Latest / Mostly Middle Tennessee Business Podcast / From Police Officer to Coffee Entrepreneur :: Ep 299 Chris Morris of Peacemaker Coffee

Transcript

From Police Officer to Coffee Entrepreneur :: Ep 299 Chris Morris of Peacemaker Coffee · Mostly Middle Tennessee Business Podcast

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  Unknown: You're good. This
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  is the mostly Middle Tennessee Business Podcast, a podcast
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  about Middle Tennessee business owners and professionals.
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  Mostly, and so you got a taste
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  of our traffic, man. I appreciate you coming down from
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  out of state, first of all, and to oblige me with you coming on
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  the on the show, but yeah, I apologize for the traffic. My
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  goodness, and you had to sit through the beginning of rush
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  hour traffic in Nashville, which typically starts around 1:30.
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  It's ridiculous,
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  and it's utterly ridiculous. It
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  reminds me of Seattle to go 20, you know, two hours to go 20,
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  you know, 20 miles or something.
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  You know, Cleveland and Parma, Ohio, were like the same way. We
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  had to go up there and do a job, and I think like the Home Depot
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  was maybe three miles away, and it would take dang 20 minutes to
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  get there because speed limits. I mean, I don't know. You're
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  familiar with that area. That's where you're from, essentially.
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  Correct.
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  Right. Yeah. I mean, is all of Ohio like that?
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  Cleveland, Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati are probably the
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  worst.
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  Really?
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  Oh yeah. Especially trying to get over that bridge into
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  Kentucky.
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  Yeah. Well, I mean, every time we go through Cincinnati, it's
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  it's relatively smooth. I mean, I think the last time we went
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  through was coming back from last year when we all met, and
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  that was one of those situations where I just think we hit the
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  traffic at the wrong time. But maybe it's like that all the
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  time.
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  Well, they've been doing so much traffic on that bridge too,
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  crossing over into Kentucky.
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  Oh, really?
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  And the river splits, you know, right there, Kentucky. Correct.
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  Yeah,
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  because that's where Ohio, the Ohio River goes into. What's the
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  split there? No idea. Yeah, I can't either. But yeah, we met
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  last year, almost to almost to the day at an Aldine show, I was
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  up there, my brother and I, in Detroit to go check it out, and
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  my guys from the Small Town Podcast were there, and Rich got
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  me the all the special treatment, so that was fun, and
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  we had a good time. Got to meet you. I think you guys are
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  sitting behind us.
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  Correct. Yeah, I think I met you guys by the bus though first,
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  right?
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  Yeah, yeah. We all kind of hung out by the bus and maybe had
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  some cigars and libations and stuff like that. So
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  some great photos.
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  Yeah, it's good to know people. 100% And that's when I got
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  introduced to your company. You guys were kind of kicking around
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  the idea of sponsoring their podcast with Peacemaker Coffee.
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  So today's guest, to those of you listening, I always say
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  mostly Middle Tennessee because most of the time we have Middle
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  Tennessee entrepreneurs, professionals, and business
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  owners on the podcast. Today is an exception. We've got somebody
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  that is from the Northern Ohio area, specifically I don't. I
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  can't remember where Toledo, Toledo. I should say Holy
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  Toledo, and then you know met you last year, and now you're in
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  our area. I said, hey, come on, let's do a do an episode talk
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  about the the coffee business and getting into commodities and
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  all that fun stuff.
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  I appreciate you,
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  of course, man. Appreciate
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  coming,
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  Chris Morris with Peacemaker Coffee. This is the mostly
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  Middle Tennessee business podcast that you're listening
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  to, powered by actually from the It's Your Show. Co studios,
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  powered by Muletown Bikes. Have you tried e-bikes yet at all?
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  Have
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  not. Have not. You're in good
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  shape, so I don't think you really need to.
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  I don't know if I'm all in that good shape. You're much
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  better shape than I am, so let's just put it that way. So not so
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  much lately, but I'm looking forward to the fall where I can
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  actually get out and ride and not be you know obliterated by
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  this heat that we've been having. It's
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  yeah, it's been brutal, especially down here. Every time
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  I come down here, it's it's insane.
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  Well, at what time? How many times you like every now and
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  then you come down in the summertime? Every
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  every now and then, yeah. My my nephew lives in Murfreesboro, so
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  all right on. I try to get
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  down here to the sale every now and then, and and of course
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  we're co packing.
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  Yeah, so
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  I'm meeting with a company tomorrow down here.
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  Yeah,
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  so getting more into that Kentucky, so it's growing and
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  growing. It's only been five or six years, business just grown.
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  What a
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  time! What a time to kind of start get a business going. You
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  know, right before you were oh, it's 2021, you got it off the
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  ground.
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  So I started in 19. So I start. I born and raised Pittsburgh,
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  Pennsylvania.
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  Yeah,
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  and
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  there you go.
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  Yeah, so born and raised Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and
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  ended up bouncing around. My mother was a was a chemist for
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  Con Ed up in New York, and
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  very familiar with Con Ed. Yeah,
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  Con Ed, and so she finally retired, moved to Florida, and I
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  ended up moving to Florida as well. Went to the police
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  academy, spent 17 years as a police officer. There and then
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  moved out west to take a command job with a police department
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  just just a little north of Seattle.
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  Right,
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  tough times, especially through COVID and so forth. And finally
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  retired in January of 21, so just shy about four months shy
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  of 22 years.
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  Oh wow! So what was what was like pension year? Did you miss
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  that or,
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  well, if
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  there was even a pension?
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  Well, there was at the time. If I would have stayed in Florida,
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  it was 20 years, 2020 and out. But then I ended up leaving at
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  17 years, so then they changed it 2025.
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  Oh, okay. So
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  now I got to wait till I'm 62 to collect.
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  Well, so not
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  a fun time.
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  So, so what inspired you to get into the coffee business?
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  So, I hated coffee originally. I used to go to my grandmother's
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  house, and she would take the old Taster Choice, the instant
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  stuff, and she would she would mix it with with cremates, and
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  that's all they would drink.
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  Right.
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  So she would force us to drink that stuff. Absolutely hated it,
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  and she would it would get cold, and then she would dump it in
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  your cereal. It was absolutely horrible. So I hated coffee for
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  many years.
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  Coffee in your cereal, cereal.
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  Yeah, she didn't have milk. They were they were we were so poor
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  that she would take the instant make the coffee, the instant
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  coffee. She would dump in the powder creamer, and and she'd
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  mix it up, and then whatever's left over, she'd put it in the
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  refrigerator and then dump it in your cereal.
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  So you had like a supercharged upbringing. I mean, you got you
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  were caffeinated. It was
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  horrible. I can't eat bologna to this day because they would fry.
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  They'd do everything they could with bologna, and I just to this
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  to this day I cannot eat baloney.
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  I don't think I've ever had fried baloney.
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  Oh, I can't eat it any which way, even cold. I can't really
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  can't even look at it.
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  Can't even look at it. Can't do it.
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  I had it. My wife works in a deli at Publix, and she brought
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  it home once upon a time, maybe six months ago. And it's kind of
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  like I just have no craving for this. We had a couple of slices,
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  and it's like you know, it's bologna. It's how I remember it.
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  Yeah, no, I can't. I can't do baloney that, and I can't do the
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  the the little block, the noodles. What are the the ramen?
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  Oh, ramen. Can't do that either. Really? Never did
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  you do spam?
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  Nope, can't do spam. Can't do spam anymore. Nah.
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  For a while there, I I ate nothing back when I was about. I
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  ate nothing. That's obviously not true. 2324, 25 years old. I
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  did body for life. I dropped like 60 pounds. Got down to like
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  175, which was way too thin for me. And to this, I just been
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  able to start eating cottage cheese again because I ate so
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  much of it during that time that you just yeah you wear yourself
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  out.
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  I love cottage cheese, but I can't eat baloney spam or any of
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  that stuff.
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  Well, that's good because it's not exactly the best stuff for
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  you. It's like poison, man.
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  Yeah, I can't even. You go into you go into places and they're
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  selling thick cuts of you know bologna sandwiches and fried and
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  everything else and delis and stuff like that.
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  Yeah,
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  or and it's just like
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  so you you had an aversion to coffee because you grew up with
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  it and it was just completely you were completely fatigued by
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  it.
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  Well,
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  why all of a sudden? Hey, let's get into the coffee business.
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  So,
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  so doing the police work, majority of my my career, I
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  worked six at night till six in the morning. So I worked 12 hour
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  shifts, and the police department barely paid anything,
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  you know, 35, $36,000 a year.
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  Gosh!
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  So you would have to work. You would work 12-hour shifts. You'd
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  work 40, 5060, hours a week, and then you would have to work your
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  off days. You were just completely exhausted all the
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  time.
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  Yeah.
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  And so, you know, everybody else was drinking coffee, and the
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  energy drinks just at some point just wouldn't cut it. Soda
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  wouldn't cut it. Nothing would cut it. So I started drinking
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  coffee. Absolutely, again hated it. Went to Costa Rica. Ended up
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  taking a tour of the coffee bean fields, and you know, which I
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  didn't know was a fruit and it grew on a tree. You know, and
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  and really the coffee is just a pit,
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  right?
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  You know of the fruit, and so at the end of the tour, got to try
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  several different coffees, and it was very good, but very
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  acidic. You know, especially coming from Costa Rica, and
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  there's different countries. You know, Ethiopian coffee, Uganda
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  coffee. Some of it's very in Costa Rica and some other some
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  other areas, and it's super esthetic. So, but it was really
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  rough on my stomach, so in order to keep myself up, I started
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  drinking coffee. So a different caffeine from everything else,
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  and and it didn't give me the drop afterwards, like you know,
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  like a soda or or an energy drink. So I got to
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  find coffee does that to me. No, it's weird.
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  I was able to stay. I was fine. Coffee leveled me out.
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  Yeah.
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  But when I would drink a you know soda or something like
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  that, it would give me that sugar high, and then all of a
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  sudden I would just have that crash. Yeah. You know,
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  especially energy drinks like Monsters and stuff like that.
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  So, so coffee was my was my next. I didn't smoke. I didn't
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  do any. I don't drink. Everybody keeps calling me, you know,
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  telling me I'm a sore loser because I don't have a few
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  drinks once in a while. But
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  I wouldn't say that. It's you're just a disciplined person.
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  So I just love coffee. So, but just a my work regimen is seven
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  days a week. I get up at three a.m. and work till 7o'clock at
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  night, and that's my been my routine.
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  Yeah.
