Coffee Business

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SCI Business of Coffee podcast

Episodes

  1. 03/08/2021

    Sara Parish: The Story of Her Spanish Cafe Pt. 2

    Alexandra Mosher: [00:00:00] This is part two of the interview with Sarah Parish, one of the founders of Torch Coffee in Seville, Spain. Sarah expands on her background growing up in Guatemala and how this affected the why behind her opening up a coffee shop. She also expands on how a trip from Torch's founder helped her and her sister to press on and what it looks like to be clear about your business's culture and the systems within your business. Sarah shares her story here with SCI's Alexandra Mosher. How's it been like knowing that it's your last, your last month there? Cause what you've been there for five years? Four years?  Sara Parish: [00:00:45] Almost nine... eight, eight and a half years.  Alexandra Mosher: [00:00:48] Almost eight and a half?! Sara Parish: [00:00:49] Yes. Yeah, by the time we got a residency, we got all the paperwork done, we looked for a locale, remodeled, everything else... so the business has been open five years, but it took us about six months before. So just by one thing after another it's we've been here a little over eight years now.  Alexandra Mosher: [00:01:10] Okay. Yeah. Cause that's what I was kind of wondering, because I know you guys have had the shop for what, like four years now. Right?  Sara Parish: [00:01:17] September 15th would have been five years. So two weeks till five years.  Alexandra Mosher: [00:01:23] Yeah. I was trying to figure out the timeline for like how everything started. So can you walk me through like the timeline of what happened for those eight years?  Sara Parish: [00:09:11] Going back to the very beginning, when I first had the idea of opening coffee shop, I think it wasn't so much about coffee for me. I know a lot of people get into coffee shops cause they love coffee. For me, I think it was the idea of like I've always loved business. I've always been really drawn by it, but it was also the idea of community around the whole coffee shop and the coffee community. That was really appealing to me. I probably didn't understand or grasp the full concept of it until I actually got into coffee, but that was super appealing for me. Like just to have a space where you can just connect with people and have conversation. I think that was one of the main motivators for me was more the business aspect and the community aspect of coffee.  Sara Parish: [00:01:34] When we first got here, we moved to Spain with just a regular tourist visa, just to try to get information. Spain is really well known for horrible bureaucracy and nothing is clear and the immigration system is just a mess. Like there's tons of blogs and jokes and memes about it, but we could not find any information whatsoever online about what type of visa or residency we needed to apply for. So we're like, well, we have a 90 day tourist visa. Let's just go to the offices, try to get some information, hire a lawyer, whatever we need to do. We are here on six months and then we were able to extend it several times so we could stay here while we applied for the residency. But it took us almost a year and a half just to get the residency paperwork done. It was, it was just a huge mess. Like we would go to one office, no one could give us information or they'd say, "you need this document from this place." So we'd have to make an appointment, the appointment was a month away. So we have to waste a whole month. Finally get to our appointment and we show up to that office they're like, "no, this isn't the right office. You have to make an appointment somewhere else." And wait another month, it was just a year and a half of basically being sent from one place to another, trying to figure out what paperwork we needed to send in. So after a year and a half, we were finally able to figure out what it was that we needed to do, what paperwork was required. We were able to get everything together [and] submit the paperwork. So it took us about a year and a half. And then once we finally got our legal residency, then we started trying to look for locales, which was also very... wasn't easy.  When we first got to Spain, I was 25-26 [years old]. My sister was 23-24. And that age in Spain is like really, really young. In the States, I think that they have this [idea] like once you're 18, you're an adult. You move out, you live on your own, you're self-supporting, you pay for your own things. But the culture in Spain is like, you can be 35 - I have friends, guy friends, that are lawyers and engineers, and they're like 35-40 [years old] and they still live at home. And so at 25... two single women in their twenties was like, "What? You guys have no idea what you're doing." Like no one wanted to rent us a place. They thought that we didn't know what we were doing. Which is partially true, but so it took us another eight months or so I think to finally find a locale that we liked that was a reasonable price and that was willing to rent to us. And then once we got that worked out, then it took us, I think, four or five months for the remodel and getting it all ready for opening.  