decaf is a wildly flavorful dupe of its Traditional flavor, made by processed with mountain water. As Piñon Coffee explains in an Instagram post, "That means that the chemical makeup of the origin of the coffee has the caffeine extracted while maintaining the coffee's flavor."

What once began as a single pickup truck operation has now expanded to four Piñon Coffee House locations across Albuquerque and Rio Rancho. At the coffee houses, fans can order house-made pastries like Biscochito Donuts or Piñon Bear Claws, vegetarian breakfast burritos, and myriad hot, iced, and frozen craft coffee drinks. Seasonal and limited-edition menu items rotate often and vary by location. Piñon recently (as of this writing) dropped a King Cake Latte in honor of Mardi Gras at its 528 location and an Easter-themed Fluffy Bunny Latte with coconut, honey, and a vanilla cream cloud, available at the Alameda location.

Madison Rumbaugh, director of business development at Piñon, told the Albuquerque Journal that the chain plans to open a fifth location at 2235 Wyoming NE sometime this summer. "We have been slowly expanding in the Albuquerque area, and we've really wanted to go to the east side," said Rumbaugh. "That's been something that's really important to us and we finally found an opportunity to make that happen."

Coffee lovers in New Mexico can also find Piñon coffee beans in grocery stores statewide. Beyond The Land of Enchantment, some national grocery retailers like H-E-B also carry Piñon, and the coffee is available to order online from the New Mexico Piñon Coffee website with shipping nationwide.