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  So
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  just kept doing it,
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  kept doing it, kept doing it, and so back in 2019, I ended up
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  spent spent 17 years in Florida working for police department.
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  Ended up moving when I moved to Seattle, it was a coffee place
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  on every
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  coffee mecca,
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  yeah, on every freaking corner and every convenience store
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  parking lot. There was
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  just rumor to have that there's a Starbucks on opposite corners,
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  isn't that where they the original or something? The
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  original,
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  yeah,
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  yeah, downtown,
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  yeah.
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  And some of them, every time I drink them, like one of the ones
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  you just mentioned,
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  yeah,
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  just tastes burnt to me every time.
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  Yeah, and I guess that's the man. Is that the appeal? I mean,
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  I didn't realize you could burn coffee.
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  I don't want to. I don't want to beat them up too bad, but
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  there's there's a reason why they do that. Oh, really? And
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  there's a reason why it tastes like that.
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  Because I mean, that's it's definitely a signature flavor,
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  you know. And not you know you can't argue with their success.
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  Apparently, they're moving here. What I what I heard,
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  wow!
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  Like their HQ is coming to Tennessee.
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  Well, because they started charging when I was up there.
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  They started the city or the King County where they were.
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  Yeah,
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  wanted to start charging an employment tax on everybody.
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  Right,
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  like Seattle was the craziest place I've probably been, you
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  know. And then working 10 miles to the north of it in the next
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  county over, but they started. I mean, they're just overrun by by
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  homeless. They've put 80 some million dollars aside for the
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  homeless. They started, you know, little tiny home camps,
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  and you know, and the you couldn't do drugs or alcohol to
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  get in there, and then all of a sudden, you know, they started
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  having homicides in these places, and and I remember being
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  part of. We had to go out, and we were working with the
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  coalition to count, you know, count how many folks, you know,
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  were homeless and what the numbers were, and the and the
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  services are insane. Like I said, 80 some million dollars
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  set aside. It may be more money now. This was in 2021, yeah, and
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  we would go around and count everybody that weren't in
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  services. But the people that were that were going to
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  services, the only caveat is, is they give you everything as long
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  as you weren't on drugs and alcohol, and that was it.
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  Yeah,
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  and it was just, it was, it was nuts to see. And then they, and
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  then right before I left, they set up. They called them drug
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  clinics or drug free zones, and and you could go in and and you
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  you're paid by taxpayer dollars, and you give me a clean needle,
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  and I can shoot myself up, and and if I overdose, you save me.
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  So it's like you're you're enabling, you know,
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  yeah.
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  It's it was the craziest time out there. Whenever I was out
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  there, and of course during COVID, and then you know the
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  calls for service-you know, probably two, three times a day,
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  domestic violence calls-just people were cooped up in the
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  house and over crazy things.
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  Wow! Yeah. Wow. I didn't realize that was actually a thing. You
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  know, you know what actually gave me that idea. We were
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  coming back from Winchester and we were listening to Project
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  Hail Mary, the movie that came out. So my wife and I will
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  listen to a book on a long trip just to kind of you know eat up
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  the time and pass the time. A lot of math in the book, a lot
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  of math, a lot of science. You know, obviously the guy's a
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  scientist. I don't know if you've seen the movie, but I
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  would see. It's a great movie, fantastic movie. But in it, they
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  talk about how the the people that were taking the trip, you
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  know, through space like an interstellar trip, they had to
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  be able to like they had to have some sort of psychological
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  makeup and be amicable to being put into a coma state because
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  they were worried about them like killing each other on the
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  way out there because they're you know it's like a three and a
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  half year trip and you're cooped up in a capsule so they
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  essentially put you to sleep and you wake up when you get there
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  kind of thing so interesting science behind I didn't realize
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  that's why they did that
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  wow they they definitely COVID was absolutely insane. Yeah, and
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  I'm glad I never I never ever got
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  it.
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  I mean, so many people did. Then whenever they started making the
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  mandatory testing, they were firing people left and right.
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  Public service. Oh yeah, yeah. That
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  happened to you?
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  No, I ended up going right before the mayor gave me an
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  option, and it was oh yeah, oh yeah. It was it was probably
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  worst worst person I ever worked for for sure. I mean, he would
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  threaten to fire me every single day, and you know, and I was I
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  was always you know, right is right, wrong is wrong, you know.
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  I stopped one of his one of his friends one day, and and one of
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  the things that my biggest pet peeve is I lived in the city,
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  and that I had to live in the city, and I had a middle school,
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  and I had an elementary school. My daughter went to the middle
• 15:12
  school. My stepson went to the or my I'm sorry, my daughter
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  went to the elementary school. My son went to my stepson went
• 15:19
  to the middle school. So I and my guys would go out there every
• 15:24
  single day. Would enforce the school zones. That was one of my
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  big pet peeves. People would come through there 4050, miles
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  an hour, and the kids were trying to cut, you know, across
• 15:32
  the street. And so one day I was physically out there, and I
• 15:37
  stopped one of the mayor's buddies, and and I said to you
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  know I said to the guy the guy says we you know hey you know
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  well I know the mayor and I said so I went to hand him his ticket
• 15:49
  and I said dude you were doing 42 miles an hour in a 20 miles
• 15:52
  an hour school zone and he says well I'm a so and so resident of
• 15:56
  the town I said well then you should know better he goes why I
• 15:58
  know the mayor I said great I says well then so do I here's
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  your ticket, and here is what I said. I said either you can pay
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  or he can pay, and I dropped it in his car, walked off. Well,
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  about three, four hours later, you know the how the city was
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  set up. The police department was on one side, city council,
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  and you know the mayor and everybody was on the other side.
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  All of a sudden, I mean, he was a he was probably a six foot
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  seven man. He was big guy, ran in there 16 years. Ran
• 16:22
  unincumbent. Nobody ever, you know, beat him. He he ran until
• 16:25
  he finally retired. But you would hear this guy. I mean, he
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  was heavy footed, you know. And if you ever been somewhere where
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  somebody, you could hear him coming down the hall.
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  Sure.
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  So all of a sudden, my guys just split out here. Boss, we'll see
• 16:35
  you later. He'll take off on me. He comes in there and starts
• 16:38
  banging on my desk, you know, and and telling me I'm going to
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  take care of it, and I said no, said I won't. I said either you
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  can pay it or he can pay it, but I'm not. I'm not taking care of
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  the ticket. I says because here's what's going to happen. I
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  says when one of these kids get hit, I says they're gonna
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  they're gonna come to me and say what are you doing about
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  it? Right.
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  Number one and number two, I says you better pull the
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  checkbook out because you're gonna have to write a check,
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  yeah.
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  When somebody gets hit or killed, so but yeah, he would
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  threaten me, threaten to fire me on a daily basis.
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  That's a good way to motivate,
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  yeah, yeah. He finally, yeah, he finally, and I mean, there's
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  there's a whole bunch. I mean, went back and forth sparring
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  with this guy, and and yeah, he was just he was a piece of work,
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  that's for sure.
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  Wow. Well, you know, it's what ended up. Yeah, I mean, the guy
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  ended up paying the bill, the ticket.
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  Oh yeah,
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  yeah.
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  Oh yeah. I mean, I had some other ones where I stopped. I
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  stopped a guy one day, and and you know, and he says to me, I
• 17:36
  hand him his ticket, and he hands it back, and he says he
• 17:38
  was an Asian gentleman, and he's like, he's like no ticket. I
• 17:41
  give you chicken. I was like, what? So he's trying to give me
• 17:43
  a chicken for his ticket,
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  right?
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  You know, bribe
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  you.
• 17:47
  Oh yeah, he's trying to bribe me. I had another. You know,
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  you'd have people that want to. You know, they own nail salons.
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  I want to do your nails. Now I'm good,
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  right?
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  But interesting. I mean, I stopped a gentleman one time,
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  and and you know, he's swerving all over the road, and I says,
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  "Here, have you been drinking? He's he looks at me, and he go
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  he goes, "Nope. I was like, "Okay. I says, "You know,
• 18:07
  license proof for insurance. And you look down between his legs;
• 18:10
  he's got a beer can between his legs. He actually hands it to
• 18:12
  me. He says, "Hey, hold this. Yeah, he says, "Hold this. Let
• 18:15
  me get my ID. I put it on the roof of the car. I was like,
• 18:17
  "Hey, step out of the car. You know,
• 18:19
  oh good.
• 18:20
  But yeah, I mean, I can tell you endless stories. I can
• 18:23
  only imagine.
• 18:24
  Of
• 18:25
  yeah,
• 18:27
  I get I get a lot asked a lot about you know do I have PTSD?
• 18:32
  Do I you know 2223 years you know of of doing it, and and
• 18:36
  prior to actually doing the police you know actually on the
• 18:40
  on the street type stuff. I was on a task force, and I traveled
• 18:43
  and did that for six years, and that was that was rough. I'm not
• 18:48
  a I'm not a live out of my suitcase. You know, I'm one week
• 18:51
  living out of a suitcase, traveling over the country. It's
• 18:53
  like being on tour.
• 18:54
  It was horrible.
• 18:55
  Yeah, it
• 18:55
  was horrible. Yeah, it's at least you're being kept busy.
• 19:00
  You know,
• 19:01
  you're bit you're busy, but it's it's rough on the home life,
• 19:03
  just like just like the touring.
• 19:05
  Yeah,
• 19:07
  but you're only home one week, you know, one week a month.
• 19:10
  So, getting how long were you in in north of Seattle?
• 19:15
  Four years.
• 19:16
  Oh wow!
• 19:17
  Yeah, spent four years, 15
• 19:18
  to 19 essentially.
• 19:20
  1818, 1818, to 2120.
• 19:22
  okay, and then you know just before that in Florida the whole
• 19:26
  time.
• 19:27
  Yep,
• 19:28
  was it much different in Florida? Where in Florida were
• 19:31
  you?
• 19:32
  So I would. I was in Pensacola, so I was up in I was in
• 19:37
  Panhandle.
• 19:38
  The Panhandle was in the Panhandle, and I lived in one
• 19:40
  county over in Santa Rosa County, but the the only thing I
• 19:45
  hated about living in Florida is that everybody would come and
• 19:47
  visit, nobody would ever go home.
• 19:48
  Right.
