By: Ali Elizabeth Turner
When Rachel Campbell was a girl of ten or eleven, her Athens grandparents unknowingly fueled both her creativity as well as a desire to one day own a coffee shop. Grandpa Leicher owned an auto mechanic shop, and in the same building, Grandma Leicher had a ceramic shop. There was a time when the Leichers were looking to purchase a RV, and in every model Rachel and Grandpa went to see there was a coffee pot on the kitchen counter of the vehicle. Rachel loved the smell and the feel she always encountered, and began to dream about having a place where people could come and sip great coffee among friends. “I was hooked,” she told me when we sat down ‘in her dream,’ Bonsai Coffee Company, which is located at 1207 E Forrest Street Ste-H in Athens.
Once Rachel and her husband Jason were married, the dream deepened when they would go on road trips and stop at coffee shops along the way. Rachel would make a point of learning about different coffees and how they were sourced, which we will talk about later. As a fantastically artistic woman, there was also a time when she would have loved to have been on Cake Boss, and her cakes were true works of art. The timing was not right for the “cake dream” because there were kids to raise (Scottie, now 26, Makaila, 25, and Carter, 18.) Jason does maintenance for apartment complexes; Rachel has worked for Toray in Decatur for 15 years. They both have a fierce interest in martial arts. Rachel has her black belt in Jiu-Jitsu, and when she was a kid just about wore out the DVD of the original Karate Kid.
Fast forward to 2025. One day Rachel took the ultimate risk and asked Makaila (who had been a team leader at Chik-fil-A) if she wanted to start a coffee biz with her mom. “I’m in,” was the response, and it was “gentlemen, (or in this case, family) start your engines.” In six months, Jason had completely built out the shop, recipes and menus were finalized, music and décor were selected, and most importantly, the coffee was sourced.
It was extremely important to the Campbells that their excellent coffee surpass the usual high standards of “fair trade and equitably sourced.” They wanted to be a part of organizations who, for example, have empowered women whose husbands had been murdered by the cartels in the Southern Hemisphere by helping them support their families. The women do so by running coffee producing farms. The “Tip the Farmer” program is one such outfit, and as Rachel says “Every bag and farm has a story.”
On to the Bonsai theme—the ability to carefully grow bonsai plants, groom them and cause them to flourish is its own highly skilled art form, and you will see several bonsai plants in the front window of the shop. Jason is the “bonsai keeper,” and sees to it that the plants are thriving. Bonsai Coffee continues the theme of being cared for, as well as invited to sit at the bar Jason built. The bar is for people to come in and talk to whomever is on duty, and faces the open kitchen. “From the start we have had people who needed a hug, maybe needed to cry, and they know they are welcome, Rachel told me.”
The “swish” around the Bonsai Coffee Company logo is actually an Enso circle, and it is a Japanese tradition. When you paint an Enso circle, you dip your brush in the paint once, you make one stroke, and you leave it untouched, unfinished, and open-ended. It symbolizes your life up to that point, and the hope that you still have much to accomplish before the circle is completed.
Both Rachel and Makaila want everything that is poured, drawn, flavored, frothed, baked, or garnished to be a work of art. “You don’t just smash the avocado into the middle of the toast, you place it carefully,” Rachel said. Same with espresso. “We make sure to ‘dial in’ the coffee so it delivers the most flavor,” she added.
As a side note and added artistic value for our community, Makaila is a musician, and her guitars are right there at the shop. Her vinyls are on the wall, and have everything from Ray Charles to Dolly to Queen as part of the shop’s ambience. Once a month, she has an open-mic night at the shop, and this month’s Bonsai Session will be on July 24 from 6:30-8 p.m. All are invited to hear Miss M’s lovely voice and guitar skills.
I asked Rachel, “Why, when I am choosing my “go-to coffee spot,” should I pick Bonsai Coffee Company?” She thought for a moment and said, “We have worked hard to find the best and freshest specialty coffee and matcha, bake the tastiest goodies, and to make everything with lots of TLC.” Come and discover just how true that is.
By: Ali Elizabeth Turner
