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Kathie's Coffee

How Kym Jolstad turned her mother's love of coffee into a business to help raise awareness of Pancreatic cancer.

When Kym Jolstad’s mother Kathie was diagnosed with Pancreatic Cancer late into 2019, she would have never guessed where it would take her.  More than a year later, Jolstad is the creator of Kathie’s Coffee blend and Kathie’s Coffee Nonprofit, an organization that raises money for Pancreatic Cancer Action Network (PanCAN) by selling coffee.  Jolstad’s first thoughts, however, were only how she could help. “I looked into pancreatic cancer. and there’s not a lot of research, not a lot of funds, so this was something I could actually do and make a difference with.”

Jolstad wanted to do something that wouldn’t just raise money for research, but raise awareness: “I don’t want to hit up my clients once a year to donate. That doesn’t make a difference in spreading the word.”  From those parameters, it took Jolstad months of brainstorming to come up with the idea: a 12oz bag of coffee that donates $3 to PanCAN. Laughing about those months, Jolstad says, “I can’t believe it took me as long as it did to do Kathie’s coffee.  Our world revolves around it.”  

From that idea, Jolstad says she could not stop talking about it. She told her co-workers, her clients, and even “talked her son’s ear off” on the way to school. That was when the first stranger stepped in to help Kathie’s Coffee. Jolstad had wanted to set up Kathie’s Coffee as a nonprofit organization early on.  During a conversation about Kathie’s Coffee, a woman at Jolstad’s office said that her husband could set up the non-profit.  “He filled out the paperwork in the next couple of days,” says Jolstad.  

She then made several calls to roasters across the country and even got bids on bags of coffee, when a client asked her why she wasn’t doing it locally.  A flurry of calls followed.  Jolstad called Anne Spaeth, the owner of the Lynhall, who connected her with Greg Hoyt, the owner of Rustica Bakery.  Hoyt agreed to meet with her, waiting until meeting her to ask, “So why are we meeting?”  Jolstad shares that she was flabbergasted at his willingness to help: “You took time to meet with me, and you have no idea why you are meeting with me, at all!” Hoyt gave her the information of a local roaster named Brett Struwe who quickly agreed to work with her.  “That’s why this whole thing has really been successful and easy,” says Jolstad. "The community has done everything they can to have this. [...] I feel like it was just meant to be, the stars were just so aligned.”

Together Struwe and Jolstad worked to create a blend of coffee similar to what Kathie actually drank.  Less than two months later, the first batch of Kathie’s coffee was roasted, bagged, and labeled.  Yet, this whole time, with all Jolstad’s calls and meetings and work, she still hadn’t told her mother: the woman after whom the coffee was named. Jolstad explains that before she told her mother, she "wanted to have a product in [her] hand to give [her] mother,” and after months of work, she finally did.  The night before she told her mom, Jolstad did not sleep. “I was like a little kid on Christmas Eve, I couldn’t stand it.”  Kathie was, of course, delighted.  

And with Kathie’s support, PanCAN’s approval, and the blend perfected, Kathie’s coffee launched their website and public sales in April of 2020.  “Within weeks we sold out and had $1000 to send to PanCAN,” says Jolstad.  Since launching, Kathie’s Coffee has been sent to more than 30 states and donated more than $5,000 to PanCAN.  While Kathie’s Coffee started entirely virtual, it can now be found in Minnyrow Market, both locations of Minnesota Makers, and Bearaboo Coffee in Cloquet.  

Jolstad has been "overwhelmed with how supportive people are.”  She cites how her mailman came up to her and gave her a $20 bill saying how successful she was going to be, or how the workers of her local post office joke that Jolstad’s husband is the ‘coffee guy’ because of how often he ships packages of Kathie’s Coffee. Jolstad says that Kathie’s Coffee was “absolutely, without question, the most positive and best thing that [she] was a part of in 2020.”

At the heart of Kathie’s coffee is the tradition of creating conversation over coffee.  Jolstad reminisces about drinking coffee and watching Saturday morning shows with her mother and grandmother, as well as how her mother used to meet ‘the girls’ every Sunday for coffee and pie.  Now harnessed to spread awareness about pancreatic cancer, that tradition shows no sign of ending.  “What I am excited about,” says Jolstad, “is people having coffee together and talking, and creating community and building relationships with Kathie’s coffee.”  

When asked about what drove her to make such a difference, Jolstad brings up her father’s Multiple Sclerosis diagnosis.  She started participating in the annual MS walk when she was just 12 years old.  “When I was little, I thought the money would go towards my dad’s diagnosis.  I soon found out that the money that goes toward research really isn’t going into his diagnosis right now.  It’s going to be for people in the future.”  Since then, Jolstad has watched how far medicine for MS has come since her father’s diagnosis.  New medicines and screenings have been developed that allow doctors to catch cases much earlier and then treat them much more effectively.  She hopes the same can happen for Pancreatic Cancer.  

In the meantime, Jolstad says that Kathie’s Coffee has been "such a positive thing in [her] family.”  She cites all the support from her community, from co-workers and roasters, to even strangers buying a single bag of coffee and leaving a kind note.  And whenever someone reaches out to Kathie’s Coffee, the first person Jolstad tells is her mother. “What’s really cool is that we have great things to talk about!”  

Kathie’s Coffee was created to do more than raise money or even begin a conversation. It was created to make a difference: “I don’t want my mom and this diagnosis not to make a difference, because she made such a difference in my life.” The story of not only one family’s effort towards change, but a community’s support, should serve as a template for us all. 

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