Latest / Coffee People Podcast / Ben Helt, Specialty Coffee Association AST Program Director

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Ben Helt, Specialty Coffee Association AST Program Director · Coffee People Podcast

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Hey everyone, I'm the host of the Coffee People and Coffee
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1:14
If you haven't poured yourself a cup of coffee, now is the time.
1:19
Our guest today is Ben Health from the Specialty Coffee
1:21
Association. You may have heard of them.
1:24
You can also find them online and in specifically at Education
1:28
dot SEA dot coffee. And of course, we'll have those
1:31
links in our podcast show notes. Ben, welcome to the Coffee
1:35
People podcast. I'm glad you're here.
1:36
Yeah, thanks for having me. It's good to be here.
1:39
I actually tried to connect with you at SEA in Chicago and it's
1:42
just everything was chaotic and I'm sure you were running around
1:45
like a. A madman, Yeah, I know we have.
1:49
We always have our goals of who we're going to meet up with
1:52
there, and we always fall short and always meet with people that
1:55
we had no idea we were going to meet with there.
1:58
It's such an an exciting event in that you just have this
2:02
energy of people and all the different things they're doing
2:05
in coffee and and sort of seeps in.
2:08
I I think it takes months and months for me to realize what it
2:11
is I took away from it because in the moment you're just go,
2:14
go, go. Yeah.
2:15
I'm hoping you can share with us.
2:18
Let's just get started with what is it that you do at SCA.
2:21
You know where you're located and you know who are you, Ben?
2:24
Yeah. Who?
2:25
Yeah, I, yeah, I guess we can start with that role and then
2:28
we'll pick up some other things along the way.
2:30
I think, I think it's important to note that everything the
2:33
Specialty Copy Association does is about education.
2:37
All of it, right, Including trade shows like the Specialty
2:41
Coffee Expo and World of Coffee. And those things it's all about
2:44
and you know, online white papers, online events, webinars,
2:50
printed materials like 25 magazine event workshops, all of
2:54
those things are all about education.
2:57
And within that world, we also have certificate programs,
3:02
certificate courses. And so if you want to learn
3:05
about and be trained about job skills, like relevant job tasks
3:11
when it comes to actually touching coffee and get a
3:14
certificate that says you took a training and pass some tests
3:18
associated with that training, that's what our certificate
3:21
programs are. And we don't deliver these
3:23
programs. Like there's never a time where
3:25
the SCA delivers one of these courses.
3:27
It's done through a network of authorized trainers around the
3:31
world. And we have about 2000 and
3:34
currently my job with the SCA is running the AST program, which
3:41
stands for authorized SCA Trainer.
3:43
So I work with those 2000 trainers around the world to
3:47
deliver these certificate programs.
3:49
And so I part of it is train the trainer, part of it is also
3:55
authorization. So I run the whole credentialing
3:57
process of becoming an authorized trainer and then as
4:00
part kind of compliance officer to make sure that the trainer
4:04
network is a complying with policies and procedures of the
4:07
system. So that's what I do.
4:10
It's a, it's a big task. I think there's a lot that goes
4:15
into education and understanding what these programs, you know,
4:19
what their value is to people around the, the the globe.
4:23
And I want to get into that. But before I do, I'm kind of
4:25
hoping to learn a little bit more about you, you know, have
4:28
some first kind of coffee experiences that really stand
4:31
out or that you made you think, oh, this.
4:33
Yeah, this is something interesting.
4:35
Yeah, I'm, I grew up in the Midwest, the United States.
4:38
I'm in Kansas City, MO, which is right in the middle of the
4:41
United States. And I think like many of my
4:46
peers, we were introduced to coffee through our grandparents
4:50
and our parents. And it was this, it was this
4:54
practical morning ritual that you may get a taste of every
4:58
once in a while. It just tastes like burnt
5:00
matches and like old grain. You know, it was like really not
5:07
pleasant. It seemed like it was more of a,
5:09
of a rite of passage to becoming an adult.
5:11
Like once you can handle this, then you're an adult kind of
5:16
coffee experience. So this would be obviously the
5:19
earliest memories and then for just decades was aware of it,
5:24
but not a coffee enthusiast, not someone who pursued coffee
5:28
probably because obviously I hadn't been exposed to something
5:31
I liked, you know. And I would say around, I guess
5:36
in the early 2000s started to become more interested where I
5:43
would purposefully have some coffee.
