Coffee Traditions From Around The World Find Home In NoVA

RESTON, VA — Since the end of November, Brandon Berryhill, owner of The Traveling Shepherd Coffee, has been setting up his canopy every Friday morning to sell hot drinks to the commuters at the Fox Mill-South Reston Park and Ride.

"I always like the coffeeshop atmosphere. I just don't like the way they're all the same," he said. "As I learned about coffee roaming around, I found my own unique thing, where I roast from 30 different countries currently and 11 different cultural traditions."

Eight year ago, Berryhill visited his first coffeeshop, where he got interested in the cultural traditions surrounding.

"Over the last three years is when I started to develop the concept," he said. "I went to work at an Ethiopian restaurant and eventually they taught me the coffee ceremony."

After visiting a friend in Vietnam who owned a coffee shop, Berryhill returned home with some coffee beans. Little by little, he mastered coffee traditions from around the world and launched The Traveling Shepherd Coffee.

"The name Traveling Shepherd officially comes from the Book of Theophilus," he said. "The main character in the book was essentially a traveling shepherd. Originally, it was a pen name for poetry that I wrote and eventually I thought this would make a cool coffee concept."

The animal in his logo is the dog of St. Dominic, which was the first church he did an event at in New Jersey.

"How I eventually learned so much about coffee was by roaming the Catholic Church," he said. "I've been to about 500 to 1,000 different ones and everyone you go to has their own cultural background due to the communities they're in. That's where I started to see they all had their own coffee cultures and concepts."

Traveling Shepherd specializes in a variety of drinks based on the different traditions from around the world.

"Vietnamese coffee is one of my best, because it's hard to find freshly roasted Vietnamese coffee," he said. "Mexican is my other one, which is why those two I always try to have on tap ready to go. But Turkish, the Turkish Arabic, is probably the most popular one I do outside the normal ones because, usually, you don't find freshly roasted and ground Turkish coffee. Nobody makes it in front of you like they used to."

Berryhill made selling coffee his full-time gig last May. He roasts beans out of his garage in Herndon and sells at venues all around Northern Virginia.

The Traveling Shepherd Coffee regular sets up at the following locations:

• Mount Vernon Farmers Market, Wednesdays, 8 a.m.-12 p.m., at 2501 Sherwood Hall Lane #2702, Alexandria, VA 22306
• Annandale Farmers Market, Thursdays, 8 a.m.-12 p.m., 6621 Columbia Pike, Annandale, VA 22003
• Fox Mill-South Reston Park and Ride, Fridays, 8 a.m.-12 p.m., 2531 Reston Parkway, Reston
• Warrenton Farmers Market, 8 a.m.-12 p.m., behind 21 Main, 1st Street and Main Street, Warrenton, VA 20186