How Alma HQ Became Home

The holiday season has a way of slowing time down, even as the year races toward its end. As Alma looks ahead to a new year, it is also a meaningful moment to reflect on where it all began.

For Alma co-owner Leticia Hutchins, the holidays are deeply tied to family and tradition. Growing up Hispanic, Christmas Eve, or Noche Buena, was always the main celebration. Family gathered together, incredible food filled the table, and gifts were opened right at midnight. Christmas Day itself was quieter. Now, married to her husband Harry, the Hutchins family celebrates both traditions, Christmas Eve with her family and Christmas Day with his.

This year, they hosted the holidays at home. Dinner was far from traditional, homemade vodka rigatoni and garlic bread instead of classic holiday dishes. But as often happens during the holidays, nostalgia set in. That reflection led straight back to a pivotal moment in Alma’s story, the purchase of what is now known as Alma HQ.

So let’s rewind the clock.

In 2018, Leticia, Harry, and her father were deep in the search for a commercial property to serve as home for their roastery and green bean warehousing business. A coffee shop was a distant idea at the time, but no one imagined it would eventually be so closely connected to the roastery itself.

Their original “dream space” was modest, somewhere between 1,500 and 2,000 square feet. They were new to everything, excited, anxious, and full of optimism. Potential seemed to exist everywhere, even in spaces that, in hindsight, were truly terrifying. Haunted-house-level terrifying. Still, they convinced themselves they could make almost anything work.

Thankfully, Leticia’s father, with his patience and experience, encouraged them to think bigger.

The search lasted eight months. If a property existed in Cherokee County, chances are they toured it. At one point, they even walked through a historic house in downtown Woodstock. It was beautiful and would have been an incredible investment. But a coffee roaster in the living room? Looking back, it is hard to imagine what they were thinking.

As time passed, excitement slowly gave way to nerves. Would they ever find the right space?

During this period, Harry and Leticia were living in her parents’ basement. True startup life. In a moment of pure desperation, they even considered asking her parents if they could install a commercial-grade roaster in the garage. Thankfully, Leticia’s mom shut that idea down immediately with a firm “absolutely not.” Today, it is a story that still brings laughter, but it also captures just how determined and hopeful they were.

Then one day, they came across a property on Holly Springs Parkway that looked promising. It turned out to already be under contract. But their realtor mentioned something else across the street that might be worth seeing. The only catch was the size. At 8,000 square feet, it felt intimidating.

Still, they scheduled the tour.

As they pulled up the winding driveway, something felt different. It felt right.

The building offered a rare separation between warehouse and office space, full of possibility. The warehouse itself had been used as an HVAC training facility, meaning it was clean and well maintained. No strange smells. No questionable chemicals. And then there was a small but unforgettable detail. A simple Post-it note stuck inside a kitchen cabinet that read: “Coffee.”

Leticia snapped a photo immediately. It felt like a quiet sign, a gentle nudge from the universe that coffee belonged there.

The usual real estate twists followed. The deal was lost, then regained, and eventually closed. Along the way, they formed a lasting friendship with the previous owners, Robbie and Dana Matiak, founders of the Matiak Foundation. That same foundation would later help fund and build the free bilingual school on Alma’s farm, Finca T.

So why reflect on Alma HQ during the holidays?

Because Alma officially closed on the building on December 3, 2018. The rest of December was spent fixing up the warehouse by hand, doing whatever they knew how to do. One Christmas Day was spent demoing wooden shelves instead of opening presents. Not exactly traditional, but it became the greatest gift they could have imagined.

A place to build a dream.
A place that was finally theirs.

What followed was not easy. Anyone who has started a business knows the grind. It takes real blood, sweat, and tears. After pouring everything into securing that property, the rest was up to them. They called every friend, asked for every favor imaginable, and got to work.

And from that hard-earned beginning, Alma Coffee continued to grow into what it is today.