• 19:49
  So that was the only thing I did not like about living in
• 19:51
  Florida. When I went to Seattle, and my wife said, you know,
• 19:53
  whenever when I went to retire, she's like, well, where do you
• 19:56
  want to go? And I said, well, I'm going to go back east,
• 19:58
  obviously, but I. Don't want to go back to Pittsburgh. She goes,
• 20:01
  "Well, why not? You know, I'd love to, you know, move back
• 20:03
  there. And nah, I said, "You remember we lived in Florida?
• 20:06
  Everybody would come and visit. Nobody would ever go home. What
• 20:08
  do you think that would happen if all your buddies lived in a
• 20:11
  certain area? They'd all come and visit. Nobody would ever go
• 20:13
  home.
• 20:14
  So, what do you mean by that? So, if people in Florida would
• 20:16
  come to visit and not go home at all because they want to live
• 20:19
  there,
• 20:19
  no, they'd come down. They went and go to the beach and
• 20:21
  everything else. They'd come down on the thing. Hey, I'm just
• 20:23
  going to come down for a long weekend. I'm going to come down
• 20:24
  on Friday. Well, I'd be off going to you know to canine
• 20:27
  training all week. You know, next thing you know, I'd come
• 20:30
  home. You know that Friday, and they're still there. But they
• 20:33
  were only supposed to come down for the the week, like Friday,
• 20:36
  Saturday, Sunday. Oh yeah,
• 20:38
  and they would just stick around.
• 20:39
  And they just stick around.
• 20:40
  Then they have jobs to go back to or anything? They
• 20:43
  a lot well a lot of time at the time people were working remote
• 20:46
  and different things like that. So they would come and next
• 20:49
  thing you know, hey hey, we're coming visit. You know, sunny
• 20:52
  beach, 10 minutes from the beach. They'd never go home.
• 20:56
  What's the one thing about that area that people don't get? They
• 20:59
  don't understand. Like, is there a misconception or misperception
• 21:03
  about the area? It's very alluring.
• 21:07
  Yes, it very much is. Yeah, but I mean, I could tell you. I
• 21:13
  mean, the the parts that people see is like Fort Walton Beach
• 21:16
  and Panama City, and they see you know Pensacola Beach,
• 21:19
  Destin,
• 21:20
  Destin. You know, it's all right there. So 30 A, yeah, that's
• 21:25
  that's the the draw. I think is what it is. Or you go to Mobile
• 21:29
  and you got Orange Beach. That's where they do the Molotas, and
• 21:33
  they got a big amphitheater over there.
• 21:35
  Well, Gulf Shores. Yep, we went there one year, and it was we
• 21:39
  had a great time, and there was a lot of a lot of oil derricks
• 21:45
  offshore. Like all of a sudden, you you couldn't see one in the
• 21:49
  daytime because it was obscured by the haze. But at night, you'd
• 21:52
  see the lights turn on, and you're always going, "What is
• 21:56
  that? And all of a sudden, you're like, "Oh, that's an oil
• 21:58
  derrick way off in the distance,
• 21:59
  way out there. Yeah, you're way out there. That was my first
• 22:01
  Aldine concert, actually.
• 22:02
  Oh, really? Yeah, Gulf Shores. Yep. How many times you've seen
• 22:05
  them?
• 22:07
  Only one time. That's when you know Tully asked me. He says,
• 22:10
  "Hey, have you ever seen us before? When I saw them, Florida
• 22:13
  Georgia Line opened up for them. So I'll tell you how many years
• 22:15
  ago.
• 22:15
  Oh wow! It's been it's been a minute.
• 22:18
  It's been a minute.
• 22:18
  Yeah, it's
• 22:19
  been a long minute.
• 22:21
  So you get into coffee business mode. Any business experience
• 22:26
  prior to that? I mean, you know, a lot of you guys like
• 22:29
  firefighters, police, especially firefighters, for some reason,
• 22:34
  at least as they're portrayed on Rescue Me, like their weekends
• 22:38
  they'd spent building like someone's porch, you know,
• 22:41
  handyman work, that kind of thing. Was that kind of your
• 22:43
  story too, or you just
• 22:45
  no? Actually, I so the coffee was so acidic, so I started
• 22:49
  researching where can I find low acidity coffee, and then that's
• 22:53
  where where my mission started. I was like, okay, I like I'm
• 22:56
  starting to like coffee. I'm drinking it at night to keep me
• 23:00
  awake, to keep me energized to you know to run through 567 days
• 23:03
  straight and some days you'd work 16 hours. I worked I think
• 23:07
  15 it was 16 hours a day for 15 days straight and I was you'd go
• 23:11
  to work you're a freaking zombie every night
• 23:13
  yeah
• 23:14
  and so there was different different areas I found parts of
• 23:18
  Brazil parts of Uganda, parts of Mexico, parts of Honduras. You
• 23:26
  went
• 23:26
  to all these places.
• 23:27
  Brazil, I go to the other ones. I did not. But doing the
• 23:31
  research and then and then introducing to family farms and
• 23:35
  different things like that. That's where I found low acidity
• 23:39
  coffee. So anything when you when you start reading about the
• 23:43
  roasting notes of something, if you look on the side of the bag
• 23:45
  of a bag of coffee, it's going to tell you okay, chocolate,
• 23:49
  nutty. It'll have floral notes. It'll say that it's lemon.
• 23:52
  Anything with fruit. So if you think about tomatoes or orange
• 23:55
  juice or anything, acid. So anything that's fruity is going
• 23:59
  to bring in acid. So if you have sensitivity to to anything
• 24:03
  acidic, stay away from those those types of coffee.
• 24:07
  Interesting. So, I actually have a a beer podcast. We just met
• 24:12
  here yesterday. We did three episodes. We could only do three
• 24:14
  episodes at once. Go figure. But a lot they really turned me on
• 24:19
  to hazy IPAs, like New England IPAs, things of that nature, and
• 24:24
  the higher the ABV, the more flavor it's like, the sweeter it
• 24:27
  gets. And some of these these like you know, there's one that
• 24:33
  there's a brewery up in Nashville called Marble Fox, and
• 24:37
  they have a beer called What a Treat, and I want to say it's
• 24:40
  like 11% ABV, it's a triple IPA, and you pour this thing into a
• 24:45
  glass, it looks like flipping pineapple juice, and then you
• 24:49
  smell it, it's like oh my gosh, just fills up the nasal cavity
• 24:52
  with just such goodness, and then you know the the the nose
• 24:57
  of it matches the taste, which I. Because there's nothing worse
• 25:01
  than taking a beer and getting a really good nose, and it's
• 25:04
  completely different. Does that happen with coffee as well?
• 25:11
  A lot of it has to do with the grind too. So, so you can take a
• 25:14
  really good coffee and screw it up very easily. Um, the thing
• 25:18
  is, is that in in one of the things that that you need to
• 25:20
  remember is that faster the brew, finer the grind. Slower
• 25:25
  the brew, coarser the grind. So if you're doing a French press,
• 25:29
  you're doing you know a percolator or something like
• 25:32
  that, an old school percolator. You want to go very very coarse.
• 25:35
  That's why when you see expressos, it's super super
• 25:38
  super fine because it's pushing you know it's pushing through.
• 25:41
  Now, here's the other thing: to get that crema, you want to use
• 25:44
  a different coffee called robusta. Now, on its own, it's
• 25:48
  absolutely horrible because it's it's very earthy. It's very back
• 25:53
  in the military days because it was so inexpensive. They
• 25:56
  actually made rifles. You'd have to research this, but they made
• 25:59
  rifles where they would give them this robust of coffee, and
• 26:02
  they had grinders in the butt, and that's how they would grind
• 26:05
  their coffee out of out of battle.
• 26:08
  They put it inside the rifle, and and
• 26:09
  the butt of the rifle there was a coffee grinder. Really? Yeah,
• 26:12
  and then and they'd put it inside of a tube sock and and
• 26:15
  put it inside you know on the fire inside of a pot kettle.
• 26:18
  That's how
• 26:18
  you got to do.
• 26:18
  That's how that's how they brewed coffee back in the day
• 26:20
  because they didn't have filters, and then they started
• 26:22
  putting them MREs and you know meals ready to eat and so forth
• 26:26
  and so on. But but one of the misconceptions is a lot of
• 26:30
  people say, "Hey, dark roast has the most caffeine. That's
• 26:34
  absolutely incredible. Light roast. It's light roast. That's
• 26:36
  right. So when you have a raw green coffee bean and as you
• 26:39
  roast it and what what you call first crack. It sounds like
• 26:42
  popcorn, you know, in the microwave or popcorn. So that's
• 26:46
  your first crack, and it's it's like a yellowish. To me, it
• 26:49
  tastes like wet cut grass. I'm not a big fan of light roast
• 26:52
  coffee. It's a it's an acquired taste. But as you roast, then
• 26:56
  when you get into your medium roast, right around right before
• 26:59
  right at second crack, that's where your chocolate
• 27:03
  caramelization and so forth. That's where most people drink,
• 27:07
  and then your dark roast. A lot of people like that dark, that
• 27:11
  smokiness and so forth. But then when you pass there, like the
• 27:14
  other, some of those other brands, that other
• 27:17
  company, that other
• 27:17
  company, when you get into that, that's your expressos and stuff
• 27:21
  like that, and they call it espresso roast. It's just
• 27:24
  darker. It just basically, to me, it tastes burnt. That's what
• 27:27
  it tastes like. It just no matter what you do, because
• 27:29
  they're
• 27:29
  roasting it for so long. They're not necessarily that you're
• 27:31
  brewing it hot or burning. I got you. It's in the
• 27:34
  roast. Basically, they're burning it. Is what they are.
• 27:37
  They're going beyond the dark darkness. It should be. Now, the
• 27:41
  other thing you can do too, which we do and a lot of a lot
• 27:44
  of folks do, is we add a robusto coffee in with the dark. So you
• 27:49
  blend it, and when you blend it, your robusta coffee has double
• 27:52
  the caffeine content, whereas your Arabica coffee is what we
• 27:56
  normally drink that that tastes very very good that everybody
• 27:59
  likes. Now if you ever had those those one pods in the machine,
• 28:05
  the the machine starts with an N, yeah, and they they're like
• 28:07
  discs,
• 28:08
  yeah.
• 28:08
  Okay, so a lot of those, if you drink them and you don't add
• 28:11
  cream or something to them, it's very earthy. It's very robust.
