About Us

I’m Johnathan. I started out roasting just a handful of coffee beans at a time for the Wounded Warriors I served with and the people supporting their healing. I used it as an icebreaker — a way to build community and relationships with the people around me — and I’d brew a fresh cup for anyone who asked. I loved watching their face light up on that first sip. It always made them smile. That’s where the name comes from, and my slogan too: Does your coffee make you smile? Now we roast for our community and beyond.

I didn’t even like coffee much myself until I tasted fresh-roasted, specialty-grade coffee for the first time — high-quality coffee from the most recent harvest, freshly roasted, ground, brewed, and enjoyed close to the roast date, not just freshly brewed from a bag that had been sitting around for months. That difference, once tasted, is what we want to share with coffee lovers and coffee skeptics alike.

Today Makin’ Smiles Coffee is a family-run specialty coffee roastery in Palmyra, Virginia, part of the third-wave coffee movement that treats coffee as a craft instead of a commodity. Everyone likes their coffee a little differently — some drink it black, some with cream, some with sugar, some with both — and we’re here to help each person find their own favorite.

Does Your Coffee Make You Smile?

Makin’ Smiles Coffee roasts in small batches every few days and keeps only a small amount on hand at any time, so the coffee reaches customers as close to the roast date as possible. Coffee begins losing its distinct flavors within a month or two of roasting. You won’t notice it right away, but you will by then, and roasting this often keeps your coffee well ahead of that.

Makin’ Smiles Coffee also roasts in small batches, not massive commercial runs — 2 to 15 pounds at a time on a Loring S7 Nighthawk. Big roasters often roast 100 pounds or more at a time and have to wait for that batch to sell before it reaches a customer, and every day a bag sits on a shelf during that wait is a day of flavor lost.

When an order comes in through MakinSmilesCoffee.com:

• It’s packed from a small batch roasted within the last few days.
• It’s ground, if needed, at no extra charge.
• It’s delivered or ready for pickup as soon as possible.
• Then it’s time to SMILE!

Want the full rundown — the equipment, the profiling process, and how new lots get vetted before they go into full batches? See How We Roast.

“Do you love coffee like we do?”

Makin’ Smiles Coffee is a family-owned business that I run together with my wife, Alyssa. I’m Johnathan, an Army veteran — she’s a military spouse. That makes us both veteran-owned and woman-owned.

Our family’s roots were in Colorado Springs, where this whole idea got started. We moved to Louisa, Virginia, in 2021 after I finished my service in the Army, and in 2025 we settled in Palmyra so we could keep roasting coffee and start a small farm alongside it. We love it here and don’t have any plans to move again. We’re passionate about great coffee and about making you smile — we’d love to help you find a roast you’ll love.

If you have any questions, email us at [email protected] and we’ll reply as soon as we can.