About the Episode:
Bunny talks with Avery and Josh of Dimension Coffee and Black Forest Farms Dispensary in Lordsburg, NM. A small coffee shop and walk up dispensary that opened in Lordsburg New Mexico (thank to the pandemic). Avery and Josh met while in Tucson for ten years and we decided to move back in the middle of covid to help bring life and a new business to Lordsburg. They are currently the only coffee shop and dispensary in town.
Links
Dimension Coffee
Facebook
Instagram
Black Forest Farms- Instagram
I Love New Mexico blog page
Bunny’s website
I Love New Mexico Instagram
I Love New Mexico Facebook
Original Music by: Kene Terry
Featuring:
Avery & Josh
We are a husband wife duo by the names of Avery and Josh who met in Tucson, Arizona while working in the music industry. After 10 years in Tucson, we moved back to Lordsburg, New Mexico (which is Avery’s hometown) so that we could open up a coffee shop and bring a little love to a small town that needed it. We dove headfirst and from there it took us six months to renovate an old 80’s RV, build an inventory, and create a menu for what is now Dimension Coffee. Through a willingness to learn, grow, do better, and with a lot of hard work…we have now been open for a little over two years and have also managed to open up the first dispensary in Lordsburg called Black Forest Farms. We’ve started off small but we have exciting plans for both businesses in the very near future as well as personal filmmaking dreams. None of which would have been possible without the love and support of our families, friends, and Hidalgo County community.
Episode Transcript
Bunny : (00:00)
Hi there. I’m Bunny Terry, and you’re listening to the I Love New Mexico podcast. Whether you’re a native new Mexican, who’s lived here for your entire life, or you’re just considering a visit, this episode is for you. Join us as we share a lot of New Mexico stories, talk about all things New Mexico, and include topics like what’s magical here, where you ought to visit, what’s happening, and the things you absolutely cannot miss in the land of Enchantment. We’re excited that you’re here, and we can’t wait to show you what an amazing place New Mexico is, because let’s face it, I love New Mexico. Today we’re talking to Avery Montenegro and Josh Stino, and I hope I got both of those names right. I said you guys used up all the continents with your two last names, but they’re in Hidalgo County in the Booth Hill, and they, uh, in, in Lordsburg. Um, and so this is a, we’ve talked to a couple of folks in Silver City before, but we’ve never spoken to anyone in Lordsburg, and I’m excited to have you on the podcast. I wanna know, um, who are Avery and Josh and how did you end up where you are right now?
Avery : (01:30)
Do you want me to start? Yeah, let’s, yeah. Okay. I’ll start. Yeah. So Josh and I met in Tucson. I growing up in Lordsburg, New Mexico, uh, had its share of difficulties, you know, on its youth as far as I was concerned. And I very much so was the classic case of wanting to run away from your small town as fast as you can and never look back. And, um, we got to develop and grow in the Tucson area. Myself, personally, for the last 10 years, um, I spent there, had a really, really, really good time learning a lot of different skill that are very unique to the city that I felt like I worked in marketing, graphic design. Uh, I worked with a lot of local companies to help build them up as far as like branding and marketing and stuff like that. Uh, we also worked in the music industry. That’s where we ended up meeting. Um, I started off doing a podcast and throwing shows, and I was a radio DJ on one of the radio stations there in Tucson as well. And we ended up, uh, booking shows and doing a promotion, uh, company as our first business, together. Nothing brick and mortar at that point, which is very different from what we’re doing now. We kind of started switching over to like filmmaking in the middle of that alongside music. And Covid just hardcore shut down everything within those two things. So instead of, um, just kind of sitting and waiting and, uh, hoping that there was gonna be things that were gonna be popping up, we didn’t wanna kind of take that chance since it was very much so out of our hands. Um, and we decided that it was important to us at that point to invest into a community with the skillsets that we’d built up that didn’t necessarily have that, um, didn’t really have that presence. Lordsburg is very, very, very small and is, uh, lacking in some of those things that even places like Silver City might have more of, like print shops or design people, you know, things like that. Um, so when we were taking a look at possibly, uh, going into business for ourselves to also, um, still go for the dream of being filmmakers, it was very important to us to have time