Alexandra Mosher: [00:09:52] Okay. And you started it with your sister, right?  Sara Parish: [00:09:54] Yes.  Alexandra Mosher: [00:09:55] So was that the same thing for her? Like, tell me what that was like with you to like, talking about it.  Sara Parish: [00:10:00] We’re very, very different. I'm probably more of the business side. She's super talented in a bunch of stuff, but I don't think Vicky ever was drawn to opening a business. I think she just opened the business cause it sounded like a good idea and she want to do it with me, but she's not the business person. She's super creative. She's really good at decorating. She's super good at coffee. But she wasn't drawn into coffee so much for the business as I was, she just got on board because I threw the idea at her and it sounded really cool. And we work really well together and now she loves it. But I think at the beginning it was just the idea of working together and starting a project together. Alexandra Mosher: [00:10:40] Okay. So starting a coffee shop is a pretty big commitment and like, where did it go from like a fun idea to like, "okay, let's actually do this." Sara Parish: [00:10:48] I think it was very progressive. One thing led to another and we kept trying to take steps in a certain direction and then one door would open up another door When we first decided that's what we wanted to do, and we both decided that we wanted to do it in Spain I had this idea that I was like, "we'll be back in six months, open in six months" and it ended up taking almost two years to finally get back and have the finances and have everything ready to open, but it was just the way things worked out were super, super cool, because we had the idea, we were determined that's what we wanted to do, but we had never worked in coffee. We knew nothing about coffee. We had never opened a business. We worked a lot, had management experience and that kind of stuff, but it was basically "let's open a coffee shop," but we had no background and [had] never worked in a coffee shop before in our lives. And so it was... it was that just one thing led to another. It was of love, like social entrepreneurship. So I found a business/social entrepreneurship course in Thailand, and that's where I met Samuel! Samuel was of one of the speakers there. He invited us to go - he heard that we were opening a coffee shop - and he invited us to go to China, to Greenhouse and get our coffee training. And he had lived a while in Guatemala. We knew a couple of the same people in Guatemala. So I was like, "Hey, why not?" And so we went and we spent, I think it was a little over three months in China learning coffee.  So it was basically, we were at the coffee shop all day. We had trainers, there were two types of coffee. So it was just like hands-on practice for about three months. And that was all the coffee training we had before opening. After China we went back to the States to look for investment, get all our paperwork together and that kind of stuff. So it was more like meeting Samuel in Thailand - he was the one that kind of introduced us into specialty coffee and helped us get trained and have a little bit of experience before opening. Alexandra Mosher: [00:12:41] Wow! That seems so divine that you would meet Samuel, who's been in Guatemala… and I always thought you guys met in Guatemala. That's so crazy that you guys met in Thailand. Okay. So before that, were you thinking about not doing specialty coffee or just going to do, like...  Sara Parish: [00:12:56] I didn't even know that was a thing. Alexandra Mosher: [00:12:59] Okay.  Sara Parish: [00:12:59] My first introduction to specialty coffee was with Samuel. He was telling me third wave coffee. I was like, "what the heck, is this?" And that was the first time I ever saw latte art. And that was weird. Because growing up in Guatemala, you're surrounded by coffee, but most of the good quality coffee was always exported. And so I've been drinking coffee since I was a little girl, but it was just coffee. [You] know, we understood that it was from the area, but I had absolutely no concept of specialty coffee then. So he was our first introduction to it.     Alexandra Mosher: [00:13:33] If you can think back to when you first started thinking about opening a coffee shop, what was your ideal vision? What was like your dream coffee shop?  Sara Parish: [00:13:44] Decor-wise. I think Vicki, my sister was the one that had more of an idea. And I think what we ended up opening up with is pretty much on what we were envisioning. It was a little more industrial. We played off a lot of the Torch brand with blues, black accents and stuff like that, but, it did - eventually it would change over like the two years that we're looking at or planning opening a coffee shop - our end product is pretty much what we wanted.  Alexandra Mosher: [0