5:46
And then I would say right around 2000 and four, 2005 had
5:50
some of my earliest specialty coffee experiences and both
5:55
espresso and drip brew. And probably like many some of
6:02
those earliest memories of a natural process, coffee from
6:06
Ethiopia was a trigger for me, you know, but then also
6:11
espresso, particularly espresso macchiatos, which I kind of came
6:17
into coffee in the lineage of David Schumer.
6:21
And for those who may not know who David Schumer is from
6:25
Seattle, one of the one of The Pioneers of many things in
6:31
coffee, particularly manipulating equipment to engage
6:34
in a real ristretto style espresso.
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And I feel like Broadway coffee here in Kansas City kind of took
6:47
that. And then that was also I guess
6:50
the lineage that I took when it came to opening up my roasting
6:53
company. And Cafe was following that same
6:58
kind of approach of real Rustretto espresso, super thick.
7:06
We're talking a lot of grams in and a lot out, triple baskets,
7:10
obnoxious 1 to one ratios of these things, fruit, but baked
7:16
fruit and blackstrap molasses type of things.
7:19
And I think when I was first exposed to a macchiato made with
7:23
that style of espresso, with steamed half and half, that
7:29
predates the days where we were trying to put latte art on top
7:32
of macchiatos. So there was still a license to
7:35
have a really balanced texture of that.
7:39
It's just like coffee candy, you know, in a cup.
7:42
Loved it. And so I think that those were
7:44
some things that kind of sent me on the on the path of especially
7:47
coffee. But what got me into coffee was
7:52
more about creating, creating a, a missing piece of the
8:00
community. I was in a place where you could
8:03
have this cultural exchange, have a place that offered all
8:06
the things that cafes offer was just missing from the suburb
8:10
that I lived in. And so for me, I got into coffee
8:15
for the love of community and then over the years fell more in
8:19
love with coffee than my community at that time.
8:23
You know when you were. Describing that coffee I was, I
8:28
was having flashbacks of my own, my own visits to the family farm
8:33
when I was a kid in Wisconsin. And like that 4:30 AM wake up
8:37
call and like hearing the coffee being brewed and smelling it and
8:41
even though I wasn't drinking it, the adults were drinking it.
8:45
And then I was waiting for them to come up the steps to yell at
8:47
me to get up. But.
8:49
Yeah. You know, at that, even at that
8:51
time, I remember thinking, oh, there's something hearty and
8:54
something fulfilling, something emotionally fulfilling about
8:56
this thing that they're doing in the mornings.
8:58
Yeah, similar experience of visiting my other like I was
9:03
thinking of when a certain set of grandparents was visiting the
9:05
other grandparents in Northern Missouri, which is might as well
9:09
be Iowa, you know? And there's still times where if
9:14
the right AM radio station comes on with some, oh sure, classic
9:18
country. I can almost taste that coffee,
9:21
just associating it with that AM radio station, you know?
9:25
Those AM radio stations only exist in certain parts of the
9:28
country anymore because we're also focused.
9:30
We all have streaming and all the different things.
9:32
And but sometimes when we're on a long road trip and you hit
9:35
this dead zone and you turn the radio on and then that's all
9:39
that's coming in and it does send you back.
9:42
I, I get that same feeling when I hear like kind of a crackly
9:47
1950s Doo wop music because I think of my dad and I driving to
9:53
the EAA air show in Oshkosh. And we had this bench seat in
9:57
the car and it'd be late at night.
9:59
And that's what he would listen to on the drive home, you know,
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and I'd be a little kid listening to that.
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And I can still remember that emotion.
10:06
You mentioned that when you started your own coffee company.
10:09
It's a big jump from having that first like, oh, I really like
10:12
think this is cool and I'm into it, to wanting to build a
10:15
community. At that time, was it more about
10:19
building community in the suburb that you lived in or was the
10:22
coffee, you know, component? And now obviously you're
10:25
invested in your part of this specialty culture, but at that
10:29
time, was that something you were aware of or was that
10:31
something that grew as you grew with that business?