Avery : (04:01)
And we see a lot of people from the interstate. We also have a pretty big community between all the people who live in the entire county. Um, so we decided to put a coffee shop here to start off with, and we’ve, uh, been open for two years doing that, and it has been crazy. And then we also saw a need, especially being a border town, and the importance of just safety first kind of a thing. Uh, we also put the first dispensary in town as well over the past, uh, over the past year. Um, and it was quite a year of getting it here, and it was insanely hard and a lot harder than we thought we were going to be getting ourselves into
Bunny : (05:17)
I always say to people, in fact, I wrote a blog with this, with the name, which is, um, get Off the Interstate. It’s like everybody, people will say to me, well, I’ve been to New Mexico, I was on I 40, I went from Gallup to Duke of care, and it’s ugly. I’m like, it isn’t beautiful if you’re on the interstate, so you’re right. Get off the interstate. Thank you for saying that. I think it’s so important. Yeah. So, so Josh, you’re, you’re not a new Mexican, right? You didn’t grow up in
Josh : (05:49)
No, no. Yeah, I, uh, I kind of grew up all over the country. My parents were in the military, so they ended up settling in Arizona, and, uh, I was in Eastern Arizona, so I grew up kind of like looking into New Mexico and, and just saying, oh, wow, there’s that other state that looks similar to mine and not really ever actually knowing anyone in New Mexico. So never having a reason to really explore the state. So I was always in, uh, Arizona and eventually when I was in, I grew up in the southeast part of the state, so a little further south than Tucson. When I, when I was an adult, I ended up moving near Tucson and in a town called Benson, similar, very similar to Lordsburg. It’s a railroad town, an interstate town that had, um, I think it was Interstate 80 or Highway 80 went through that, like the old, the old Highway. And then the interstate came through. And so the town was sort of like changed. And so I had already kind of experienced, um, in a, some, in some way living in a town that had changed, that had like a lot of booming paths that had been affected by the interstate. And so that was one aspect of that. And because I was playing in the music world, I ended up in Tucson a lot. That’s where I met Avery. We ended up out here after, after Covid. And having already lived in a small town, I was, I already kind of knew what to expect coming to Lordsburg, but I would have to say that the thing that attracted me to New Mexico, that having grown up in a military family, there’s a strong sense of community on military bases that you don’t really get off base because no one really, it’s, it’s just sort of a, like, you have your own world on the base, and so you end up going to similar bases and they all sort of look the same, and you end up seeing a lot of the same people that get stationed there. And so it’s just sort of its own thing. And that’s how New Mexico felt. And it had this big sense of community and family and like the whole state was kind of on its own thing. And having lived in a lot of other states, it, it wasn’t like that. And so I was really attracted to that New Mexico, the big strong community aspect. And I love food, and that was awesome too. And so the food in New Mexico is absolutely, probably the best in the country, I think, or like one of the best foods in the world. It’s absolutely unreal. I grew up with Italian and Puerto Rican, uh, family, and so I had a lot of food thrown in my face growing up. And so I was, you know, I, I just grew up loving food. And New Mexico has such a strong food culture and it’s, it’s, uh, special. Yeah. So that’s one of the just special things, the community aspect. I already, yeah, I love the small town aspect. I grew up in cities and it was just, there’s, there’s certain things that, certain pros and cons of living in cities or it’s a small town, so if you already know mentally, like going into it, what to expect, there’s a small town that make it very, very, um, fulfilling. Yeah,
Bunny : (08:43)
I’ve noticed, um, in the course of doing this and just noticing what’s going on near my hometown in Logan and in Tuciumcari and that northeastern part of the country of the state, I’ve noticed that, um, a lot of young people your age, I mean, I don’t know if I, I suspect you’re in your, I don’t know, late twenties, thirties, but I, I, um, I’ve noticed that there’s this whole, even in Santa Fe, which is considered an an old, an elderly
Josh : (09:26)
Yes.