• 28:14
  It's got that they use straight up robusto, and that's how they
• 28:18
  get the crema, that that foam on top. So, so in a in an espresso,
• 28:24
  you're going to add those robusto beans along with an
• 28:27
  arabica, and you kind of combine them. But you can do the same
• 28:30
  thing for double the caffeine content on a medium or dark. So,
• 28:34
  what was the biggest surprise going into it? So, I mean, you
• 28:37
  kind of you you continue the story. You went from and
• 28:40
  researched all these different countries. I would imagine the
• 28:43
  soil has a plays into the acidity or
• 28:48
  near a volcano, high up, very good water sources. Those less
• 28:54
  acidic than those situations.
• 28:55
  No, it's it's more where it's grown.
• 28:58
  Wow,
• 28:58
  really, to be honest with you. And then how the process
• 29:01
  is too,
• 29:02
  like you have a you know a decaf. We we have a Colombian
• 29:06
  decaf that's what's called a Swiss water. So, I mean, decaf
• 29:10
  is not 100% decaf. They can't take all the decaf out of
• 29:14
  it.
• 29:14
  But basically, it's it's the outside of the bean is stripped
• 29:18
  using high pressure water is where the caffeine lies on the
• 29:22
  on the coffee bean.
• 29:23
  Yeah.
• 29:24
  But there's also a chemical process as well. So you want to
• 29:27
  try to if you're you're a type of person that that wants to
• 29:30
  stay away from wants a natural, a very good clean coffee, you go
• 29:34
  with a Swiss water if you're a decaf person, Swiss water decaf.
• 29:38
  But all of our coffees, when we we get them. For instance, I get
• 29:41
  a container of Brazilian, so I get it from a family farm. I go
• 29:44
  over there about June or July of every single year, and then
• 29:47
  anywhere from November they start picking, and then I visit
• 29:50
  about five families, and then in November, between November and
• 29:54
  January is usually when the container arrives in the U.S.
• 29:58
  and I usually keep it in. Wisconsin, or I keep it in New
• 30:01
  Jersey, and then as we need it, we pull from the container and
• 30:04
  we have it brought to our warehouse. We have a 3000 square
• 30:07
  foot warehouse, 18 wheeler pulls up to our loading dock, and
• 30:10
  that's where we bring it in. And we go through so much coffee,
• 30:14
  but the the coffee, the coffee when when I lost my train of
• 30:22
  thought. Go back to going
• 30:23
  back to the the countries and everything like that. You're
• 30:26
  bringing it in, and you have a 18 wheeler pulling up.
• 30:28
  Correct, correct. So, so on the Brazilian, it all depends on
• 30:32
  where what what country and where you get it from, and again
• 30:36
  how it's grown and so forth and so on is, and of course the
• 30:39
  process. Once we get the container in, then I send it off
• 30:43
  to a lab and and have it tested for mold and mycotoxins and
• 30:47
  yeast and so forth and so on. How is
• 30:49
  that is that a typical process or is that something you do?
• 30:52
  That's something I do special, and there's a few other
• 30:54
  companies out there that do it as well. But they charge you for
• 30:57
  the same. It's it's it's kind of a marketing thing with these
• 31:03
  guys. They say that you know they do above, and we can talk
• 31:06
  about those. But anyhow, they'll charge you for the same 12 ounce
• 31:09
  bag. They'll charge you 3040, 50 bucks, which isn't crazy. And
• 31:12
  they're not doing anything special with
• 31:14
  it. Right?
• 31:14
  They're just price gouging people, and it's I had to do it
• 31:19
  in order to sell to the folks in California,
• 31:21
  right.
• 31:22
  So when I was when I started moving into the market in
• 31:24
  California, everybody kept saying, "Hey, did you are you
• 31:27
  testing this? And I'm like, "What are you talking about? So
• 31:29
  that's how I got introduced to. Oh, okay. So you need to have
• 31:32
  these certifications in order to sell in different markets.
• 31:36
  Oh, are they different state by state?
• 31:38
  You no, and you really don't need
• 31:40
  it,
• 31:40
  right? Again, I mean, if you think about if you think about
• 31:43
  it, how how does mold how does mold build up on anything? So
• 31:47
  moisture
• 31:48
  and
• 31:48
  exactly, and and that's another myth that people. I will get
• 31:53
  phone calls and they'll say, "Hey, listen, you know, I bought
• 31:55
  a couple bags of coffee and we keep them in the freezer. We
• 31:57
  keep them in the refrigerator. You probably heard that before,
• 31:59
  right?
• 32:00
  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 32:00
  Worst thing you can do.
• 32:02
  Really,
• 32:02
  they'll do that. Either a leave it in the bag or put it in some
• 32:06
  side, some type of dark air airtight container. When you put
• 32:10
  it, think about this. When you put anything in the refrigerator
• 32:12
  or the freezer, you take it out. Let's think about a gallon of
• 32:15
  milk. When you pull the gallon of milk out and you put it on
• 32:18
  the on the counter, what happens after a few minutes?
• 32:20
  Condensation.
• 32:21
  Yeah,
• 32:22
  same thing you're doing. You're taking this item. It stays in a
• 32:24
  stable environment when it's inside. As soon as you bring it
• 32:27
  out and you set it on that counter for four or five minutes
• 32:29
  or whatever it is, just to put it, you know, in your coffee
• 32:32
  maker, what happens?
• 32:33
  Starts sweating.
• 32:34
  It starts sweating, and you're building up mold. And now what
• 32:37
  you're doing is you're taking out of that sterile environment.
• 32:40
  You're bringing it out, and you're going back and forth, and
• 32:42
  you're curating mold.
• 32:43
  Oh wow!
• 32:44
  Here's another. Can
• 32:45
  mold grow in a freezer, though?
• 32:47
  It cannot. But the problem is, is that when you bring it out,
• 32:51
  think about that, though. As it's as it's sitting there, and
• 32:54
  the condensation's building up, and it's starting to sweat.
• 32:57
  What's happening? The spores are already formulating.
• 33:00
  Oh wow!
• 33:01
  And then you're putting it back in there, and you're basically
• 33:03
  freezing it,
• 33:04
  right? So it becomes still there. It's still there.
• 33:07
  It starts to become moldy. It's preserved. Just preserved, and
• 33:10
  that's the other thing with a you know if you have a coffee
• 33:12
  maker like a Misty you know a Mister coffee maker or just like
• 33:15
  a regular pot. So when you're done roasting, you empty the
• 33:19
  basket, leave it open. Same thing happens. You've you've got
• 33:23
  you just you just you know did this coffee and now you're
• 33:26
  closing it and it's wet inside. So what happens? There's no air
• 33:30
  moving.
• 33:32
  So even where the filter basket in the coffee maker, you want to
• 33:35
  leave that lid open.
• 33:36
  Just leave it open. Just leave the top open. Because even
• 33:38
  like we have one of those little filters. We have a grinder next
• 33:41
  to our coffee maker. We put the coffee in, it grinds it up. We
• 33:44
  don't store it in the in the freezer or the refrigerator, but
• 33:48
  with the moisture retained by the plastic filter that came
• 33:52
  with the coffee maker. Well,
• 33:53
  a lot of times people close that,
• 33:55
  right?
• 33:55
  So, so yeah,
• 33:56
  we pull the lid close. Do we? Just leave it open. Yeah, just
• 34:00
  we might leave it open. Yeah, if you leave
• 34:01
  it open, that's the best thing you can do.
• 34:03
  Although you know, we'll brew it overnight. We'll have a you
• 34:06
  know, we'll set the time because my my wife leaves early, like
• 34:11
  between 445 and five. That starts firing up, but that
• 34:16
  coffee is sitting there in that filter overnight. That's
• 34:19
  perfectly fine. Is it okay? That's perfectly fine. the The
• 34:22
  issue is, is when you're done brewing and the water has
• 34:25
  flushed through. What a lot of times people open it, they dump
• 34:28
  the basket, they put the basket back in empty because they're
• 34:31
  not going to brew another pot, and they close that lid.
• 34:33
  What if you leave the coffee grinds in there all day? You can
• 34:37
  do that. Yeah,
• 34:38
  I mean, it
• 34:39
  no, it makes no difference.
• 34:40
  It doesn't make any difference. It's still closed
• 34:42
  up and everything. It's still closed up.
• 34:43
  There's no air movement. So even even if you brew and you're even
• 34:47
  not going to take it out right then, just leave it open.
• 34:49
  Okay.
• 34:50
  Same thing with Keurigs with the pods. You know, you make a pod,
• 34:53
  you take the pot out, you throw it away, and if you're going to
• 34:55
  use it, just leave it open.
• 34:57
  Ah, okay.
• 34:57
  Same situation. I mean, you're building up. Building up, you
• 35:00
  know, when you brew, you're closing it, and it's wet inside
• 35:04
  there. So now
• 35:04
  I'm going to leave all my stuff up. I've been doing it all
• 35:07
  wrong. I've got a, you know, one of your pods in my coffee maker
• 35:10
  behind me. Yeah, I appreciate that. And basically, it's, I
• 35:14
  guess, preserving it. I don't know.
• 35:16
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you, you, you get folks that'll, you know,
• 35:20
  it's. I mean, if you just think about how mold and the moisture
• 35:24
  and everything else, I mean, just little steps like that.
• 35:26
  Yeah.
• 35:28
  So you so you you you take a leap of faith. You retire. You
• 35:31
  started in 19.
• 35:33
  Started in 19. So it was
• 35:34
  a little bit of overlap from where you're still working the
• 35:37
  day job, and then your side hustle was a coffee company.
• 35:40
  I was only making coffee for myself,
• 35:42
  yeah.
• 35:42
  And I bought this little. It looks like a little toaster ever
• 35:45
  called Be More. So I started roasting one pound of coffee,
• 35:48
  just experimenting, trying different origins, trying
• 35:51
  different countries, trying mixing stuff.
• 35:53
  You're like a home brewer.
• 35:55
  Yeah, I was a yeah. I was I was a straight up mad scientist in
• 35:58
  the garage, and caught the thing on fire a few times because they
• 36:02
  didn't realize that every time you do it, you know the oils
• 36:05
  build up and you also catch on fire and it
• 36:08
  is oil. So
• 36:09
  I yeah I went through a few machines. Yeah, so lesson
• 36:12
  learned.
• 36:13
  So
• 36:13
  my wife's caught on caught a big roaster on fire before.
• 36:16
  Oh really?
• 36:17
  Oh yeah. How do they? I
• 36:18
  mean, you could light a match around them or something, or is
• 36:20
  it just how it heats? No,
• 36:22
  no. What happens is, is when you're you're in the brewing
• 36:24
  process. Obviously, as you get further in, it's it's like
• 36:27
  anything. I mean,
• 36:28
  how do you how do you get the oil out of it? I got you got to
• 36:30
  have some sort of special cleaner. No, no,
• 36:32
  no, no, no. You don't do that. It burns. It's like the grill.