10:34
It's a good question. I think it was if they speak
10:36
specifically to the specialty coffee or specialty nature of
10:41
coffee at the time. I was in on that specifically,
10:45
but that doesn't mean I knew what I was doing.
10:47
This is not the story of the the home roaster who was using an
10:53
air popper or whatever we had at those times and then trying to
10:57
grow that into a business. This is not that story.
11:00
I mean, I was a first time business owner, first time
11:03
barista, first time roaster, all at the same time, which is not a
11:08
good idea. It is not, it's not a good path
11:11
to go. But I mean, it's possible.
11:13
But the, the community that I was opening this up in was what
11:17
we would call a first tier or inner ring suburb.
11:20
So it was one of the first suburbs built from urban flight
11:23
right from Kansas City proper out.
11:27
And then over the years started to suffer the same fate of of
11:31
people continuing to move out. And I worked for the school
11:35
district there for quite a while in the community relations and
11:39
public relations department. That's my pre coffee profession.
11:43
And I'm going to kind of skip the details of that journey and
11:49
just say I got to a place where I found that it was better to
11:52
try to build a community that attracts the right or like like
11:58
the next generation as compared to trying to keep the current
12:02
generation from leaving, right. So creating a space where you
12:06
would attract the kind of committed community members that
12:10
you would like. And for me, that combined with
12:15
an entrepreneurial seizure led to, you know, getting into
12:20
coffee from there. We weren't quite ready to be the
12:23
bar owners in the family, right? The night life was another piece
12:26
that was kind of missing from this community.
12:28
But coffee at that time kind of seemed like it would be that
12:31
nice vice kind of space and would give us an opportunity to
12:36
create a place for that culture exchange to happen.
12:40
For example, if you wanted to see some artwork in our
12:42
community, you would have to see it in a high school, a bank,
12:46
maybe a local bank would have some things on display.
12:48
And from time to time, like the the Cafe within a grocery store
12:53
might have something there. And that was it, you know, and
12:56
that was a piece that we felt was missing from our area.
12:59
Now that running in parallel with seeing what was happening
13:03
in the specialty coffee world at the time, we, we were committed
13:08
to not just being a cliche, right?
13:12
And we, we spent a lot of time visiting places to see what was
13:16
just, you know, cafe for cafe's sake, right?
13:19
And obviously I'm not going to name any names, but let's take
13:22
the friends, like the cafe on the TV show friends, right?
13:26
We were, we were wanting to stay away from Central Perk, right?
13:31
And, and be on the forefront. So not following the trend, but
13:34
trying to figure out where is the trend headed and start there
13:39
with it. This particular suburb was often
13:43
lampooned, you know, so like if a comedian came to town and
13:46
said, ask the people working there, like, what's the town
13:49
that fits this mold for this joke I've already got going on?
13:53
This would be the town they would tell them, right?
13:55
And so we knew that we wanted to set it up in a way that could
13:59
kind of transcend that a little bit if we could, and which was
14:02
one of the reasons we decided to roast.
14:05
At that time, the vast majority of cafes in Kansas City were
14:09
serving Broadway coffee. The Roastery P TS Starbucks
14:14
obviously was there. And then there were some small
14:18
local roasters, but they weren't predominant at the time and but
14:22
then continued to grow. And we wanted our town to be
14:27
producing something that went out, not being part of a network
14:31
from somewhere else, if that makes sense.
14:34
So we wanted to produce that ourselves.
14:37
And so that's what made us decide to take the path of
14:41
roasting. Now at that time, no one in the
14:44
coffee industry would work for me.
14:46
Like I, you know, put out the word asked and they said you're
14:50
doing what? Where No, no thanks, you know,
14:54
And so we opened with a a brand new staff had to invest in a lot
14:58
of training being brought in. In fact, I think there's only
15:01
one member of our staff that had worked in food service before,
15:04
and she had worked at McDonald's for a while.
15:06
So we we used a lot of that knowledge that she picked up
15:11
from working in a franchise to make that work.
15:14
Now, over time, I think once people saw what we were doing,
15:17
then I built some favor within the coffee community.