Avery : (09:27)
Um, we’re seeing both definitely because, you know, coming from a small town as well has its stigmas to it, and your, your want to, you know, go and run, which I agree with broaden your horizons. And I like the way we kind of did things where we brought skill sets we learned on the outside and a unique perspective. And that’s why I believe that we can, you know, add a little flare here and there or do things a little differently. But yeah, we, we’ve seen, um, people wanting to leave and people wanting to come back in full force with a lot of passion and a lot of drive and a lot of want instead of in defeat, which is really nice to see. So yeah, I’ll say it’s
Josh : (10:02)
We’ve seen, uh, yeah, some people too that are from surrounding states that come through New Mexico and they sort of like, they catch a whiff of something and they’re like, oh, what is this place? This is interesting. Like, what’s going on in New Mexico? Like, they’ve never been there. And then we tell them about a few of the places and then, you know, they, they’re saying, oh, I’m looking for a place to move to, or, oh, I’m looking for this. And so we always imagine that those people just end up going to one of these pretty small towns in New Mexico and they just like end up moving there or something, you know, because it ends up happening in Lordsburg more often than I assume. Yeah, it’s, we, we meet some of those people at the coffee shop too, so we’re just like, really? You’re here? Why are you here? Like, oh, we just, just ended up coming back here. We were here like 20 years ago and then we came back or something. We’re like, cool. Strange, awesome. You know, it’s, it’s a, it’s an interesting place.
Bunny : (10:51)
So, so you have a really unique story about the coffee shop. I, so everybody out there is, and, and I’ve had a coffee shop before. So, um, every, uh, everybody has this idea that there, you can create a lot of community by having a coffee shop where you live. You did something sort of unexpected. I, I wanna hear about that.
Avery : (11:13)
Uh, so, and we did it very fast too. It was, it was very surprising myself that we, what we did this, we, um, had the idea that the coffee shop was coffee shop for one, um, when we were doing a lot of research. And, um, Josh was working in a coffee shop at the time. So we had a realistic view of like, numbers coming through and like what the idea and the initial setup would be. Uh, so we did a lot of research on one of the lowest things, the lowest overhead things that you could possibly do. So we took that idea and we tried to think of a way to make that as small as we could possibly do, because at that point we’d done, um, nothing brick and mortar as far as a business goes, just, uh, throwing shows and marketing and, and working with local businesses.
Avery : (11:54)
So we had an idea of where, um, certain things could kind of lead. Uh, so we were lucky at the time that my grandfather had gifted the family an old rv. And instead of being able to say, have to say, it was the direction we would, decided we were gonna go in for that low cost, just kind of low, as low as possible, um, style that we were going for. And we were lucky that that kind of all aligned and happened in once. And the family, um, was believed in us and was really happy to have us back and really excited about our ideas and what we were doing. So they gifted us that little rv. It took us about six months of having never renovated anything or ever built anything like that in our entire lives. We had only rented because we’re, you know, in our late twenties
Bunny : (13:54)
I have to see a picture. I mean, we are gonna have to, um, put a picture of the RV in our, um, show notes. But what I wanna hear, um, first what do you call it and how do people,
Josh : (14:09)
It’s, dimension Coffee and they can find us on Google, Facebook, Instagram, if you just search our name, it has our, uh, our hours location where right across the street from McDonald’s in right off the interstate, right off the interstate in Lordsburg. So it’s a fairly easy location to find. And uh, the r it’s a little RV with a really colorful design on it and uh, with a bunch of flags outside and stuff. So yeah, Lordsburg, New Mexico across the street from McDonald’s and Google, Facebook and Instagram. If you just search Dimension Coffee, that’s, that’s where most of our info in information is.
Avery : (14:46)
Yeah, we have it a very Southwest style, which is nice being, uh, we have some drinks that have, uh, chili and lime options, um, different things like that. We have a lot of like blended cokes that have become really popular. Um, everything that we do in store since there is no bake shop in Lordsburg, because it is also that small
Josh : (15:30)
A, it’s a lot of fun to just like, I dunno, we, we, part of, part of going into the business was wanting to have just the freedom and creativity, just kind of like experiment on all kinds of stuff. And so we just, anything we see or think of that we go, oh yeah, that would sound good. That sounds like it would be, it’s really tasty. We try it and if it doesn’t work, we’re like, okay, well maybe the next one. And that’s always obviously like, uh, a bummer ’cause you spend the money on the product and if it doesn’t work, but more than often it, it just blows our mind. And then we’re like, oh, so excited to like, share it with people and, and, and they just are like, oh, when are you gonna make that thing again? And so, yeah, it just keeps adding more things to our baking menu. And so it’s a, it’s a growing thing as well.
