Longtime coffee professional and marketing expert Darleen Scherer has launched a new coffee-focused consulting and marketing firm called Black Sheep.
Working with a strategic team of graphic designers, developers, photographers and other business pros, Scherer is providing the bulk of the firm’s coffee expertise following more than two decades of executive and operational leadership in the specialty coffee industry.
“Running a coffee business today is hard,” Scherer recently told DCN. “The landscape is crowded and consumer trends are changing. What worked five years ago no longer works today.”
Scherer said the consultancy is offering a range of customized services related to branding and marketing, product development, coffee shop and roastery operations, and business.
One of the firm’s key pitches is its founder’s experience in the coffee sphere. Scherer founded Brooklyn, New York-based Gorilla Coffee in 2002, building the company up over more than a decade. In 2014, Scherer founded Brooklyn’s Supercrown Coffee before pivoting into consultant roles for numerous high-profile alternative milk and coffee brands.
“We sit somewhere between agency and accelerator, where collaboration and coffee industry connections are our biggest strengths,” Scherer said. “We don’t waste time because we know this industry first hand.”
Scherer cited the specialty coffee industry’s continued global growth while noting that Black Sheep’s target is “emerging to mid-sized” coffee companies looking to grow, including companies wishing to develop or expand new product lines, or venture into different product categories.
“The specialty coffee industry is my home, and coffee geeks are my people,” Scherer said. “Helping the independents out there is what drives me.”
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Nick Brown Nick Brown is the editor of Daily Coffee News by Roast Magazine.