• 36:35
  You know, like a grill. You know,
• 36:36
  right.
• 36:37
  You know, you cook and it starts building up. Same thing with the
• 36:39
  coffee bean. When you get past you. You start getting your dark
• 36:42
  roast. It really starts caramelizing it. If you ever
• 36:44
  open up a bag of dark roast and it's super shiny,
• 36:47
  yeah,
• 36:47
  yeah, it's starting to. You start getting into that,
• 36:50
  and that the smell is yeah such a good smell.
• 36:53
  Especially when you grind
• 36:54
  it. I can only imagine, dude. When you walk into your place,
• 36:57
  it must smell amazing. It's
• 36:58
  smellivision. I get we we get department bag. It comes in, so
• 37:01
  we have an FDA, you know, certification. We the Department
• 37:05
  of Agriculture comes in, and he's just like, "Oh man! He
• 37:07
  goes, "You're one of the best places I come to, you know,
• 37:10
  because I go to you know meat meat you know meat houses in
• 37:13
  different places, you know, butchers and stuff like that.
• 37:16
  And is this something
• 37:17
  about a cup, you know, coffee brewing that's just man?
• 37:21
  My wife loves the smell, hates drinking it. Will not drink
• 37:24
  it. See, I've I've gone past like you know, as a kid, I used
• 37:28
  to put loads of sugar and milk into it. As I've gotten older, I
• 37:32
  just use it as like, hey, I try to put I put a little bit of
• 37:36
  maple syrup, just a tiny bit, just to give it a little bit of
• 37:40
  a hint of flavor.
• 37:41
  I've heard that honey.
• 37:42
  Honey is one thing. Honey, I don't really put sugar in it. I
• 37:46
  mean, unless for B and I on Wednesday mornings because the
• 37:49
  coffee there's just the. I
• 37:50
  used to go to those.
• 37:51
  Yeah, yeah, I bet. Well, that was that's a good thing. You
• 37:55
  know, I was actually to suggest you should probably do that. I
• 37:58
  think the other day when we talked, I forgot to bring it up,
• 38:01
  but you're familiar with it. Yeah, I'll put like a little bit
• 38:05
  of like like even the yellow sugars and stuff like that. That
• 38:09
  it's just you know you're putting freaking chemicals in
• 38:12
  it. You know even the white sugar. Oh yeah, sugar is not
• 38:14
  supposed to be white. So if you get the pure sugar, like there
• 38:17
  was Florida crystals one time I found in Publix down in Florida.
• 38:21
  I'm like that's sugar, you know. You just need a lot more of it.
• 38:24
  Or that
• 38:24
  sugar in the raw with brown. Yeah, it's good stuff. It's
• 38:27
  really good stuff.
• 38:28
  But so you know, you have that overlap. You were kind of like,
• 38:31
  when did you decide to take a step and make it a business? I
• 38:33
  mean, you wanted to retire, and the thing about retirement is
• 38:37
  that so many guys do it, and then all of a sudden, within
• 38:40
  three to six months, they're fricking bored out of their
• 38:42
  skull.
• 38:43
  I was,
• 38:43
  yeah, I
• 38:44
  was too. So I went through, and really, I was I was doing the
• 38:49
  coffee just for myself,
• 38:50
  right?
• 38:51
  A to have you know to find something that didn't didn't
• 38:53
  mess up my stomach or give me acid reflux. I mean, at the
• 38:57
  point, I mean, the acid was so bad when I first started doing
• 39:00
  coffee and and you know drinking everybody else's coffee in these
• 39:03
  stands and paying six $7 you know even just for a regular cup
• 39:06
  of coffee especially out west and and so I wanted to do it I
• 39:10
  wanted something nice and fresh and something wasn't rough in my
• 39:13
  stomach and and the acid reflux was just killing me I was taking
• 39:18
  I think 80 milligrams of mepers all day
• 39:20
  oh my God! Just because
• 39:21
  because the acid reflux was so bad. Oh, it was killing killing
• 39:25
  me. Yeah, and and so whenever I figured out okay what blends and
• 39:29
  what I can do for the acid, now I take nothing at all, and I
• 39:33
  haven't for years. But so I started in 19, kind of
• 39:38
  experimenting. Started taking to the police department, everybody
• 39:41
  started drinking. They're like, "Man, this is really good. You
• 39:43
  ought to start selling this. I was like, "Really? You know, you
• 39:46
  know, this is a hobby.
• 39:47
  So you, so you would take it, and while you were brewing it
• 39:49
  for yourself, and they would, you would like get everybody
• 39:52
  hooked.
• 39:52
  I'd get everybody hooked, yeah. And then, and then the
• 39:54
  neighboring agency would say, "Hey, you know, do you, you
• 39:56
  know, can I buy a bag of your coffee? And I was like, "Okay."
• 40:00
  I'll just give it to you, and then it got into okay. Let's
• 40:03
  let's start putting stickers on bags, you know, proof of
• 40:05
  concept, and then we started selling it at a local little
• 40:08
  farmers market down the street, you know. And
• 40:10
  what were you calling it then?
• 40:11
  It was still Peacemaker Coffee, and everybody said, you know,
• 40:14
  how did you come up with Peacemaker Coffee? Well, it's
• 40:16
  Matthew five nine. God bless the Peacemaker for our for our God's
• 40:20
  children. So, so that's really I just got it from the Bible,
• 40:23
  from from the Beatitudes,
• 40:25
  yeah,
• 40:25
  yeah,
• 40:26
  and that's you know that's really where Peacemaker Coffee
• 40:28
  came from. I remember I remember whenever I actually started, and
• 40:32
  you can actually research this on the trademarks. So I ended up
• 40:36
  doing a trademark on it, and I didn't even have it probably a
• 40:41
  week, and there was a another company with the word peace in
• 40:45
  it out of Minnesota that sued me immediately to steal my
• 40:47
  trademark. Yeah, they just wanted my brand, and I and and
• 40:51
  in trademark office, you know, trademarks you can't you can't
• 40:55
  pretty much it's you can't get anything. Were
• 40:58
  they claiming the the word peace?
• 41:00
  No, they said that my brand would confuse their people in
• 41:03
  the market, and their their brand was a turtle. My brand was
• 41:07
  you saw. So it's revolving different
• 41:10
  product on a turtle.
• 41:12
  Yeah, they're they're
• 41:13
  interesting.
• 41:14
  Yeah, theirs was an orange bag with a turtle, and mine was a a
• 41:18
  black bag with a you know with a skull and and you know and does
• 41:22
  that mean
• 41:23
  there's the other like there's a lot of those types of coffees. I
• 41:27
  mean, you got heavy metal bands that have their own coffee. You
• 41:30
  know, Corn has their own coffee. Anthrax has their own coffee. Or
• 41:35
  no, the drummer at least is Zach Wild has one. Yeah, from the
• 41:39
  guys from New York. Yeah, from Death Wish, Death Wish, and also
• 41:44
  whatever band he's in, I can't remember. But yeah, Benante,
• 41:47
  Benante's blend-they called it. It was-it was actually pretty
• 41:50
  good, you know.
• 41:52
  Yeah, I mean,
• 41:52
  are they pretty much just finding a place and white
• 41:54
  labeling them, kind of like what you're doing? Pretty much,
• 41:56
  yeah, yeah. I do. We do that for probably 75 plus companies now.
• 42:00
  Oh, really?
• 42:00
  Yeah. So it's it's our coffee, their brand, their label. Well,
• 42:04
  talk
• 42:04
  about you know the benefits of the reasons why you'd want to
• 42:08
  consider diverting your your coffee dollars to you. There's a
• 42:13
  lot of different differentiators that benefit people in the line
• 42:18
  of service. Correct.
• 42:19
  Correct. Correct. So, so when we first started, we were doing X
• 42:24
  amount, you know, $1 or two for every bag sold, and then we
• 42:27
  would find an organization. So we did Wounded Warriors, we did
• 42:30
  you know Fraternal War of Police, we did PBA, we we would
• 42:33
  do a bunch in fire and police and military and and a ton of
• 42:37
  things. It became so overwhelming, and we spent more
• 42:41
  time on vetting people. That I mean, you would get
• 42:46
  organizations coming out of the woodwork. You'd never even hear
• 42:49
  of them, and they would go and have 501 Cs, and and you would
• 42:52
  think you're doing your due diligence, and then you'd find
• 42:54
  out the money's just going to the wrong place.
• 42:56
  Right.
• 42:57
  And so, and we would get calls. I can remember people just
• 43:01
  wanting free samples, and you would, you know, oh, I got a
• 43:04
  coffee shop, blah blah blah blah, and next thing you know,
• 43:06
  you know, you'd run the address, and it's a trailer sitting in
• 43:08
  the middle of a trailer park in the middle of nowhere, you know,
• 43:12
  but you know, just trying to scam free coffee, and it it got
• 43:15
  so crazy that that we we've diverted from the money, and we
• 43:20
  started we started giving donations as coffee. So, for
• 43:24
  instance, in in Toledo, every year they they take the you know
• 43:28
  like your Bridgestone Arena and they turn it into a veterans
• 43:32
  breakfast. So we donate all the coffee to that. So every year we
• 43:35
  do that. We've been doing it for the last five years, and then we
• 43:38
  have police departments, fire departments. I probably get 50
• 43:41
  requests a day. We probably pick about 10 to 15, maybe 25 a
• 43:45
  month, and we give away a few $1,000 worth of coffee a month.
• 43:49
  Wow! So it's it's. I remember an overseas thing happened, and
• 43:54
  they came to us and wanted pallets of coffee. Well, you
• 43:56
  can't do that. It's so expensive right now. I mean, back then,
• 44:00
  you know, even four or five years ago, where where coffee
• 44:03
  you know coffee prices were versus where coffee prices are
• 44:06
  now, ridiculous. I mean, I'm paying for green coffee like $6
• 44:10
  a pound, five $6 a pound. Well, what people don't realize is
• 44:14
  that five or $6 is really $7.50 per pound, because coffee is no
• 44:20
  different than cooking a hamburger or cooking a steak.