Bunny : (16:14)
So, so I wanna hear what people like. Well first of all, I wanna hear what your favorite, um, thing is that you bake. And I wanna hear what people are liking because, um, maybe we could, um, have them find you and um, if they follow you, you might share the recipe.
Josh : (16:33)
Oh yeah, yeah.
Avery : (16:35)
That sounds
Josh : (16:35)
Awesome.
Avery : (16:36)
Yeah. Yeah, we would love that. Um, let’s see. Oh my gosh, what is been the most popular?
Josh : (16:42)
I mean, I guess this like, I don’t know, the cinnamon rolls are always the one that people come off the interstate for, like do you have the cinnamon rolls today?
Avery : (16:49)
Yeah, the pictures on Google bring on our cin, the cinnamon roll bowl. Absolutely. Yeah,
Josh : (16:53)
I would, the cinnamon roll is like the main overarching thing. Yeah,
Avery : (16:58)
The cinnamon, the brownies. Oh yeah, the,
Josh : (17:00)
Yeah, yeah, the brownies. There’s a, we make a really yummy brownie
Avery : (17:04)
Josh : (17:09)
Something. It’s really good. Uh, so yeah, I would definitely, I would definitely say either of those. Um, did you want us to share the recipe, like right here on, or just like, oh, no,
Avery : (17:18)
No one,
Josh : (17:18)
They’ll follow us.
Avery : (17:20)
We’ll do like a video, like, and we’ll like
Josh : (17:22)
Show whole message
Avery : (17:24)
Something.
Bunny : (17:25)
I want folks to be able to find you and I wanna give them some incentives. So, um, you guys decide whether you wanna give people the recipe for the cinnamon roll or the brownie. And, and here’s the thing. I think they ought to just drive to Lordsburg and have one, because that’s what I’d like to do. Um, and, and, and besides the coffee, which is um, which is a great way to create community, you also did the dispensary, which I, you know, I remember because I grew up in Logan, which is over near the Texas border. And when we were waiting for the vote on recreational marijuana, I remember thinking how to do a dispensary in Logan. And of course, because we’re so close to the Texas border, and of course, um, we didn’t do it because I have about 27 other irons in the fire. But you did it. I mean, what a leap of faith to jump out there and do
Avery : (18:19)
It was quite an interesting leap indeed.
Josh : (18:21)
Yes. Yeah.
Avery : (18:24)
To this point, it was our hardest mission.
Josh : (18:27)
That one, that one, uh, involved, uh, yeah, a lot of, a lot of paperwork and a lot of, um, just partnering with, uh, family members for investment and things. ’cause uh, like just lawyers got involved ’cause it had to, there was just so much information to make sure that we were like crossing all our T’s and dotting all our, all our i’s. ’cause you’re dealing with a very.
Avery : (18:51)
New Market
Josh : (18:51)
Litigious organization with the state. You know, they’re gonna make sure everything is like in order, but there’s no information, they’re not gonna let, you know. So we had to go backwards kind of thing. ’cause we’re just two people kind of like, we’re, we’re, we’re just figuring it out. And the coffee shop’s just like, get the business license, get your food handler, set it up, we’ll come inspect it. You’re good, open. And, uh, that was not the case with the, with this one, it was, uh, it was just like a whole, which was to be inspected, which was okay. But it was, it was just it’s been a, it’s been a whole process for more, more than a year actually, because we’ve been open for almost a year now. And so the whole setup process of paperwork took a year. Took an entire year. Yeah. So it’s been, it’s been quite a process. But we were so grateful that we had so much help from family members and so much help from, from people in the state that had other information for us. Like that just made streamlined things at a certain point. And we were just, uh, grateful it got done at all. And really just happy that even if we’re still dealing with the startup phases of the state itself, legalizing the product or the,
Avery : (19:54)
And being so small, we make the joke that we’re probably the smallest dispensary in the state.