15:21
In particular, I found out that a lot of people who worked in
15:24
coffee lived around me, who worked downtown and worked in
15:28
these other places. They were our neighbors and
15:31
would come in. And if you're humble enough to
15:35
listen to what they're telling you, his consumers and his
15:38
friends, you can learn a lot. And then some of them came to
15:41
work for me. And so I'm one of those people
15:44
who learned everything I learned about the basics of coffee in
15:49
the beginning. I can credit the people I hired
15:53
with teaching me that in kind of leading the way.
15:57
And then I, you know, I did my best to give them the freedom to
15:59
push the envelope where they could in those spaces with our,
16:04
our customer base. And you know, 8 to 9 years later
16:09
was able to sell the wholesale part of the business.
16:12
And that's what became or the family that, that bought the
16:15
wholesale portion of my business that became Messenger Coffee
16:19
here in Kansas City. And so my green coffee buyer and
16:23
my roaster went with that business to join them and then I
16:26
was able to sell the retail part of the business to a couple that
16:30
had met working for us and got married and then took over the
16:34
business for a few years. There's a, a great management
16:38
value, leadership value in recognizing talent, recognizing
16:43
people that might know more or be better at it than you.
16:46
And being this isn't necessarily, I mean, it is a
16:49
management skill, but it's, it's something I really struggle
16:52
with. But giving up the control to
16:54
them to do the thing that represents you.
16:57
I mean, I, I trust you, but also it's my name on the door or
17:01
whatever it might be. And, and I, I, I need to really
17:05
trust you and understand. So I commend that.
17:09
How did that turn into, and I know we're skipping some things
17:11
here, but how did that turn into you connecting with the
17:16
Specialty Coffee Association and transitioning into a more
17:20
facilitator educator role and then a step up even further into
17:25
educating educators? Yeah.
17:28
Well, I, you know, my pre coffee career in the world of education
17:32
and doing some adult education and then a lot of training
17:35
within that role of those who are kind of frontline personnel
17:38
in school districts made it a natural fit to take what I had
17:43
learned in my experiences of owning and operating a rose tree
17:47
and Cafe and training my staff. Learning of this, you know, just
17:51
the subject matter expertise and coffee combined with just a
17:56
natural inclination and leaning towards training, right and
17:59
recognizing how important that is after selling the businesses
18:04
and getting out, you know, there's a lot of like there's a
18:11
lot of decisions to be made about what your post business
18:14
life is going to look like. And for me, I was able to
18:19
connect with a couple here in Kansas City that are kind of the
18:24
premier providers of of copy technician services here and
18:29
they wanted to get into providing training within the
18:33
especially Copy Association of America at the time.
18:36
And at that time, the Specialty Copy Association of America and
18:39
the Coffee Quality Institute were collaborating on creating
18:46
certified campuses around the country and world where
18:51
especially Copy Association of America certificate courses and
18:55
Q grader licensing programs could take place.
18:59
And this is very early on. And so I, I joined Workbench
19:03
Coffee Labs here in Kansas City to open one of these early
19:08
campuses. And that's what gave me an
19:11
opportunity to get exposed to those who were working in the
19:15
education department, especially Copy Association of America at
19:18
the time, and started doing some contract work for them.
19:23
There were some opportunities where I felt like my skill set
19:26
could be helpful and they did it as well and so jumped in helping
19:30
with that full time job after finishing up that work at that
19:34
campus was selling green coffee to Coffee Roasters with Anthem
19:38
Coffee Imports here in Kansas City and that was a fun journey.
19:42
So for a while I was working full time selling green coffee
19:45
and part time contracting to organize online education for
19:49
the Specialty Coffee Association of America.
19:52
And then became the Specialty Coffee Association after the
19:55
Specialty Coffee Association of Europe and America merged and
19:59
unified. And then at one point just
20:02
decided to go full time with the specialty copy Association.
20:06
And I thought I was still maybe dabble in selling some green
20:09
coffee. And I wasn't wrong.
20:10
There was no capacity for like the specialty coffee associate
20:14
was taking a hold of me for that.
20:18
I think that, you know, maybe being busy is part of the answer
20:21
to my next question, but just kind of stepping back one one
20:25
click there. When you sell your business, you
20:29
sell the wholesale, you sell the retail, and you're looking at
20:32
the next step in your career. Relatively young still I'll.
20:39
Take that. You know, I, I think, I mean, I,
20:42
you know, it's weird to think, but like the, the years add up
20:46
and you all of a sudden you look back and you're like, Oh, well,
20:48
I did this and I did this and I did this.
