For two sisters from Virginia, making a morning cup of Joe is not just a passion — it's their business.
It's brought them closer together as grown-up siblings, too, whether they're preparing a Chai latte, a caramel macchiato or any other specialty coffee order for their customers.
Lauren Bates, 19, and Lexi Bates, 24, from Culpeper, Virginia, opened a coffee truck in 2021 named Two Sisters Coffee Company, after a great deal of preparation.
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The mission is simple: They're giving back to their community by spreading joy through a delicious cup of coffee.
Fox News Digital spoke to the young women about their business venture and what it's meant to them as sisters.
Lexi Bates, the oldest of four siblings in the Bates household, said she’s always wanted to open a coffee shop — but it was never the right time.
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When she graduated from Virginia's James Madison University in 2020 — right in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic — she knew this was the time to start the business she had always dreamed of, she said.
"I drained my savings and took out a loan," she said.
She needed a business partner, however — so younger sister Lauren Bates started helping out each morning before she went to high school during her senior year.
The sisters purchased a 66 square ft. 1957 Chevy bread van on Facebook marketplace — and had the truck shipped from Ohio to their home in Virginia.
"The previous owner had turned it into a food truck, but he had originally bought it from Hollywood," Lexi Bates said.
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The truck has appeared in popular movies and has even traveled all over the country — but it needed a lot of help when they got it, Lexi Bates noted.
"It was a lot of YouTubing and trial and error to figure out how we wanted to do everything, but it was a really cool experience," she said.
The sisters said their parents were a huge support system for them when they were renovating the bread van and building the business.
They also said their dad is the first person they call when the truck won’t start.
"At 5 a.m. when the truck doesn’t start or something goes wrong, he’s the first person I call, and he’s the first person there," Lexi Bates said.
Once the truck was in shape, Lexi Bates headed to Portland, Oregon, to a barista training school to learn how to make specialty handcrafted coffee beverages.
The two sisters had never made specialty coffees before.
Lauren Bates said that she really had no idea what she was doing at first.
"When [Lexi] came back, she taught me everything because I didn’t even know how to pour a shot of espresso," she said.
After months of practice, the young women officially opened Two Sisters Coffee Company for business.
Although the business name might seem obvious, it was actually quite a difficult decision to make, Lexi Bates said.
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"We were just trying to think of a name that would be meaningful for us and [we] eventually said, ‘Call it what it is — two sisters,'" she said.
The coffee shop has brought the sisters closer together, they said, as they were apart for years when Lexi Bates went off to college.
"I feel like I went to college and came back and she was grown up, and it just [quickly] happened," Lexi Bates said about her younger sister.
"It was kind of cool to see who she’s turned into and then to be able to work together and learn more about each other," she added.
"Becoming close sisters and friends has been a huge blessing in this."
Lauren Bates noted this has brought the two sisters much closer together, despite the six-year age gap.
"This definitely did bring us a lot closer together, I would say."
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The young women's truck generally stays in one spot most of the time unless they have a private event (baby shower, birthday, wedding etc) that they're handling.
They work from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays, plus every Saturday morning.
The business is doing well, they said. And yes, it's literally just the two of them — the two sisters — running it.