Josh : (19:58)
Yeah. And we might not be, but we very well, one of the smallest, you know, certainly because we’re, it’s not exactly the number one thing that small businesses go into to, to start, you know, and so we’re, we’re just figuring it out and we’re really just happy that it’s, uh, we’re, we have most of the hard work done. And now it’s just about finding more, uh, you know, people in the state, more farms reaching out to other people and creating more of that community, which that has been a great response from the older community as well. And they have been so grateful that there is someone in town that they don’t have to go out of town. ’cause that’s something that, that can become just such a problem for any reason. But adding one more reason for like medi medicine or anything like that for, for an elderly community is just, it’s, it’s a pain, you know, to have to go 45 minutes to an hour out of town and then back, um,
Avery : (20:49)
Much less money. We see a lot of low
Josh : (20:50)
Income
Avery : (20:51)
Ranges within
Josh : (20:52)
That. So we always try to just give more deals or match, match other prices anywhere that we see where something might be, uh, where we can give a better deal on a product or things like that to help people. And so we’re always happy to do that. And that’s something that we personally don’t really ever, or we’ve never really experienced in a lot of, uh, you know, dispensaries. ’cause they’re very, a lot of ’em are very corporate, um, feeling. And so we like to give a very small town, local, local business type type of vibe for the thing. And people really appreciate that. Yeah.
Avery : (21:23)
And being a border town too, one of the first responses that we got from a lot of people who started filtering in and, um, understanding that we were an actual dispenser you can buy from us now. I know it’s strange times, but come in. Um, but a lot of response that we got was, yeah, I had a lot of friends who got cross contamination from buying illegally from Fentanyl, and they had an overdose. So thank you for being here because you are a legal place and I know I’m safe from buying by buying from you. And that was something that we didn’t expect to hear, but it was the first thing that we started hearing, um, aside from our elder community who enjoyed having us open and not having to travel and be as an expensive, as expensive of, of a trip. Um, so it really, uh, it made us feel good
Bunny : (22:09)
So, um, tell me what the name of the dispensary is and where folks can find that. Because that’s, I mean, if I’ve got, if we’ve got somebody, uh, and I want people to know, I always say this when we’re talking about, um, geographic areas, I, I want people to know sort of exactly where Lordsburg is because you know, if you’re listening and you’re, you know, you’re in Ireland or New Jersey, I’d like for them to know what part of the state you’re in and then where they can find the dispensary as well.
Avery : (22:40)
Yeah. You have a pretty good rundown on geography,
Josh : (22:43)
Oh my god. You know where we are. Come on.
Avery : (23:30)
18 minutes away from
Josh : (23:32)
Border. Yeah. So it’s, I mean, it’s like the, the big, the big town on, you know, like the first one or the last one you’re gonna hit, um, coing or toing going, going or coming from Arizona into New Mexico. And so that’s gonna be the thing if you’re going to Silver City, if you’ve ever been to Silver City or if you’ve ever been to uh, um, Glenwood or any of the northern parts of the west part of New Mexico, you’ve had to travel through New Mex, uh, through Lordsburg to take that, uh, to take that road, uh, north. And uh, yeah, that’s, that’s just, uh, that’s pretty much the only way to get to new, uh, to Lordsburg is right, uh, right off the interstate, right off Interstate 10, on exit 12, I think.