20:50
But you were at a, in a place. And this is something I think a
20:53
lot of our listeners and a lot of coffee people experience as
20:56
they grow through the industry. You were an owner and somebody
21:02
leading A-Team and you your identity gets wrapped up in that
21:06
somewhat. Right.
21:08
You I, I feel that now, even though I don't have a team now
21:12
and I don't own, you know, on the show, but I don't have a
21:16
restaurant or a business like that.
21:19
How have you filled that? You know, how did you find a new
21:23
identity? You know, was it because you
21:25
were so busy, didn't have time to think about it?
21:27
Or was it OK? That was my life and I'm moving
21:31
into this phase where I'm teaching again or I'm selling
21:33
again and I'm just, I'm OK letting that drift away.
21:38
But I think there's always part of you that feels an ownership
21:40
pull and it's just, it's a character trait to some extent.
21:43
And identity, I think is I, I struggle with and I am always
21:47
wondering how other people manage those transitions in
21:50
their life. Yeah.
21:51
This is really an interesting question and thinking about, I
21:55
guess I might have a little bit of a different take on it with
21:57
my experience. I think over my journey, I found
22:02
out something to be true that somebody told me when I started.
22:05
I think one of the first steps that I took, just because of my
22:08
experience in the community and being involved in the chamber
22:11
and in the business community from the school district
22:13
perspective, was put together an Advisory Board of local business
22:19
people that I knew just to kind of, you know, be a, a sounding
22:24
board and invite, Well, I mean, I guess the an Advisory Board
22:28
providing that advice for me along the way.
22:30
And several of them mentioned how lonely it is to be an
22:36
entrepreneur, right? To be the boss, to be the person
22:39
who writes the checks. And you're surrounded by great
22:41
people, including your staff, including your family and
22:44
others. But there's a loneliness aspect
22:47
that is hard to describe if you haven't experienced it.
22:51
In the same way that parents are told they're going to grow up
22:55
fast and you believe them when they say this.
22:57
And then it happens to you and you're like, oh, yeah, that's
23:00
crazy how fast that happened. So like, even if you believe it
23:03
when somebody says it, experiencing it is something
23:05
different. And so there's some, you know,
23:09
there's something that is akin to trauma over that time from
23:13
being in those positions and seeing the toll that it takes on
23:17
you as a person and the toll it takes on your family, especially
23:21
retail. Retail just takes a whole of a
23:24
person, you know, even. And I'm not just talking about
23:28
numbers of locations. I mean, just like being involved
23:31
in retail is just completely absorbing, particularly if you
23:34
don't have experience in it. You know, maybe the second
23:37
endeavour is a little bit easier than the first because so many
23:40
of us, especially in the coffee world, we don't do the math in
23:44
advance. Like if you if you ask people
23:47
how many of these things they need to sell in order to hit
23:50
what they need to put in their bank account, it's hard to get
23:55
the right answer, you know, for that well.
23:57
There's so many variables that you don't account yeah that are
23:59
unexpected. That's true.
24:01
And that's if you do the math, you find out that there's so
24:04
many variables and some just don't and just place hope in
24:07
their their intent, you know, to get there.
24:10
I think over my years in the cafe working in IT, you know,
24:16
because I was a work in Briston and roaster at times, I, I think
24:21
I found that even though I have a degree in public relations,
24:25
that maybe engaging the public is not right for me.
24:28
Like that's not where, where I, I fit, you know, and I felt like
24:33
I was really getting burnt out to the point where I started to
24:37
kind of despise our regulars, you know, like your regulars
24:41
will come in and be like this guy, you know, like where you
24:45
just kind of get tired, mostly because maybe they want a
24:49
relationship that's not the relationship you were looking
24:53
for. You know, I, I had this desire
24:56
for a relationship where I'm going to craft this delicious
24:59
experience for you. I'm going to give it to you in a
25:01
great place in a great way. I'm hoping that you like it so
25:05
much that you use a little profanity when you taste it or
25:08
when you see it. That would be awesome.
25:11
Like, I want you to love it this much and please enjoy yourself
25:14
over there at that seat, you know, and I found that maybe
25:19
there are others who wanted that relationship to be different.
