Dessert Oasis

OUR ARTICLE

Passion and innovation can never be limited by age. You could be 53-years-old learning how to build a motorcycle or 27, starting an apprenticeship at a tattoo shop after quitting your job in finance. Or you could be a 13-year-old who falls in love with coffee, buys his first roaster, and become an award-winning coffee roaster by the time he was 17. That’s Nate Hamood’s story, one of the main guys behind Dessert Oasis, a coffee shop in Detroit.

Dessert Oasis may have begun as a family business in 2009 with Nate’s parents working behind the counter and his sister playing live music every night, but Nate’s passion for coffee placed the coffee shop as one of Detroit’s most beloved spots.

While great coffee can be about blends and where it was grown, sometimes it’s made better by knowing exactly who is roasting the fuel to jazz you up that day.

Nate bought Dessert Oassis’ first roaster, on which he learned all he could about coffee, polishing his craft, and eventually winning awards for his coffee and roasting skills. As Nate’s coffee passion grew, so too did Dessert Oasis, opening two more locations in Rochester and Royal Oak, Michigan.

Nate’s love for coffee and the spirit behind his drive to make a good cup of coffee better, is one that can be admired.

Dessert Oasis serves unique blends like Burundi Karinzi from Africa or El Salvador Finca La Esmerelda, a coffee grown in high altitudes of volcanic soil. The shop supplements these tasty blends with after-dinner desserts like fondues and fruit crepes, and serve them to patrons in their minimalist, warehouse-aesthetic shops. Live music and coffee blend together most nights, along with cool branded items like coffee mugs that feature a skull with a cowboy hat and bandana.

Though coffee is mostly associated with morning times, Dessert Oasis is itself an oasis in the coffee scene. It highlights how roasts have a place at night when the sun goes down and live music, and dessert foods come out.

Dessert Oasis may have started out as a family business but Nate’s love for coffee and his passion for roasting, really made the Detroit shop and the other two locations what they are today.

On the coffee shop’s Instagram, Nate said, “Coffee is just about all I do, but when I’m not roasting coffee, brewing coffee or drinking coffee, and I’m not in the office, I’m probably listening to some records or playing drums.”

While great coffee can be about blends and where it was grown, sometimes it’s made better by knowing exactly who is roasting the fuel to jazz you up that day. A simple cup of coffee roasted by Nate at Dessert Oasis reminds us that passion and drive is something that we should all strive for.