    54 min

  2. 03/08/2021

    Sara Parish: The Story of Her Spanish Cafe Pt. 1

    SCI Sara Interview Alexandra Mosher: [00:00:00] Sara Parish, one of the founders of Torch Coffee in Seville, Spain, tells the Sustainable Coffee Institute about her experience blazing a trail for specialty coffee in the classic Spanish city. Sara and her sister Vicki experienced the burden of opening a shop in a country with high expenses and bureaucratic burdens while also being new to specialty coffee and business. After years of exhaustive work, the sisters saw breakthrough when they gained clarity on the culture of their business; their vision, mission, and values, and allowed this clarity to dictate their strategy and tactics. Sara shares their story here with SCI's Samuel Gurel. Samuel Gurel: [00:00:43] Sara, you kind of know our story. You were with us in China when we were at Greenhouse. And then after selling Greenhouse there was really a desire to take what we learned through that and help people through all of the SCI, develop some coffee shop classes, like how to start a coffee shop. And you remember when I was in Spain, we talked to one class there, so you kind of have some kind of overview of that.  Well, I've spent most of the last couple years in China working on that. And then in 2018, my very last year in China, kind of finish the end of that project was getting into the nitty-gritty of coffee shop managers. Like, what should coffee shop managers be doing? How do owners and managers work together? What sorts of questions and understandings and stuff should happen between them? What is the role of the coffee shop manager and how you train someone to do that? And so that kind of finished out from a training perspective, everything we wanted to do. And then I got busy moving back here to the US and have, quite frankly, we just had to learn how to be Americans again: get our kids in school and all the weird American things that we have to figure out. But now we've been back in the States almost two years and we've gotten in a groove, God's really helped us settle in nicely. It's allowed me to come back to this kind of work of passion I've had, which is around helping business owners. And so it has less than me do about coffee, less to do about even making the coffee shops successful.  My heart is to create a community, create some empathy, create support, encouragement, and tools for the actual owners. For them to know how to build a culture around their company that allows them to run a coffee shop and stay sane at the same time. You know, it's kind of the goal. Forget being profitable, staying sane is… so that's kind of the heart. I felt like we should write a book about  So the idea is we're writing a book.. It's going to be a kind of a fable based on real experiences, but written with made up characters. I don't know if you've read any of Patrick Lencioni's books, but he has like The Five Dysfunctions of a Team and The Ideal Team Player, but they're all written in a fable kind of form where these fictional characters who are going through these things and he kind of details and he teaches the business principles, through their story.  Sara Parish: [00:03:54] That sounds great.  Samuel Gurel: [00:03:54] So, yeah, so we have some characters. We already kind of started with the beginning and we're transitioning into this: the girl she opened the cafe isn't going too well.  And honestly, that story I've heard 200 times from different people. So it's not at all a made up story. It's just that the character is made up. But just to tell you, our entire - and you may remember this from my time there in Spain teaching this class - my entire idea is that there's layers of what makes a coffee shop successful.  On the outside, what people see is location, remodel, brand, cool coffee cups, cute boy behind the counter, service, whatever those things are. That's the surface level stuff that they see. But underneath that, there's all kinds of management practices and systems and processes that actually ensure that the big stuff is out on time and looks good that the coffee's good. It's not happening by itself. There's an underlying system in place at really successful coffee shops. Now, unsuccessful coffee shops there isn't a system and whatever happens that day is just literally left up to chance on how Pedro feels when he wakes up and whatever circumstances just happen, but in successful coffee shop there are systems and processes to make sure that happens. But then underneath that, there's actually a more foundational layer that most coffee shops never get to, which is really digging into their vision, mission, values, which really becomes a nucleus in the soul of the company and actually is what provides the durability, sustainability, resilience. I remember there was a season, a couple of years in that you and Vicki were like, "Hey, we're done. We haven't paid ourselves, we’re working 80 hours a week. Like we're just done with that." And I think - my guess is - the only thing that gave you guys strength and encouragement to continue was that there was, there was something more to why you're doing the coffee shop. There was more to your motivation than just, "oh, would it be really cute and cool to run a coffee shop." There was something more like, "we want to do this to have positive influence on Seville," or there's some deeper meaning and you guys have found a lot of purpose and your team and your interactions with your team and the relationships that were built there. And that was some of what was motivating to keep going through what was a difficult time. And that's what I call the soul of the business or the culture of the business. And so that's our entire theory is that there are all these exterior things that people think makes coffee shops successful, but that's simplistic. There's really these systems and processes beneath that and beneath those systems and processes and managers, there's a culture. And if you go all the way down to the culture level, you're going to be way more successful. You're going to be way more happy and you're business is going to be way more resilient to pandemics and economic upheaval and difficulty.  So anyway, that's to give you context, that's our idea and what I really hope happens today - we just want to hear what it was like, if you can go back all the way to what you did to prepare, to open a coffee shop, what were some of the challenges of finding a space and build out and finances and hiring staff and just like, what was it really like, try to paint a picture for people.  What was it like? And then how did that affect you guys emotionally? I know that sometimes it be hard to share that vulnerability, what the feelings going on inside were, but I think that's what people need to hear. Our goal is they would hear this and go, "Oh my gosh. That's how I felt. I didn't know anyone else felt that way. I just thought I was really emotional. I thought there's something wrong with me," but we want them to feel like, "Oh my gosh, it wasn't just me." That's the whole goal is that people can feel empathy by your story.  Samuel Gurel: [00:42:17] Sara, the way we think about culture is in terms of like - Simon Sinek had this idea of Start With Why. His idea is like, people care more about why you're doing what you're doing and what you're doing. So, can you talk about some of the why behind opening the coffee shop in terms of what kind of difference did you want to make in the world - that's another way to think of Why, what kind of difference do you want to make in the world - or even better: what kind of difference do you want to make in Seville through opening this coffee shop?  Sara Parish: [00:42:48] Even though we didn't understand specialty coffee, and we didn't understand how the prices were to better quality, higher prices - like even if we didn't understand that we saw the conditions of the coffee farmers. And so I think for us, it was, in one way or another, we wanted to work in the coffee industry just to see how we could make an impact. And that... we didn't fully grasp how to do that until later on, until we went to China and started seeing specialty coffee. I think that was one aspect of working with a product that was from our home. And working with farmers and that kind of stuff. But I think on a level here in Seville, I think a big motivating factor for us was the way we run business. Seville is known for being, within the hospitality industry, extremely corrupt. They treat their staff horribly. They make them work long hours, not paid over time, paying really bad salaries. So there's a lot of just like under the table kind of things going on within hospitality here in Seville. So one of the big factors for us is just to show people as well, that you can run a successful business and treat your staff really well and have a really great culture within your business, do things correctly, and you can still make it work. Like you have that alternative. You don't have to do things unethically just cause you feel like you have to, that you do have that alternative of... there're sacrifices to be made, of course, but in the long run it totally pays off. It totally pays off to do business that way. [SG1] Samuel Gurel: [00:44:20] That's cool. So, another way I like to think about culture is like, what are you wanting to accomplish. I guess I’m curious, did you guys ever explicitly state, like, "Oh, we'd kind of like to be the most popular shop in Seville or maybe even Southern Spain?" Did that just kind of happen or was that a goal?  Sara Parish: [00:44:41] I think in a sense it was the goal, but it was more of a motivating factor of doing things with excellence and doing things really well. We knew that in order to get the recognition that we wanted to within the coffee community or becoming well-known as a coffee shop, we had to do things a certain way. And so we're very, very, very intentional about doing things with a lot of exc