Avery : (24:11)
Yeah, we have a dimension coffee, like we mentioned off of Google, Instagram, and Facebook. If you wanna find us on there, that’s usually the easiest right now. Uh, we have a website that’ll be launching for our dispensary portion, which is called Black Forest Farms Dispensary, or Black Forest Farms, um, dispensary, that website and the Weedmaps pin and all of that stuff will be, um, launching in October specifically. ’cause we were just two people. My, our third party happens to be my brother and he lives in Italy right now as a military contractor,
Avery : (25:02)
Yeah. So we liked that we get the opportunity to give back, um, in that regard. And then our community takes really good care of us as well. So it’s really nice. We would love to get to see more people we love, uh, we get to see people now that’ll come find us from Silver City, which is really cool. I heard about your coffee shop and you’re baking and they’ll come down and see us now. It’s really exciting. Uh, we really, really enjoy that. The dispensary, um, is a little bit since it is just us two here physically and the only, um, people who are working the coffee shop currently as well as, um, operating it. Um, so it’s insanely small, but um, it’s a little, these details are a little behind for us, so we apologize that everything is not quite there. It’s growing and getting better
Avery : (25:40)
Um, but uh, the Black Forest Farms dispensary is located in Dimension Coffee with us at Dimension Coffee. So we operate specifically as a walkup, um, dispensary, which we are really lucky with because our city and state don’t have an ordinance against it, which is really, really nice. Uh, so we operate currently as a a walkup dispensary, still same legalities. Have to be 21 and over, have to present your, ID have to have the whole, the whole deal. Um, but we’ll have that website coming up soon. The best time to find us currently is with Dimension Coffee hours, uh, just because as long as the coffee shop’s open, the dispensary is also open currently. Um, we will be looking in the next couple of months to be, um, expand. Yeah, the property that we’re on, it can be a little bit difficult for people to find us. We do have flags. We have a really, really big colorful, nice pretty RV that has dimension coffee shops right across the dispensary. Flags are outside with, uh, the dimension coffee shops. You just come and talk to us for the few people you talk to for dispensary related things, coffee shop related things. It all happens at the same place,
Josh : (26:55)
We’re about to paint.
Avery : (26:57)
Yeah. But we’re, um, getting ready to paint, uh, the autobody shop that we’re taking over from my dad. So we get to be lucky to be third party, um, or third generation owners in this property at this point, which is really cool and really exciting. Um, my grandparents were built really big entrepreneurs in this town as well. Um, so we get to kind of take that on a little bit. And so the, the, the, uh, autobody shop, um, next to us will also be a part of the business and we’ll have like a head shop and some merch and some smoking utilities. And the idea is hopefully the dispensary can move down there once we have more manpower. Once we have more availability. So currently Dimension Coffee and Black Forest Farms all in one little thing.
Bunny : (27:41)
I have one question, um, and then we’ll, we’ll wanna wrap up, but who’s making the coffee this morning?
Josh : (27:48)
So currently we’re, we’re closed right now actually. So we were at for this this last couple days. Uh, we we’re gonna weird little blip of updates and, and we just a great blip of updates. Yeah. We’ve been like
Avery : (28:48)
Josh : (29:42)
Yeah, typically our hours just change because, uh, we, we have to run out of town sometimes for, um, products if there’s something that we, we don’t end up having. And then we also, with the baking and yeah, the baking sometimes takes up a lot of time and so there’s dispensary,
Avery : (29:59)
Pickups
Josh : (29:59)
Yeah. Or pickups for the dispensary. That’s added a couple of of things in that regard. So we’re just still managing packaging. Yeah, packaging is another aspect that, that will end up taking like a whole full day. And because it’s just the two of us, then there’s no way for us to do both of that. And so then we have to just dedicate a whole day to doing one of those things. And so that’s, that’s the only reason, more business stuff.
Avery : (30:20)
So that’s why, but we’re, we’ve spending hours, expand our hours.
Josh : (30:21)
Yeah.
Bunny : (30:25)
Well, I wanna thank you so much for taking time to visit with us and I wanna encourage people to find you. And I, I especially wanna applaud you for coming home to New Mexico, Avery and bringing Josh with you and finding your dreams here because that seems to be what people do. So thanks for being on the show.
Josh : (30:47)
Thank you so much for having us. Yeah. It was so nice to talk with someone from New Mexico about all the great things going on in New Mexico.
Avery : (30:55)
Josh : (30:59)
Putting it all back out there.
Avery : (31:00)
We can’t tell people enough how much we love this state and how beautiful it is and how much it has going on. There’s a lot happening. It’s why we decide to be filmmakers here as well. So, you know, give it a chance. Enjoy the beautiful things it has to offer and we appreciate you. So thank you.
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