25:22
And I don't know if I, I don't think that that was for me, you
25:26
know, And so I learned a lot about myself along the way as
25:30
far as where I felt most comfortable.
25:33
And I think what I found was I'm much more of AB to B than B to
25:37
C, so much more of a business to business operator than engaging
25:42
the public. And I still do some things now
25:44
to make sure I'm connected to the public, right, And stay in
25:48
touch with the, the actual act of hospitality, right?
25:52
But I felt like that's something I learned about myself over time
25:57
was getting out of that. So when I think about identity
26:01
issues post business, post entrepreneur identity issues for
26:10
me, I found myself escaping like we've become quite popular where
26:15
we were successful and a lot of my customer base shopped at the
26:20
same grocery store where I shopped.
26:22
And I found that I wanted to distance myself from that to
26:26
where if I saw one of my customers down an aisle, I'm
26:30
going to the next aisle, right? Or finding the wanting to just
26:34
kind of hide from those conversations and really kind of
26:37
unplug from that part of the community that we had helped
26:41
build. You know, and I feel like it
26:44
took, gosh, I think it's, I think it took probably about
26:47
eight or nine years to kind of get over that.
26:51
But I don't think I ever wrestled with a, I'm no longer
26:55
an owner loss of any some, some, any kind of prestige or
27:05
reputation connected to that. Yeah, it was really easy for me
27:09
to let go of being in that that position.
27:12
It was almost the opposite to where I wanted to let go so
27:16
much. I found myself letting a lot of
27:18
those relationships build, just kind of dwindle and fade, you
27:22
know? And so I don't think I've ever
27:24
wrestled with kind of a, a, a hole in my ego from walking away
27:31
from ownership. I think if I experienced regret,
27:34
it would be more about trying to disconnect from some of those
27:38
relationships of people who showed nothing but love, right?
27:42
Nothing but commitment to this thing succeeding and in valuing
27:46
what we're doing. But I will say also for anyone,
27:51
maybe I'm wrong, maybe I'm projecting.
27:54
I wonder if I'm alone in thinking this way.
27:59
I feel like it's a risky business to get into an
28:02
entrepreneurial effort with a community in mind, in hanging
28:11
your hat on that. Because in those moments where
28:15
it's the hardest, you'll start to be tempted to resent that
28:22
community because you may not feel like they appreciate what
28:28
you're going through. They may have misconceptions
28:31
about how well you're doing right?
28:33
And because you're the owner, you're doing, you know, you must
28:36
be doing great when actually you may be just wanting to try to do
28:40
as well as your baristas are doing right along the way.
28:44
And if you go into it with, you know, with that in mind, like
28:51
with this, this intent to save a community or add that, that you
29:01
may never get the return that you think you're going to get.
29:04
So I mean, you have to manage your own mental health, your own
29:07
mental health and your own expectations going into that.
29:09
So you don't put yourself in a position where you end up
29:13
resenting the very thing that you were looking to, you know,
29:17
help. Two of the things you mentioned,
29:20
I just want to point out to people listening.
29:22
And one is the grocery store experience, you know, running
29:26
into a customer when you are representing your business and
29:30
your owner, you're always representing it.
29:32
You don't get the option to have a bad day or tell someone to F
29:36
off, you know, at the grocery store because they're going to
29:40
tell someone else in your neighborhood and they're going
29:41
to tell someone else in your neighborhood and and it will
29:44
eventually come back around. Not even if you really want to
29:47
tell them that. The other part of that is, you
29:51
know, entrepreneurial mental health is still relatively new
29:54
talking point. I mean, it's not something that
29:56
I even understood until I was breaking down mentally as an
30:01
entrepreneur. And even then I didn't
30:03
understand it to the point where I thought it was some other
30:06
problem. And so it's something that I
30:09
take very seriously. And, and we do talk about
30:11
loneliness with a lot of people on this show.
30:13
And everybody is going through their thing and all of us in
30:20
different industries and coffee in particular are learning and
30:23
growing. But it, it, people aren't going
30:27
to just find you to help you, you know, as much as that would
30:30
be lovely, sometimes you have to be the one to say, you know
30:34
what? I am lonely and I need to figure
30:36
that out or I need to talk to someone about it or I need to
30:39
take a step. You know the the 12 year old
30:43
version of me used to shoot hoops in the yard and just
30:45
assume some NBA scout would drive by and say that kid, he's
30:49
got something and that never happened.