    28 min

  3. 02/25/2021

    Cupping Protocols with the Farmer in Mind

    SCI Cupping Protocols Samuel Gurel: Welcome to the SCI coffee business podcast, where our goal is not only to help you understand coffee better, but to run a better coffee business and hopefully a more sustainable coffee business. [00:00:16] This week, SCI is launching their new cupping protocols. These cupping protocols have been in the works for more than a year. So the question is: what is the job of a cupping protocol? Well, when we evaluate coffee samples, if we prepare them differently, then we may be noticing the differences in preparation and not the differences of coffee. [00:00:42] So the goal of a good cupping protocol is to minimize the amount that you're tasting the differences in roast and preparation and maximize the amount that you can taste the coffee so that you can get the best evaluation possible of that coffee sample. So why new cupping protocols? SCA has long had their cupping protocols and Barista Hustle launched their new cupping protocols and SCI is now launching theirs. And SCA has announced that they are looking at updating their cupping protocols. So there's been a lot of focus on cupping protocols, but why did SCI feel that it needed to have its own cupping protocols? The answer basically comes down to a survey we did where we looked at coffee professionals, specifically those who were high up in the area of coffee. These are instructors at CQIQ greening program, and these are people that teach for SCA and these are the world's leading cuppers. And what we ask them is: "Are you using Agtron 63 for your sample roast preparation?" [00:01:50] And the answer we got back was not surprising. The answer was no. The answer was no, that's too dark. And we found that to not be necessarily unanimous across the industry, but it's definitely ubiquitous. It's clear that a vast majority of people are roasting lighter than the 63 ground coffee Agtron score. [00:02:15] So once we decided okay, this is a problem, then the question became, well, how do you solve that problem? How do you find the best roast level for your cupping protocol? And an experiment was developed with which we would take the same coffee and roast it to multiple different levels. We would take one coffee sample and roast it from way too light to way too dark. And then we would evaluate it on the cupping form and see, where do you get the peak aroma, peak sweetness, peak acidity, and the most observable and nameable flavor descriptors? And so when we did this, the results we got back were clear that all coffees have a range with which they can be best evaluated. [00:03:06] Once we had done this with one coffee, we decided to repeat it with multiple different coffees from different growing regions and different processing methods, roasted on different kinds of machines so that we could understand how these protocols would work with different situations. But in each individual experiment, there was only one coffee that was being evaluated. So the results were that the Agtron 75 minus 10 plus five was really the best Agtron for evaluating specialty coffee. [00:03:53] Once we had finished looking at the roast levels, we decided that we should also look at ratio and these two are not completely disconnected. If you think about it, as you roast a coffee darker, you lose weight and water and moisture and the coffee actually gets easier to grind and easier to extract. So the darker roast coffee you're going to get for the same amount of weight of coffee, you're going to get more extraction. [00:04:24] So as you roast samples lighter, you might need more coffee. So our experimental results found this: we ran multiple different experiments, again using different coffees, and what we found was that a cupping ratio of 1-to-17 is really the ideal cupping ratio. That if you go with less coffee, like a 1-to-18, or with more coffee, more than 1-to-16, that the samples were not as easy to evaluate clearly whereas if you got up to 1-to-18, you were getting too watery to really assess the coffees and if you got down to a 1-to-16, you're really getting too strong of a coffee to really get the delicate nuance of coffee. So that's how we came up the 1-to-17 ratio plus or minus one.  [00:05:18] So let's talk about that for a minute. You'll notice that with a lot of protocols, they'll just have one target number. But if you look at any kind of industry standard in any kind of laboratory, there's always a range. Now you may have a target you're trying to hit within that range, which may be the center of the range, or it may not be the center of the range, but there's always a target and a range. All standards should have a range and a target. So that's the unique thing about the SCI standards. We always have a target and a range. So an Agtron target of 75, but a range of 65 to 80. And with the ratios, there's a target of 1-to-17, but because of variations in your scale and water and cup size, you're never going to get exactly, exactly 1-to-17 unless you cut beans in half, right? Because we're using individual whole beans. So, because of that, we have a range from 1-to-16 to 1-to-18. Now that's not used to give people creative liberty to just do, "Oh, like 1-to-16 better [or] I like 1-to-18 better." No, the goal is always to make it as consistent as possible. But you gotta have a clear range with which if you get outside of that, you're now too far from that target to be acceptable. [00:06:41] These cupping protocols were designed with one thing in mind. The goal of SCI is always to help the coffee industry grow. To help coffee farmers. And we believe this cupping protocol has the potential to yield better results. As we roast coffees lighter, we can discover more of the origins. We can celebrate more what the coffee farmers intended to do with the coffee. Also, one of the things that is changing in the industry is different processing methods like honey processes and natural processes, and all kinds of variations from lactic acid, carbonic maceration, whatever whatever, are being used - and what we found with these experimental processing methods that the lighter roasts are really helping bring out the nuance in those where if they're roasted to an Agtron 63, it's much more difficult to really celebrate what farmers intended to do. So at SCI our goal is always help coffee farmers.  [00:07:40] And so we hope that this tool will be used. And we hope that as the industry progresses that this will be a great tool for the industry. And we'd love your feedback. We'd love you to use this new protocol. See how you like it. I'm sure there's always room for change. We look forward to hearing your great ideas on how we can change and make this better. Thank you so much for listening and we'd love for you to go to SCI.coffee and leave us a question for this podcast. We've already received lots of great questions. We'll start listening to those soon. We would love to hear your questions, especially related to current issues right now that SCI is dealing with, which is the SCI cupping form, the SCI protocol, and also our coffee shop success initiative. Anything to do with any of these, especially any struggles you might be having with your coffee shop, we would love to hear about that. Thank you for listening.

