Kevin Nealon
Huckleberry | Denver
April 2017
Kevin Nealon was born in Brooklyn, grew up outside Hartford, Connecticut, and went to college at Middlebury in Vermont, where he studied political science and Latin American development. After graduating in 2008 with a bit of wanderlust, Nealon spent time traveling and camping out of the back of his car. He stopped long enough in Washington, D.C., to dip his toe into the coffee business as a barista at Chinatown Coffee. In 2010, he took the full-on plunge into coffee culture when he moved to Guatemala. There he assisted a small coffee growers’ cooperative with processing, roasting, and packaging coffee and forging relationships that he maintains to this day.
Upon returning to the States, Nealon moved to North Carolina, home of iconic third wave roaster Counter Culture. After a short stint as a barista in Raleig, he landed a gig at Counter Culture, where he spent two and half years working in production and as a retail coordinator.
Parlaying his skills a bit further west, since 2014, Nealon has been the green coffee buyer and head roaster for Huckleberry in Denver. He still travels to Guatemala at least once a year, continuing to build relationships, work towards more transparency in specialty coffee, and help to develop the growing regions he loves. With Huckleberry on track to double production in 2017, Nealon is making Denver one of the country’s best cities to grab and savor a cup of coffee.