• 44:23
  You pay, you know, and then you lose 18 to 20% and the roasting
• 44:27
  process of the bean because you're drying it out, you know,
• 44:30
  because there's moisture. So, so that that $6 or $5 per pound,
• 44:34
  you know, is $1 dollar 50 more, and then you have the roasting,
• 44:38
  you have the you know the labor, you have the bagging, yeah. I
• 44:41
  mean, there's so yeah, there's so many things. So, so your
• 44:44
  margin profits. I get a lot of people that'll call me up and
• 44:46
  they'll say, "Hey, you know, I want to get in the coffee. I
• 44:49
  mean, everybody wants to get in the coffee business. You know,
• 44:51
  interesting,
• 44:52
  really.
• 44:52
  It's crazy. It's crazy. And so we get more calls about, you
• 44:57
  know, I want to get in the coffee business. Why do you want
• 44:59
  to get in the coffee business? Because everybody else is doing
• 45:01
  it, I'm like, okay. Well, you realize that you know what? So
• 45:04
  what we've done, and we kind of pivoted. And a lot of people
• 45:08
  think I'm crazy for doing this. So many years back, we ended up
• 45:11
  getting all the the equipment, getting all the machinery,
• 45:14
  getting everything we needed. So you can start your own brand and
• 45:17
  not own anything. You come to me. I we make 24 different
• 45:21
  flavor coffees, and and I'll talk about the flavors too
• 45:24
  because it's a little different than what what most offer. But
• 45:29
  you come to me and say, "Hey, I want to I want to get into the
• 45:31
  coffee business, and you know this is my design, this my
• 45:34
  label, everything else. I sell you a finished product. You just
• 45:37
  slap your label on it to prove proof of the concept, or you can
• 45:40
  print. We do printing. We do K couple lids, all that stuff. But
• 45:44
  you can slap your label on it. I sell it to you. Let's just say
• 45:47
  for $9. You mark it up for $5. You made your return, and you're
• 45:51
  making $5. You don't own a piece of equipment. You don't have to
• 45:53
  do anything.
• 45:54
  Right.
• 45:54
  And it's right to your door.
• 45:55
  It's business in a box.
• 45:56
  It's exactly 100%
• 45:58
  Yeah.
• 45:58
  And so that's been a huge model for us because of the fact, and
• 46:02
  and other coffee companies, you know, other folks will say, you
• 46:05
  know, my local guys that that I talk to, you're absolutely nuts,
• 46:08
  you know, how could you, you know, you're a sellout and this
• 46:10
  and that, because and I'm like, no, because when we started, and
• 46:13
  I went to people and I said, hey, can you help me bag this
• 46:16
  stuff so I don't have to buy anything? Can you help me bag my
• 46:19
  product or could you roast my product, or can you make me K
• 46:22
  cups? Yeah, sure. Yeah, you got to buy 2000 pounds. Yeah. Well,
• 46:25
  I haven't even proved proof of concept yet. Right. And now I'm
• 46:28
  buying 2000 bags of coffee.
• 46:31
  Yeah. So this is basically as needed.
• 46:33
  Correct. So so
• 46:35
  it's a good deal. I mean, you you showed me. You know, it's
• 46:39
  it's crazy.
• 46:40
  Well, and that's why we kind of pivoted. We wanted to help
• 46:42
  everybody else and the other small business and the people
• 46:44
  that are getting into it. A educate you and tell you because
• 46:47
  I learned a lot of lessons, lost a lot of money, and so going to
• 46:53
  our flavored coffees. We offer 24 different flavors, and with
• 46:56
  the flavored coffee, what's interesting about it is that
• 46:59
  when we started doing it, there's a place in Florida that
• 47:01
  kind of makes, you know, it's it's everything in a bottle, you
• 47:05
  know. So okay, I want to make s'mores. Well, it's already
• 47:07
  pre-mixed at a lab, you know, and that's what they are.
• 47:09
  They're a flavoring lab. So you get it. You roast the coffee.
• 47:13
  You drop the coffee. You cool it a little bit, and and when the
• 47:16
  coffee is warm, that's when you apply the the flavor to it
• 47:20
  because the pores are open,
• 47:21
  right,
• 47:22
  and so you you apply you know so many ounces to X amount however
• 47:25
  many pounds you you made, and and then you let it sit for 20
• 47:30
  well 24 hours minimum, but normally you want to let it sit
• 47:34
  for about three days. So the longer you let it sit, the more
• 47:37
  flavor comes into
• 47:38
  it. Yeah, marinates
• 47:40
  exactly. Well, what happened with us is that we had a
• 47:43
  neighbor that we would let him test stuff. You know, hey, tell
• 47:46
  us, tell us what you think about this, and what you, you know,
• 47:48
  how do you like this? And didn't know that the wife was an
• 47:52
  extreme diabetic. Like every little thing would set just
• 47:56
  spiker sugar, so she couldn't drink anything. And we were
• 48:00
  Like, huh? That's interesting, and so so Tiffany had a great
• 48:04
  idea one day. My wife and said, "Hey, what about? And she was
• 48:07
  doing something, and she was making a cake or something.
• 48:10
  Something she was using vanilla extract, and she said, "You want
• 48:13
  to know something? I wonder if we could use this, you know, to
• 48:16
  flavor this, and let's try it. I said, "Okay, well, let's try it.
• 48:20
  So we ended up everything we make is all extracts now. So so
• 48:27
  what's interesting about the extracts is that no sugar, no
• 48:31
  alcohol, kosher for the folks that you know you get into
• 48:34
  Detroit, a lot of people are you know have a kosher diet, so
• 48:37
  kosher. I mean, so it fits everything and it doesn't spike
• 48:40
  diabetic sugar, so they can drink it. The only caveat to it
• 48:45
  is you need to add a little bit of cream to it, like what you
• 48:48
  said, which brings out a whole new flavor. If you drink it by
• 48:51
  itself, it's very bitter. So if you drink one of my flavors,
• 48:54
  it's it's very bitter. But if you add cream to it, and as it
• 48:57
  starts to cool, it's like it brings on a whole different
• 49:00
  world. You know, it's almost like a dessert sometimes. Oh
• 49:02
  wow! But
• 49:02
  it's not overpowering because it's very subtle. Because you
• 49:05
  want you want people to taste the coffee. That's the reason
• 49:08
  why.
• 49:09
  Yeah,
• 49:09
  a lot of people go to these you know places like what you were
• 49:11
  talking about earlier that that are coming possibly coming to
• 49:14
  town. That to me, you know, all that cream and sugar and milk
• 49:17
  and everything else. It's I call it a milkshake. Yeah, dice up
• 49:21
  every. That's a
• 49:21
  dessert.
• 49:22
  That exactly. Yeah, 100% There's always that
• 49:24
  aftertaste too. My wife and I always detect the aftertaste.
• 49:27
  100% Yeah, yeah, without a doubt.
• 49:29
  Yeah, but I mean, it's it's interesting. I mean, you know,
• 49:32
  you talked about already just every business kind of hits a
• 49:36
  snag, snags, especially in the first five years. You know, you
• 49:40
  and I talked the other day about that first five years being-it's
• 49:43
  your proving ground. It's-it's essentially the air-the
• 49:46
  airplane's at the end of the runway, revving up its engines,
• 49:49
  and you know that five-year mark is when the rollback happens,
• 49:53
  and that plane's going to take off, or it's going into the the
• 49:55
  fence line.
• 49:56
  I never thought it would turn into a job. That's for sure. You
• 50:00
  know, I I started the whole thing as a hobby in 2019. It
• 50:04
  really didn't take off until until 22.
• 50:06
  Yeah.
• 50:07
  So in 2022, I retired in 21, took nine months off, and and it
• 50:13
  really kicked into gear into 22. And and I started. You know, I
• 50:16
  wasn't working full time, so I went out and really started. I
• 50:20
  got more no's than yeses. You know, you go to every single mom
• 50:23
  and pop store, you go to every box store, you go everywhere,
• 50:27
  and you know, 99% of the time they tell you no.
• 50:30
  Yeah.
• 50:31
  But I believe in in trying before you buy
• 50:35
  it.
• 50:35
  So I started, and we still have it today on our website. Little
• 50:37
  two ounce sample packets, and and that's the same thing we
• 50:40
  have for for the try it guys, is that you know let them try it.
• 50:44
  They can buy a sample set, they can buy the pods, and it all
• 50:47
  comes in a convenient little packet, and you can try
• 50:50
  everything. You try the light, medium, and dark. You try the
• 50:52
  pods, and and you know, and if you like it, then buy a bigger
• 50:54
  bag.
• 50:55
  Yeah,
• 50:55
  and so I started doing that with you know walking into these
• 50:59
  grocery stores and talking to whoever, or talking to
• 51:01
  corporate, and and that's pretty much how it grew from there. And
• 51:04
  I think we're in-I don't know-you have to look on our
• 51:08
  retail page, 100, 150, 175 mom and pop stores. That's great,
• 51:12
  man. Yeah. So it's
• 51:15
  there's a company that I do a lot of work with the Dream Motor
• 51:19
  Group, and they own a bunch of Mercedes-Benz dealerships around
• 51:22
  the South. One of them being in Baton Rouge, and out of Baton
• 51:26
  Rouge is Community Coffee, and they're over 100 years old. Yes,
• 51:31
  and I actually got to interview the owner, the CEO, while I was
• 51:34
  down there because she obviously she get you know gets her
• 51:36
  service done at the dealership and buys her cars there and
• 51:38
  stuff like that. Wonderful human being, very nice woman. What's
• 51:41
  interesting about their coffee is that anywhere down there,
• 51:44
  they're putting chicory and everything. And we had a
• 51:46
  customer actually in in in they're in Houston, I think,
• 51:52
  that wants to do something with chicory, but like an all natural
• 51:55
  thing.
• 51:56
  Interesting.
• 51:57
  Yeah.
• 51:58
  What other things kind of popped up that you know price
• 52:01
  structuring it. Are you trying to stay within a a certain you
• 52:05
  know obviously your costs and adding your profit on top of
• 52:07
  that and trying to be market competitive and all that fun
• 52:10
  stuff and dealing with commodity pricing you know not much you
• 52:15
  can do about that but people have to understand that it's you
• 52:18
  know you want a premium coffee you got to pay a little more
• 52:21
  premium for it.
• 52:22
  100% I mean, it's it's that's been that's been a very
• 52:25
  challenging. So what we've done is for our retail side, a lot of
• 52:29
  that a lot of that stuff is baked in. You know, we ended up
• 52:32
  having to move $1 or two up, probably about two years ago,
• 52:37
  right after you know after COVID, and then right right
• 52:40
  after that, the market just went insane, and what was happening
• 52:43
  in Brazil that we were finding out was that a lot of you know
• 52:46
  we're all about the fair trade and taking care of the farmers
• 52:49
  and so forth, but the market seemed to, and I guess there was
• 52:53
  a lot of issues with the president over there. So you
• 52:57
  know, hearing from the Brazilian folks on on what was going on
• 52:59
  over there with the trade and stuff, but they were holding
• 53:03
  back, holding back a lot of a lot of commodity that wasn't
• 53:06
  being so. It shorted the market. So when you short a market,
• 53:10
  becomes in demand, prices go through the roof.