    9 min

  4. 01/14/2021

    Introduction to the SCI podcast

    Samuel Gurel, of the Sustainable Coffee Institute, introduces SCI and the motivation behind creating a podcast about the steps toward a successful coffee shop.

    10 min

  5. 01/14/2021

    What Makes A Coffee Shop Successful

    Samuel Gurel, of the Sustainable Coffee Institute, debunks the myths around coffee shop success and talks about why the road to success looks more like understanding the core of your business—your why, vision and values.

    9 min

  6. 12/13/2020

    Exploring Culture with Emily from Catalyst Trade

    of 7     Automatic Zoom Actual Size Page Fit Page Width 50% 75% 100% 125% 150% 200% 300% 400%   SCI Emily InterviewEmily: [00:00:00] Hey, I'm Emily McIntyre. I'm a founder and the CEO of Catalyst Trade. We are a boutique Ethiopian importing company that is majority Ethiopian-owned and boots-on-the-ground, super focused on traceability and processing, and also really bought into the concept of doing good with our company and spreading increased benefit throughout the supply chain from producers all the way through to consumers.Alexandra: [00:00:30] This is great, because I think that you're going to have a lot to say about what we're going to talk about today, which is vision, mission, values, and why that's important in a business. So our big idea is that business goes beyond simply working inthe business, that without a clear understanding of why you're doing what you're doing and a long-term vision for your company, you'll have a harder time being successful. Have you seen this in your own business ventures? Emily: [00:00:54] Absolutely. I think that I can pinpoint 2017 as the year that I began to really understand that. Prior to that, my various business ventures were successful in some ways, but alsostruggled in the sense that we would ally with people who weren't really the best for our business, or ultimately not synced up with our core values, which weren't really well-stated. And we were interestingly, always very value-driven. We were always coming at this from an incredibly intentional and ethical and passionate angle, but we hadn't formalized our core values, and we hadn't found a way to incorporate that into our business. And it was really showing for us. We were just bumping into barrier after barrier, after barrier, and a friend got us thinking about this, and I ended up systematizing our core values in a unique way, which I've built on for the last few years.And I can absolutely pinpoint that as the time -the point where, not only did we start seeing really strong, forward momentum with our businesses, but we also began to really attract the right kind of partner for us and, you know, fast forward a few years, it's hugely integrated into our business now -core values, mission. Every decision we make is run through that and I'm happy to share about some of the ways that I've tried to systematize that. But not only that, we also, named our product lines after our core values, and, the more we align that way, we find the more we see success and we also see success in those core values being implemented in a practical way.And I believe that if you can't see your core values implemented in a daily way, There's not really much satisfaction in your work. And so, I find myself increasingly... everyday I wake up and I'm excited because what I do is I'm creating a world where the core values that I seek, they become more and more pervasive and exert more and more influence. That is something worth fighting for in business.Alexandra: [00:02:57] Wow. That's amazing. I love that. Yeah. I would really like to hear... that's actually the next question I was going to ask you, like, what do those systems look like for you? So we have different kinds of things that we talk about is finance, hiring operations, customers, and you talked about decisions. So you don't have to get to all of those, but those are kind of what we focus on.   Emily: [00:03:17] Okay! Well, first of all, as a business owner or manager, there are a lot of yes/no decisions that have to be made. Do we partner with this person? Do we take this contract? Do we expand here? Do we take this loan? Do we, you know... there's tons of decisions where you simply have to decide you're going to go one direction or another, and you can get in the weeds about those decisions.So what I did in 2017 and have used dozens of times since is I actually created a template, a sheet of paper, that was divided into three columns. And at the top of each column were, you know, one of our core values. For Catalyst Trade, that is: sustainability, excellence, and innovation. And then I had a couple of, kind of open-ended questions to ask myself that I put below those.And then I use that as a place to notate with my business partners when I make a decision. So for example, if I need to decide whether to expand in a certain direction, you know, you do all your research, you gather as much as you can, and then you still have to make the decision. And you need some kind of a rationale or a rubric to make a decision or else you're just going on, like, gut calls, which are no good with business. You have to have a reason, for making any kind of decision. And I believe that those reasons should be informed by core values if you're going to run a cohesive business. So at that point, once we have all that information, what