The Co-Founder of Charlotte’s Giddy Goat Coffee is Also a Paralympic Medalist

Carson Clough. Image courtesy of Carson Clough / Giddy Goat Coffee Roasters.

When not running a booming coffee business, the co-founder of Charlotte, North Carolina’s Giddy Goat Coffee Roasters is likely to still be running, or biking, or perhaps swimming.

Carson Clough, who co-founded Giddy Goat with business partner Rhyne Davis as a multistory roastery cafe back in 2020, also happens to be a world-beating athlete, taking home the silver medal in the para triathlon at the 2024 Summer Paralympics in Paris, France.

“I had 55 to 60 people from the USA buy plane tickets to come watch my race. That was one of my favorite parts of the whole experience — just how many people actually got behind and supported me,” Clough recently told Daily Coffee News. “I wouldn’t say that [winning] was even a highlight of the trip, but it was definitely a cherry on top that made the experience even more amazing.”

Image courtesy of Carson Clough / Giddy Goat Coffee Roasters.

Just two years prior to swimming the Seine, cycling down the Champs-Élysées and running in the heart of Paris, Clough participated in his first para triathlon. As the newest member of the U.S. Elite Paratriathlon Team, Clough committed to an intense training regimen.

For months, he spent 30 to 35 hours per week running, biking and swimming with an inspirational music playlist that ranged from Breaking Benjamin and DJ Encore to France’s own Celine Dion.

“Running is my strength and [that] was the quickest to excel at,” said Clough, who lost a leg in a boating accident in 2019. “I really had to hone in on the bike and the swim to try and play catch up with everybody else.”

Carson Clough. Image courtesy of Carson Clough / Giddy Goat Coffee Roasters.

A week or two before the competition, Clough had to start slowing his weekly training time to 15 to 20 hours while settling into the Athletes’ Village in Paris and watching other events like archery, track and basketball.

“I was hungry and I had tons of energy, and I didn’t really have an outlet for that, because you’re trying to let your body recover,” Clough said. “You can’t eat as much because you’re not training as much, even though you’re still as hungry as you were.”

Of course, coffee — any coffee — helped provide some nourishment, with Costa Coffee being the official supplier of the Paralympic games. The UK-based coffee giant maintained numerous types of coffee stations for athletes.

“There was one part that had four auto machines where you just stick a cup underneath and press cortado, cappuccino or latte or espresso shot, and then the busiest one in the world was the one where it had actual baristas, fully manual coffee machines, and they were whipping out whatever drinks you wanted,” said Clough. “Inside the dining halls there was drip coffee.”

Back in Charlotte, all of Clough’s coffee endeavors are devoted to Giddy Goat. After Clough graduated with an MBA from Florida Tech in 2020 — not long after losing his right leg in a boating accident — a friend with family ties to the coffee industry, Rhyne Davis, approached him about potentially starting a business.

With construction on the roastery and retail location at the Plaza Midwood roastery cafe completed by that September, the entrepreneurs took the COVID-era opportunity to introduce themselves to the neighborhood through free coffee.

Image courtesy of Carson Clough / Giddy Goat Coffee Roasters.

The location now boasts a cafe and bar, supported by a full kitchen. Giddy Goat is currently in the process of moving into a second production and retail location in a renovated building in the South End neighborhood. That location is expected to include an expanded kitchen and food program, a new bar concept, and a new 75-kilo San Franciscan roaster.

Currently, roasting takes place on smaller San Franciscan machines, with many of the green coffees coming from Balzac Bros.

“My number one metric that I look for is, how can I get people back in because of the experience they have?” Clough said of the coffee business.

While his personal performance aspirations seem to know no bounds, Clough said the aspiration for the coffee business is to keep “growing for demand, not growing for growth.”

Giddy Goat Coffee Roasters is located at 1217 The Plaza in Charlotte, NC. Comments? Questions? News to share? Contact DCN’s editors here. 

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