Megan Navarro
DRIPPING SPRINGS — One Dripping Springs family is bringing a unique, nostalgic twist to its coffee company through a home delivery service.
In the aftermath of the tragic loss of their son, Micah Narté, due a snowboarding accident, Washington natives Ted Rockwell and Tina Rockwell were compelled to find what was next for their family. Connections with friends and their own research of the Texas Hill Country landed them in Dripping Springs in 2023.
They had a desire to create a business that would bring a legacy honoring what they had lost by celebrating all that has been found. It has also opened up a space for healing in the family, with everyone being able to showcase their own skill sets, such as Ted and Tina’s college-aged daughter, who works on the finance piece.
In doing so, they took what they knew best from their time in the Pacific Northwest: coffee. ROCTÉ Coffee Company — a combination of the two family names, Rockwell and Narté — was started in September 2025, but has been operational since February 2026.
While ROCTÉ does not currently have a storefront, it focuses on bringing back the classic “milkman” model to its Dripping Springs neighbors, but with coffee.
“We’d always utilized a local milk man delivery service, so [we are] just taking that premise and idea and putting it into coffee,” said Eli Narté, Micah's brother, who moved to Dripping Springs last year and founded the idea of the coffee delivery service. “They would put a little metal kind of insulated cooler on your porch and on milk delivery days, they would drop it in the cooler, so instead of having a metal cooler, we got some insulated tote bags, and we are going to be basically redoing the milkman service, but calling it the ROCTÉ Coffeeman.”
There are a lot of coffee-related businesses in the Austin area, Ted explained, so they knew that they wanted to do something that was different, including bringing beans to their customers in their freshest state, while still maintaining a comparable cost.
“Postal costs are quite high. We didn't really realize that they cost as much as $5 or $6 to mail a bag, so we talked about it as a group,” Ted said. “I said, ‘Well, what are some ways that we could offer the quality of product that we want at a price that is going to be attractive relative to what most people purchase when they buy beans to roast or to brew at home?’ We knew that grocery store beans had a much longer warehousing period and could also sit on shelves for weeks, so we knew we had a quality advantage, but we wanted to try and bring the price to parity or close to parity.”
ROCTÉ works with two third-party organizations, Rising Tide and Genuine Origin, to help with the roasting and procuring of 100% Arabica specially-grade coffee beans from high-altitude regions in South America and the South Pacific.
“We have a medium light roast from Tanzania and we have a dark roast, as well, from Sumatra, so we tend to want to stay in that medium range because we think it's the right combination of complexity and flavor, but we recognize that not everybody shares our taste,” Ted explained. “We want to be able to offer them something that aligns to the natural preferences that they have.”
Being rooted in the Dripping Springs community is important to the Rockwell and Narté family, especially as the coffee company does not currently have a brick-and-mortar storefront. So, they take 10% of the profits and distribute them equally to three local organizations — PAWS of Central Texas, Dollars for Scholars and Central Texas Food Bank — that are committed to causes close to their hearts.
Additionally, last week, the company donated 50 pounds of its coffee to local businesses, first responders and civic leaders, giving back to “some of the local heroes in what they're doing and helping them stay caffeinated,” Eli said.
Moving to Dripping Springs, Tina explained that they discovered the highly-anticipated Founders Day Festival, where they had a booth near the main stage this year. For her, a large part of her identity is being a mother and incorporating herself in the community; after meeting with the Dripping Springs Art League, they collaborated to do an art contest for their Founders Blend, where they would pick one of 21 submissions to showcase their logo on the packaging for one year.
The winner was Kyndall Womack, the daughter of the head softball coach at Dripping Springs High School. As the submissions were anonymous for the contest, finding out the name and identity behind the winner was special, Tina explained, because the school colors from their hometown are the same as that of Dripping Springs HS, helping her feel like this is their new home.
“Our son Micah, who passed, was a left-handed pitcher and first baseman. The first picture, when I Googled [Womack's] name, she's wearing our old school colors and she's a left-handed pitcher and first baseman,” she said. “It just felt really good, like we are where we should be.”
Looking to the future, the family wants to have a physical location in Dripping Springs for ROCTÉ, where there is space to do roasting in-house, while also feeling like they are “an authentic and beloved part of the community,” Ted said, adding that they want to do appearances at farmers markets and pop-ups..
The coffee delivery service has been officially launched, with the company actively promoting it in the mail and across social media, Eli said. Currently, they are exclusively keeping the routes to the 78620 and 78737 zip codes and the first delivery will be July 6. Fresh bags of coffee will be delivered to neighbors’ doors before 9 a.m. on the first and third Monday of every month.