we do is we sit down and we'll ask ourselves those questions. So for sustainability the question might be, what does this decision look like 10 years from now?Best I can tell. Reverse engineer it, you know, what does that mean for now? And also does this promote longterm success for all of our stakeholders, not just ourselves at this moment, but also the producers that we are allied with and the different stakeholders along the way. That's the sustainability piece.Moving over to the column for excellence, we would ask, does this promote excellence?Are we getting better with this or worse? And it actually is a good question to ask, because sometimes you have the chance to speed up your processes. That's excellent.But then, maybe it's incorporating less quality. That's not excellent. Unless you decide that your higher excellence is having better systems, in which case go for it. So you can ask yourself those questions and kind of narrow it down.And on the innovation piece, one of the questions is actually, is there another way to approach this? Are we missing something? Are we blind here?And that's where I like to call in counsel from people I trust. "Hey, you know, here's the scenario? Am I missing something? Do you see something I don't?" And once I've done all of that, usually the decision is very clear to make. So there's that on decision-making. You asked about hiring. I think that's a really cool thing to talk about with core values, because we all know thatthe coffee industry is often not very cohesively run with hiring and HR is sort of an afterthought. That causes so many problems and I see that as a basic respect problem. If we don't respect our employees enough to treat them seriously and create systemsthat will allow them to have high quality of life while working for us and grow and become the kind of people that they want to be while they're working for us, then we're failing in our roles as employers. So for hiring, I think that it's important to approach this with core values front and center. Not just communicating core values and what they mean   to potential employees, but also letting those drive the onboarding process and the continual management process, as well as any kind of reviews that happen.I also have developed an incredibly detailed rubric that I use to try to assess some of the softer skills and personality aspects of potential employees in a way where I assign them kind of a numerical value based on what we are looking for. And when I have maybe 40 or 70 different line items in this sort of ranking system, it allows me to clearly see people's strengths and weaknesses and how they stack out against what we need.Of course, you know, part of excellence is judging people on their potential, but also seeing where they currently are and where that might mesh with where we're going. Alexandra: [00:07:28] Right. Emily: [00:07:29] I can go into any more detail you like, but, feel free to move us along to another topic. Alexandra: [00:07:34] So, okay. That's cool. So you mentioned decisions and hiring and... what would you tell someone ---so like for probably like you pre-2017, like someone who wants to go into the coffee business, coffee shops, whatever that looks like, and they want to move forward without that clarity, what would you tell that person? Emily: [00:07:55] Don't do it. You're setting yourself up for failure. The world is littered with business people who got into business sort of in a haphazard way. I was one of those and I'm lucky because my business partners and I have learned really hard and really fast and sometimes the hard way, how to systematize things and approach it from a more methodical angle. We have to be methodical about the way we structure our businesses, both from an ethical and core value standpoint, and also from the systems, to deliver the product that we want in such a way that our customers will want to take it.So, yeah, I would say. Just get clear on everything, as much as you can, knowing that this will all change as soon as rubber hits the road, as soon as your business gets engaged. Yeah, you're going to immediately find that you were totally off-base about some things, but if you have some kind of a framework in place, then you actually can make modifications instead of just having to scrap it all and start over, which is chaos and costs a lot of money when you have a working business.Alexandra: [00:09:00] We also wanted to talk about something more like what's going on right now with COVID. And do you think that businesses, with that clarity -maybe even you've experienced this in your own business -would fare better during COVID or at least have a better chance?Emily: [00:09:18] 100%. 110%. I would just say -and I have no data to back this up, this is just me saying this, you know, estimation -I would venture a guess that those companies right now, during COVID, which are run through mission value and constantly improving. You know, the coming to center so that the mission and value and the actions are more and more increasing, increasingly resonating together, thatkind of company, I th

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SCI Business of Coffee podcast

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  • Creator
    sci.coffee, SCI
  • Years Active
    2K
  • Episodes
    6
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Show Website
    Coffee Business