When it comes to java, there are three waves of drinkers:
Those who lean toward corporate-owned shops where the coffee is good but not great and the menu is packed with sugary specialty drinks.
Those who pay a premium for specially brewed custom roasts and an environment solely focused on coffee, from brewing processes to the origin of the beans.
And the folks in middle: They appreciate higher quality coffee but they also like the sugary specialty drinks and a comfortable modern setting.
Eddy Yunkherr says that’s called the “second-and-a-half wave,” and that’s where he sees his new shop .
“I think if you put us head to head with who has the best coffee in Tucson, wins. But we believe that we can take this second wave of coffee and elevate that not quite to the third wave because we will have some of the sweet drinks that have that mass appeal,” Yunkherr said last week as he started training workers for the first of three Desert Drifters he plans to open in the next several months.
The flagship at on the corner of North Main Avenue is expected to open by month’s end, followed in late October by a store at and one in Oro Valley at in late November.
Yunkherr said he would like to open as many as 20 stores in Tucson and Southern Arizona, including in Casa Grande, Bisbee and Sahuarita. Each will feature a unique Joe Pagac mural; the mural on the Speedway store has Pagac’s signature desert animals watching a brilliant gold and orange sunset. Pagac also hid a cactus whale in a cluster of prickly pear as a dig at Starbucks for opening a drive-thru in front of Pagac’s iconic “Sky Islands” on East Grant Road and North Campbell Avenue.
“We want to build the most badass coffee company we can,” Yunkherr said, from the Pagac murals to roasting their coffee with Presta and locally-sourcing products including milk and fruit. “Tucson deserves this awesome second-and-a-half wave coffee shop, and we think we can be the ones to provide that.”
A mural by local artist Joe Pagac, adorns the outside of the new Desert Drifter coffee shop, one of three locations opening soon. Each of the shops will feature a mural by Pagac.
Yunkherr has 15 years experience in the coffee industry, starting when he was 15 years old working for Dutch Bros. in Oregon. He worked for several Oregon shops that went national, opening more than a dozen stores during his career.
That’s what brought him and his wife to Tucson in 2020.
On their first trip here, Yunkherr said he and his wife got lost and ended up exiting Interstate 10 at Tangerine Road just as the sun was setting.
“The Catalinas were just lit up like one of those movie scenes in my head that I’ll never forget,” Yunkherr recalled. “We kind of knew we were home. We just absolutely fell in love with the city the first time we ever saw it.”
While Yunkherr worked the coffee shops, his wife enrolled in the University of Arizona, where she finished her degree; she now teaches at a Marana school.
When he was about to leave his job with the national chain early this year, it was his wife who encouraged him to strike out on his own.
“She’s like, ‘You know, I love you so much. You’re such a good guy. Do you maybe want to do something instead of complaining about it all the time’,” Yunkherr said. “And I was like, that was the kindest way to say, ‘Quit complaining and do something about it.’ And it kind of just clicked right there.”
The couple came up with Desert Drifter, a shop that would focus on local sourcing and giving back to the community, from paying employees higher wages and including them in profit sharing, to giving designated Tucson non-profits 100% of the proceeds from its quarterly “Charity Coffee.”
The shop’s menu includes fresh smoothies, nitrogen-infused iced teas and signature “Sonoran Sips“ coffees, alongside pastries and baked goods sourced from Tucson bakers. He said they will sell 289 different items including snacks and memorabilia.
Yunkherr and his partners, including Ken Ashley, said the company’s plans to grow to 20 stores is the end goal, “if the sales can support it,” Yunkherr said, adding that he has no designs to take Desert Drifter beyond Southern Arizona.
“We don’t want to grow to private equity size,” he said, alluding to coffee shops in his native Oregon that went national and were sold to corporations focused more on profits than the product. “We want to go all in. But the goal is to be Tucson’s coffee shop.”