Murilo and Christine Santos together boast passport stamps from more than 100 countries. Through their newly opened Boarding Pass Coffee shop, roastery and tasting room, they bring some of those international locales right to Milton. By exploring new tastes, people get a ticket to the world’s best flavors and a glimpse of different international cultures via the common language of coffee.
“The whole idea is for people to enjoy the experience,” Murilo said. “Our goal is to offer great coffee, but also provide our customers - our ‘coffee travelers’- a cultural experience and insight into new travel destinations.”
Murilo and Christine met in Sao Paulo, Brazil and began sharing their life adventure together in 2013. After speeding up steep and dusty roads on the back of a motorcycle, Christine met Murilo’s parents for the first time at the family coffee farm, Fazenda Sant'ana, where they ultimately married. Wedding favors were bags of specialty coffee. Afterward, guests clamored for more of that rich and delicious roast, which planted seeds for Boarding Pass Coffee.
While earning an Executive MBA at Georgia Tech, the idea to roast his family’s coffee really started to percolate for Murilo and he knew it was time to chase his dream. His coffee roots found fertile soil in Georgia and his grad school classmates were happy to act as taste testers for Murilo’s various roasts, providing early direction for Boarding Pass Coffee. The Santoses began selling their specialty grade coffee beans online and at Atlanta-area farmers markets and festivals in 2020.
Just a year later, the new shop and tasting room opened where “coffee travelers” can learn about other cultures and document their taste travels with “visa stamp” stickers in their very own Boarding Pass Coffee “passport.” The most popular roasts at Boarding Pass Coffee come from beans grown at Fazenda Sant'ana. Other current roasts and bestsellers come from Ethiopia, Uganda, Tanzania, Papua New Guinea, Honduras and Colombia. Beyond coffee, they offer in-store and virtual coffee tastings as well as a monthly coffee club, delivering a variety of impressive roasts to Georgia, as well as direct to doorsteps across the United States.
Today the Santos family, which now includes three daughters, enjoys traveling to nearby Puerto Rico for a dose of the Latin vibe. The family plans to safari in Africa, with the coffee-producing countries of Uganda, Rwanda and Kenya high on their priority list.
Both the family farm and its coffee beans are Rainforest Alliance and UTZ certified, and organic certification is underway. Boarding Pass Coffee is minority owned, a Georgia Grown company and a proud supporter of IWCA, the International Women’s Coffee Alliance.
Hours: Monday-Saturday 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
13695 Highway 9, Suite 102, Milton
770.674.1350