The bikini-clad barista babes making a killing in oil-rich boomtown… and their creepy encounters
A bright pink coffee shop isn’t what most people would expect outside the oil fields near Odessa, Texas, but business is good.
Pickups full of workers line up bumper to bumper before dawn and inside, scantily clad baristas serve almost exclusively male customers – losers looking for strong drinks from hot women before doing hard manual labor in the unforgiving fields.
Boomtown Babes Espresso is the brainchild of Nyssa Gray, a Seattle native who grew up in the shadow of Starbucks and cut her teeth in the coffee industry in the Pacific Northwest – including running a lingerie-themed stand called Hot Chick-a-Latte .
She had recognized the potential of coffee shops with sexy service, and when she heard about the oil and gas boomtowns she suspected she had found a winning combination.
“I knew I wanted to open a stand, but Seattle is obviously a very saturated market… and then I heard about guys working on the oil fields in North Dakota,” Gray, now 36, tells DailyMail.com.
“They worked two weeks on, two weeks off, went from Seattle to North Dakota, made a lot of money and then came back – and at the time the ratio was a hundred guys to a girl. So I thought, ‘That’s perfect.'”
North Dakota’s infrastructure at the time was struggling to keep up with the boom; there wasn’t even enough housing for oil field workers and others who flocked to the area. So Gray put her name on an apartment list, and when an apartment opened in 2013, she threw her belongings into a U-haul and drove to the flat Midwest.
What she found upon arrival, she says, was “the Wild West times a million.”
Nyssa Gray, now 36, opened her first location (pictured) in 2013 in Williston, North Dakota – which she described at the time as “crazy” and “Wild West times a million”
While the servers cater to the boomtown clientele, Gray says, “the average customer is just an overworked oilfield guy who comes in just to see a pretty face and a nice smile, have a nice conversation and have coffee.” to get’.
The male-to-female ratio was 100 to 1 when she arrived in North Dakota during the oil boom, Gray says, and initially she had to “import girls” from elsewhere, as well as provide housing.
“This was when there was a huge boom, in 2012, 2013; There were guys just sleeping in the Walmart parking lot making over $100,000 a year,” Gray says. “It was just crazy.”
It was also a no-brainer, she says, to launch a company advertising the region’s “breast coffee” for “overworked men – bring in some sexy women” to cater to the rough and tumble, while they’re “super hyped, acting bubbly, joking around,” she says. all around.’
She opened a small pink stand in Williston, North Dakota, and dreamed of staffing it with barely clad baristas.
However, local authorities nipped her plans in the bud by requiring employees to dress more modestly—outfits with shorts and spandex tank tops, more “Hooters,” she says, than a strip club.
She also had to cast a wide net for employees, given the low gender ratio and relatively absent glamor factor in the arid region of North Dakota.
“I used to import girls,” she laughs. “I had a big house in North Dakota that I paid about $6,000 a month for, and I had a bunch of women living with me at the same time… I think there were 12 employees at one point.
“I mean, the boom happened in North Dakota, and there weren’t enough apartments or anything, so there was nowhere for anyone to live. So it’s not like you could just say, “Hey, come work for me;” you had to provide housing.”
Once she found the employees and opened Boomtown Babes – albeit a slightly more chaste version than she originally expected – the business took off.
Her attractive employees were cleaning up with tips; Barista Marisa Randock, one of the importers from Washington state, told the Grand Forks Herald in 2013 that she averaged between $200 and $300 in tips during a four-hour shift, but emphasized that the windfall was not just based on appearance was based.
“You have to have a kind, wonderful personality,” she said.
Gray says it was a ‘no-brainer’ to launch a company advertising ‘breast coffee’ for ‘overworked men – bring in some sexy women’ to cater to the rough and tumble while they are ‘super hyped , behave bubbly and make jokes’
Boomtown Babes Espresso’s employees often call themselves “baberistas” and serve drinks with names like The Driller, Sweet Crude, Gold Digger, Oil Spill, Big Rig, Black Gold and Day Shift; sizes range from 12 to 32 ounces
The most expensive Boomtown Babes drink is 32 ounces, costs $9.25 and is called Back to Tripping – consisting of six shots, chocolate, Irish cream, 2% milk and half and half. Then there’s the Pipeliner Pack, which gives employees a 24-ounce drink and a muffin for $9.50.
The great success of Boomtown Babes prompted Gray to dream bigger and further, so she followed the oil – and the boomtowns.
In 2018, as the industry exploded in West Texas, she opened her first bright pink drive-through coffee shop in Odessa, near the local Goodwill.
There were no employee wardrobe restrictions like those she experienced in North Dakota, she tells DailyMail.com.
“Odessa, anything goes there,” she says. “That oil field is definitely a lot more sexual.”
She found an equally wild – if not wilder – vibe in Texas; After opening the first location, she opened a second in Odessa “five minutes apart to accommodate overfill.”
The lines of trucks and patient hocking she experienced are similar to those of “Babes n Brew” — a fictional cafe with bikini-wearing baristas from Paramount+’s Landman, inspired by Gray’s company.
After living through two oil and gas explosions in different states, Gray says of Thornton’s new show Landman, “I know exactly what they’re talking about.” I’m like, ‘I was there'”
The oil and gas industry in West Texas’ Permian Basin, pictured, took off as North Dakota’s boom waned, and the Lone Star State served as the backdrop for the new series Landman; Gray says the show reflects real life during its heyday
‘To be honest, we’re so busy that you’ll have to sit down for a while [customers] out in a minute,” she says.
“The average customer is just an overworked oilfield guy who just comes in to see a pretty face and a nice smile, have a nice conversation and get a cup of coffee,” says Gray — though the entrepreneur admits that it’s not all went off without a hitch. sailing.
“Oil explosions bring a lot of crime, a lot of money, a lot of everything. You name it – I’ve seen it all,” she says.
About a decade ago, in North Dakota, “someone robbed us at knifepoint…we would take shifts watching the coffee shop when the girls opened,” Gray says.
For their safety, Gray said she and other employees would park directly in front of the booth to be ready in case of any problems at the start of the shift.
“It was quite scary because we were – or we are still – in a hotel parking lot. So there would be a lot of losers and such living there, but also people who used drugs.
“There are also a lot of drugs in the oil fields,” she says. “When people make money, it brings everything: crime, drugs, sex… it was vague.”
Customers fixated on specific baristas have also occasionally proven problematic, she says.
Gray expanded Boomtown Babes to Texas in 2018, opening her first booth (pictured) in Odessa, a place where she says “anything goes” and where restrictions on her employees’ wardrobes were more lax than in North Dakota
Boomtown Babes Espresso’s social media accounts feature photos, selfies and videos of its lingerie-clad employees, who strive to exhibit “bubbly” behavior with a smile in addition to wearing provocative outfits
Gray says there have been occasional “scary” moments at her Boomtown Babes location, including a knife robbery and “a few” instances where her employees had to call the police
“There would be guys who were a little more obsessed,” she says, which would require “the window to be closed on them” and “if it gets too much, the police should be called.”
She insists this has only happened a “few times” in the decade she’s been running the company – and she’s not done identifying new opportunities in the boomtown.
“I’m trying to expand into New Mexico,” she says, where there are “tons of oil,” though she is coy about not giving away the city.
Now based in Austin, Gray has launched coffee roasters and catering companies in addition to the eye-catching coffee stands, and she says Landman has “definitely given us a boost” that she plans to “leverage.”
She also watched Landman with great interest – and amusement.
“I know exactly what they’re talking about,” she says. ‘I’m like, ‘I was there’.’