• 53:12
  Yeah,
• 53:13
  and that's kind of what happened. Shorted the market on
• 53:16
  a lot of coffee. I mean, right now it's really tough to get
• 53:18
  Brazil coffee, and I mean, very short, and if you can get it,
• 53:22
  it's super high.
• 53:23
  Really,
• 53:24
  yeah.
• 53:25
  That's. I mean, it's the thing is that you know, with the
• 53:27
  commodities, it's just tough to. I would imagine it's just razor
• 53:31
  thin margins,
• 53:32
  razor thin margin. So it's all about with us. It's all about
• 53:35
  moving. You know, it. You don't make big money on on a single
• 53:42
  sale. It's it's all about moving volume.
• 53:44
  It's volume,
• 53:45
  100% I mean, you make little margins, but you're moving
• 53:49
  volume, and you have to move volume. That's the only real way
• 53:52
  to do it. Yeah. Um. You know, and then when the tariffs, you
• 53:54
  know, that that killed just just killed us. I mean, you're you're
• 53:57
  talking two, three more dollars per pound with all the tariffs,
• 54:01
  and then a kind of shape, yeah, and
• 54:04
  then adds up.
• 54:04
  It adds up, and then you can never calculate shipping. Amazon
• 54:08
  has ruined it for everybody because everybody wants free
• 54:10
  shipping now.
• 54:11
  Can you offer yours through Amazon?
• 54:14
  We've been on Amazon. Matter of fact, they were the very first
• 54:16
  person to put me on their platform.
• 54:18
  Really,
• 54:18
  back then you had to send them your product, and they tested it
• 54:22
  and tasted it to get on the. Now everybody and anybody can get on
• 54:25
  Amazon.
• 54:26
  Yeah, well, it's it's a process though. They take a hefty
• 54:30
  portion of whatever you whatever the spend is. Oh yeah,
• 54:33
  without a doubt. Yeah, they take probably 15% Yeah, you know the
• 54:38
  least amount of profit I make on a product is Amazon. You're
• 54:42
  lucky if I make $1 and and on somebody order one box of K cups
• 54:45
  and after the shipping and everything else, I I lose $1.
• 54:48
  Wow!
• 54:49
  So it's a loss. I take a loss on it just to sell. But again, it's
• 54:52
  such a monster, a marketing monster.
• 54:55
  Yeah, he created the the the world's first online shopping.
• 55:00
  100%
• 55:01
  essentially.
• 55:01
  I mean, it's it's an absolute monster. If you're not on Amazon
• 55:04
  and people can't find you, you know,
• 55:07
  it's kind of like a musician or an artist being on Spotify and
• 55:10
  Apple Music. You got to be there in order. You got to get that
• 55:13
  distribution for people because that's where people are going to
• 55:15
  be. But you know, the problem inherent there is the fact that
• 55:19
  they pay nothing for those streams. I mean, nothing. I
• 55:23
  mean, fractions of a cent per stream. You know,
• 55:28
  Amazon just milks it out of me.
• 55:29
  Yeah, I mean, you know, and you can always raise your prices,
• 55:33
  and it's all about building a strong brand that's got quality
• 55:38
  behind it. I mean, we literally just my my daughter was coming
• 55:42
  back from UTC for my wife's birthday from Chattanooga, and
• 55:48
  there's a pizza place there that out of the blue and out of
• 55:52
  nowhere, you know I'm from the Northeast. Good pizza is a
• 55:56
  rarity down here. So when you find it really good, and this
• 55:59
  guy is actually from Philly, he moved from Philly to Florida,
• 56:03
  and then he half backed to Chattanooga. Now he's got a
• 56:06
  winery and pizzeria called Lookout Winery, and it's on the
• 56:11
  side of a mountain overlooking the Nickajack Lake and the
• 56:14
  river, and the it's gorgeous, really cool experience. He built
• 56:18
  a wedding venue there. That's cool. And when we went there, we
• 56:23
  were camping at a campground locally, and they they had one
• 56:26
  of those little flyers that they give you when you go there. And
• 56:29
  like, yeah, let's check this place out. You know, we went up
• 56:32
  this like winding switchback road to go to the side of the
• 56:35
  mountain of this restaurant, and we ordered the pizza. And the
• 56:38
  pizza was like, my wife and I look at each other, going, "Oh
• 56:41
  wow, this is actually we weren't expecting much.
• 56:44
  What kind of wait is it? Is real thin, like a New York style? It
• 56:47
  was like
• 56:47
  almost like a Northeast New York style. I even brought my brother
• 56:51
  there, who's very finicky about pizza, and he was like, "This
• 56:54
  place. I said, "Dude, try it. And he tried it, and he goes,
• 56:58
  "Oh my gosh! And he pulled up Portnoy's Pizza Raider, and
• 57:02
  apparently the place had like an 8.8 or something. Wow, it was a
• 57:04
  high score.
• 57:05
  I just went to one that that that he did a review on in
• 57:08
  Detroit, and he called it the number one pizza in Detroit.
• 57:11
  Really?
• 57:11
  Oh my gosh! Yeah, good. Freddie's the pizza man. Freddie
• 57:14
  the pizza man, or something like that. Was it make it back
• 57:16
  in Detroit or in like? It was
• 57:17
  in Detroit.
• 57:18
  Oh wow!
• 57:18
  He was in Detroit, and it was probably about a week and a half
• 57:21
  ago, and absolutely fantastic.
• 57:25
  Well,
• 57:25
  fantastic.
• 57:25
  She comes through. I said, "Hey, why don't you pick up four pies
• 57:27
  and bring them in? We'll have it for dinner. Not that good.
• 57:31
  Something changed.
• 57:32
  Wow.
• 57:33
  Yeah. You know, and all of a sudden, it's like the brand that
• 57:35
  you had in your mind and the perception of it. All of a
• 57:37
  sudden, oh come on, man! What'd you do? Well, you know,
• 57:40
  a lot of times, it's it's the quality, and then obviously the
• 57:43
  pricing. Yeah, the prices go up, and I don't mind paying the
• 57:46
  price up. It's freaking
• 57:47
  25, $30 a pie. I know, I
• 57:50
  know. But I'll tell you some of the research that I do. I will
• 57:53
  stand in a in a in an aisle in a store, and I just I'm a people
• 57:59
  watcher, and I watch people, and it's interesting how people will
• 58:04
  walk up and down the coffee aisle, and they'll look. I mean,
• 58:07
  there's a million brands anymore, you know, and and local
• 58:11
  guys and stuff, and they walk up and down, and it's so amazing. I
• 58:14
  mean, some people will buy that filet mignon and pay the price.
• 58:18
  Yeah,
• 58:18
  most people want you know a filet for the hamburger price,
• 58:21
  you know. But I watch the people go up and down, engage in
• 58:25
  conversation with them, you know, and they'll look at what
• 58:29
  they don't realize is they're paying more or they're paying
• 58:32
  the same price, but they're not paying attention to the bag and
• 58:35
  where the bag, you know, they're paying $1 more now, but they
• 58:40
  dropped off two ounces, but they don't pick up on that 10 ounces,
• 58:43
  or they don't pick up. This is a 12 count box over here, but they
• 58:47
  see this over here for $8 or whatever it is, and they're
• 58:49
  like, and they shop by price.
• 58:51
  Yeah,
• 58:51
  and really they shortage by 2k cups, and now you're paying 80
• 58:54
  cents a cup versus you're paying maybe 75 or 70 cents a cup.
• 58:58
  Yeah,
• 58:59
  so I see that all the time, and and I'll start engaging them as
• 59:01
  like, hey, you realize you're paying more, and it's and
• 59:03
  sometimes it's that's what I can afford. So I've actually, well,
• 59:07
  hey, why don't you try this brand over here? Let me buy you
• 59:08
  a couple boxes. So so we'll do stuff like that, and um, man, I
• 59:16
  mean, there's so many things that that you know that I want
• 59:19
  to get into, and it's just I wish I could clone myself, you
• 59:22
  know. I mean, there's so many different avenues where, you
• 59:25
  know, for instance, you know, like you talked about the
• 59:27
  dealerships, you know, you know, dealerships, you know, private
• 59:30
  labeling, you know, you go in, they'll have a bunch of K cups,
• 59:33
  or you know, and branding it their brand,
• 59:36
  right?
• 59:36
  Versus you know some off brand. Interesting. I walked in Safe
• 59:39
  Like the other day, and had a conversation with them, and
• 59:42
  they're just buying, you know, something from Walmart and stuff
• 59:45
  like that. And he said, "Man, it would be kind of cool if we can
• 59:47
  do it for you.
• 59:48
  Yeah,
• 59:48
  and so just so many opportunities like that. And we
• 59:51
  just we just get introduced to we had a couple real estate
• 59:54
  agents come in the little sample packets that we have the two
• 59:57
  ounce sample packs. You can make a whole 12 pot you know. Cup of
• 1:00:00
  coffee and and they said hey you want to know something what if
• 1:00:03
  we printed up like a two and a half by two and a half sticker
• 1:00:06
  could you make these for us and we just want to put them on so
• 1:00:08
  we sell a house we can put them inside of a basket you know like
• 1:00:12
  a gift basket we sell a house with all like the you know
• 1:00:14
  different different products and stuff you know wines and
• 1:00:17
  crackers and different things and I said hey that that's a
• 1:00:19
  great idea
• 1:00:19
  that's one way of doing it,
• 1:00:20
  yeah. So I mean, you know, I learn new things every day, and
• 1:00:23
  it's been you know five, six years, whatever it's been now.
• 1:00:26
  Well, the
• 1:00:26
  white labeling thing is is kind of a very I never really thought
• 1:00:30
  about doing. I'm I probably did at one point, but I didn't
• 1:00:33
  realize how pervasive it was, how you know big of a business
• 1:00:38
  that is. So the 75 businesses that is that are buying from you
• 1:00:42
  on a regular basis, they're white labeling it,
• 1:00:44
  100% Wow! So we we pack the product. So some of them will
• 1:00:48
  send us their product. I've got a company in Cleveland that'll
• 1:00:52
  send us six seven pallets of coffee. So we're not really
• 1:00:54
  doing anything for them. Is they're they're importing it
• 1:00:56
  from Italy. They bring in. They'll have a truck deliver
• 1:00:59
  seven eight pallets.
• 1:01:00
  Okay, so their other coffee company, their other coffee
• 1:01:02
  companies, yeah.
• 1:01:03
  So I'll get six, seven pallets of coffee, and it's whole bean
• 1:01:08
  or ground, and then they'll give us their bags, and then we're
• 1:01:11
  just packing for them. So we're packing, we're casing,
• 1:01:14
  repalletize. They have the trucking company come and pick
• 1:01:17
  it up.
• 1:01:17
  Wow. So
• 1:01:18
  we're doing that as well.
• 1:01:20
  That's interesting. I mean, I was thinking that you were just
• 1:01:22
  doing it for businesses, like you said. You know, hey, we're a
• 1:01:25
  dealership. We want to put our logo on, and here's our own
• 1:01:27
  coffee, quote unquote. But you and I talked about, you know,
• 1:01:31
  getting podcasts, you know, podcasts to have their own
• 1:01:34
  coffee. It might as well. It's advertising,
• 1:01:35
  100%
• 1:01:36
  You know what I mean? It goes right through your your
• 1:01:39
  organization. You're setting up the website, you're setting up
• 1:01:41
  the the merch in a way. So yeah,
• 1:01:45
  I mean, I'm there's so many things out there. It's just I
• 1:01:49
  just don't have the time in a day, you know. And well,
• 1:01:52
  where do you want to see it go? What's it look like 510, years
• 1:01:54
  down the road?
• 1:01:56
  I would love to turn it, you know, turn it into. I mean,
• 1:02:02
  it's. It, it's it's it's grown beyond my wildest dreams ever.
• 1:02:07
  Again, you know, it started out as a as a hobby, and it's turned
• 1:02:11
  into a job, you know, and and I've got four. You see
• 1:02:15
  it that way.
• 1:02:16
  I see it that way. I see it that way. You feel
• 1:02:18
  like you own a job?
• 1:02:19
  I yeah, I'm because I'm again. It's all what you put. What what
• 1:02:24
  I notice and it drives the younger, the younger
• 1:02:29
  generation
• 1:02:29
  generation. Yeah, drives me absolutely crazy because there's
• 1:02:33
  no work ethic. Once we paid a lot of money, you know, every 10
• 1:02:38
  seconds, you know, hey, go, they'll do A, B, C, and D, they
• 1:02:41
  can't. They're not self sufficient at all. Right. And
• 1:02:43
  next thing you know, you go around the corner and they're
• 1:02:45
  doing this on their cell phone. It's like you get to the point.
• 1:02:47
  It's like, come on, you know, do we got to put them? You know,
• 1:02:49
  act like everybody's five years old to put them in a box. You
• 1:02:52
  know. But I mean, we employ five, six people full time, and
• 1:02:55
  then and then I have four or five people that are that are
• 1:02:57
  part timers. They're either you know, veterans or on disability,
• 1:03:03
  or you know, or just need that extra income. You know, they're
• 1:03:06
  over 65. They're on Social Security, but they can only you
• 1:03:08
  know collect say $1,000 a month or whatever the cap is. Yeah,
• 1:03:12
  and so we try to employ a lot of folks that you know need
• 1:03:15
  it, need it. You know, and and and the older generation. I
• 1:03:18
  mean, you know, I'm I'm giving a lot of the younger generation,
• 1:03:21
  but it's it's just so tough. You
• 1:03:22
  got to go. What's the ratio? How many people you got to go
• 1:03:25
  through to find the one?
• 1:03:27
  It's tough.
• 1:03:28
  Is it? It's really in the electrical field in the trades.
• 1:03:30
  When I when we own a business that did that, it was about 12
• 1:03:33
  to one. We had to go through about 12 people, 12 duds to find
• 1:03:37
  the good one.
• 1:03:38
  It's it's all the time. People don't want to show up to work or
• 1:03:40
  they're late all the time. I mean, but you know,
• 1:03:43
  on the other side of it, like even even with corporate, I'm
• 1:03:45
  finding out with you know my wife's job, she's basically you
• 1:03:51
  know they pay them well, but when it comes time for raises,
• 1:03:57
  it's like they're not talking dollars. They're still talking
• 1:04:01
  cents, and it's like, guys, you know this is this. The things I
• 1:04:07
  would say if I were employed by somebody again to my boss or
• 1:04:11
  manager, I would literally say, with what was offered to her, I
• 1:04:15
  say, you know what? Why don't you keep it? You guys obviously
• 1:04:17
  need the money more than I do.
• 1:04:18
  Agreed.
• 1:04:19
  You know, you you and you're actually proud of the fact that
• 1:04:23
  you're giving me more than what was expected. You're telling me
• 1:04:25
  this. Don't say that because this is nothing to be proud of.
• 1:04:29
  I had that happen to me. So when I first retired, I had a large.
• 1:04:34
  So my expertise too is in is in DOT and federal motor carrier
• 1:04:39
  compliance and data queuing and crashes and so forth and so on,
• 1:04:43
  and I get a lot of I get a lot of attorneys that still call me
• 1:04:45
  to this day. You know, hey, I had this fatality or I had this.
• 1:04:49
  You know, I'm worried about my client getting sued or whatever.
• 1:04:51
  Can you come back and re-investigate it? And I was
• 1:04:53
  about nine months into into retirement, and I had a large
• 1:04:57
  trucking company that you would know of that's in check. Danuga
• 1:05:01
  reach out and their head attorney hired me and to to work
• 1:05:07
  a lot of their really large cases and same thing was
• 1:05:11
  happening it was like hey listen I'll do these couple you know
• 1:05:14
  and then let me walk away and it was sense it was like well if
• 1:05:16
  you need the money more than me then and I kind of walked away
• 1:05:18
  at that point but
• 1:05:19
  yeah
• 1:05:20
  same same thing. It's just, it's almost, it's, it's
• 1:05:23
  on both sides of the coin. You know, you can't really blame the
• 1:05:27
  people. Not that I'm saying I'm saying that you're underpaying
• 1:05:30
  them, but you know, I, you know, there. What is the threshold to
• 1:05:33
  really start separating the wheat from the chaff? You know,
• 1:05:37
  where does the cream rise to the top? When do you get to that
• 1:05:40
  level of cream, and it's like to me, for a company like the one
• 1:05:44
  she works for, it's like
• 1:05:46
  they're huge, right? I got a buddy that yeah, an executive
• 1:05:49
  there. We'll talk about that.
• 1:05:50
  Well, that's the thing is that you know this is what happens
• 1:05:53
  when bean counters run the operation. There's no culture
• 1:05:57
  being kept in mind. You know, the Atta boys come in the form
• 1:06:00
  of $5 sandwiches, and not even like boars had meat. It's Publix
• 1:06:04
  meat,
• 1:06:04
  yeah.
• 1:06:04
  And it's like you know they they they give them these the like,
• 1:06:07
  hey, you did great. You need to so and so secret shop to you.
• 1:06:10
  You need passed with flying colors. Here's a $5 half
• 1:06:13
  sandwich.
• 1:06:14
  That's crazy.
• 1:06:15
  That's like guys, you know how much these people would love to
• 1:06:19
  if you gave $100 a month, even $50 a month away to each
• 1:06:23
  department. What is that going to cost you?
• 1:06:25
  You just feel you you just feel unappreciated and valued, and it
• 1:06:29
  really yeah I agree with you 100%
• 1:06:32
  It's it's it's nuts, man. I'm like the the solution so simple.
• 1:06:36
  You do realize that if you just bump it up to $50 a month, just
• 1:06:39
  a gift card, just a gift card. It
• 1:06:41
  means so much to people.
• 1:06:43
  Oh, they they'd freaking eat that up.
• 1:06:45
  I saw. Hey, listen, I saw the exact same thing in the police
• 1:06:47
  world. Yeah, you know, you would have. You know, you get these
• 1:06:50
  guys that knew where they came from. You know, they work the
• 1:06:52
  streets. They understand. You know how it is. Yeah. And then
• 1:06:55
  all of a sudden, as they start moving through the ranks, you
• 1:06:57
  know, now they're sitting in an office and it's all
• 1:06:59
  administrative and so forth and so on.
• 1:07:01
  Yeah,
• 1:07:01
  same type of bean counter type of things, making things that
• 1:07:04
  don't really understand what's really going on with the boots
• 1:07:07
  on. You see it in the car
• 1:07:07
  business.
• 1:07:08
  Agreed. And and and nobody talks.
• 1:07:10
  Yeah,
• 1:07:11
  you know what I mean. Or you have to go through so much chain
• 1:07:13
  of command that it never translates up, never translates
• 1:07:17
  down because the person down here, everything's fine,
• 1:07:18
  everything's fine, everything's fine, everything's fine.
• 1:07:20
  Right,
• 1:07:20
  can't fix if it's not broke,
• 1:07:22
  right?
• 1:07:22
  But then they got like an ostrich, you know, with the head
• 1:07:25
  buried in the sand too.
• 1:07:25
  Yeah, because it's yeah, because
• 1:07:27
  of the political politics. That's why I got out of it
• 1:07:30
  because of the political politics more than anything.
• 1:07:33
  Well, man, what where people could find and follow you, and
• 1:07:36
  if they're interested in taking you up on white labeling coffee,
• 1:07:40
  where should they go?
• 1:07:41
  PeacemakerCoffeecompany.com. You can find us on Instagram. You
• 1:07:46
  know, send us an email. You know, info at
• 1:07:48
  peacemakercoffeecompany.com and reach out. I mean, you know,
• 1:07:54
  answer any questions you you have.
• 1:07:56
  There you go. Here we're going to put it in the all the details
• 1:08:00
  in the description as always, and of course, if you want to
• 1:08:03
  share this episode, if you got some value out of it, check it
• 1:08:05
  out at mmtbp.com. That is a truncated version of the mostly
• 1:08:09
  Middle Tennesseebusinesspodcast.com.
• 1:08:12
  Much shorter way to type it. Just say mmtbpp.com, and there
• 1:08:18
  you go. Chris,
• 1:08:20
  appreciate you.
• 1:08:20
  Thanks for having me. Thanks for coming out here, man. It's a
• 1:08:22
  long drive.
• 1:08:23
  I appreciate the invite, my friend.
• 1:08:24
  Thanks for being here.
• 1:08:25
  Absolutely.