30:52
Also, I never grew beyond 510, so there was a lot of factors
30:56
there and I couldn't jump very high or run very fast.
30:59
But still I always assumed somebody would show up.
31:02
And I think at some point I realized, especially in
31:04
business, I can't assume someone's coming to the.
31:08
Rescue. You have to be your own rescue
31:10
and, and to some extent or at least start the process and then
31:14
you'll find people that want to help you along the journey.
31:19
Ranting, apologies. I don't wanna to lose sight of
31:24
one of the core things that I really wanted to learn from you,
31:26
which is about the SCA training programs and kind of who the
31:32
audience for that is. You know, I went on the
31:35
education dot SCA dot coffee website.
31:39
I could get lost just going through all the different
31:41
options and say, oh, or go through when I start looking at
31:44
the resources that are offered online and you're like, this is
31:47
so much information. How do you convey value of the
31:51
program? What value is there to the
31:53
people taking these? You know, and and where do you
31:57
start? Where do you tell people, Hey,
31:59
this is where you should start? It's a good question.
32:02
I think, I think in order to kind of understand the value of
32:06
it, I think it's important for us to really define what these
32:09
programs are and what they're not, right?
32:12
And as I mentioned, like earlier in our conversation, you can
32:17
learn about coffee all sorts of places.
32:19
You can come to our events and and take workshops on how to do
32:24
things. Maybe you know, espresso,
32:26
building drinks, signature drinks, learning about defects
32:31
and coffee, cupping for defects, acids, all sorts of stuff.
32:36
You can learn how to make a cappuccino from watching
32:37
YouTube, right? There's no one owns how to do
32:41
that, right? So you can, you can, there's
32:43
lots of ways that you can learn these things.
32:45
But what the SC as coffee skills program is, it's an assessment
32:50
based certificate program. It's always connected to a
32:54
training. It's where you sign up for a
32:56
training, there's an assessment that covers the key points of
33:00
that training. And if you pass those
33:02
assessments, you get a certificate that says you did.
33:06
And it's international, right? And so these certificate
33:09
programs are such that if you get a certificate here, let's
33:14
say on the West Coast, you get that.
33:16
It's the same test. It's the same certificate in the
33:21
UK, in Bulgaria, in the United Arab Emirates, in South Korea,
33:27
Taiwan, Australia, West Coast, right?
33:31
It's all the same. So it has an international
33:34
recognizability and it's all based on job task analysis.
33:38
Now our certificate programs focus on, I would say, where
33:43
coffee is traded from exporter to importer to the preparation
33:48
of the cup. So we're not out with these
33:51
certificate programs teaching farmers how to farm, right?
33:54
So this is mostly on the consuming end of the supply
33:58
chain, right? I'm not just saying consuming
34:02
countries, but the consuming end of the supply chain around the
34:06
world, right? So it's and it's mostly
34:08
connected with actually touching things, actually interacting
34:12
with coffee or equipment to the most part.
34:15
And so an assessment based certificate program is not a
34:18
certification program. These are not professional
34:21
certifications. It's a different type of
34:23
credential. A professional certification
34:26
would be 1, where the Specialty Coffee Association says that you
34:29
are certified and that we stand behind you in completing
34:34
specific roles within the industry.
34:37
It would likely expire and there would be requirements to stay up
34:41
to date. And it would be based on your
34:42
professional proficiency, not specific trainings, right?
34:45
It would be knowledge based and proficiency and experience
34:48
based, not training based. These certificate programs are
34:52
training based. They never expire.
34:55
That certificate always means you took this course and you
34:58
pass these tests, right? Almost like a diploma, right?
35:02
The difference between an accounting degree and ACPA,
35:06
right? And so you have something that
35:08
says that you've finished this, right?
35:12
So I want to emphasize that because I think when people say
35:18
people come up to me and say, why should what's the value in
35:22
me as a breeze to getting a certification, I first have to
35:25
spend some time backing it out and saying there is no SEA
35:29
certified barista doesn't exist. There are those who hold
35:33
certificates in our barista skills program, but they are not
35:36
certified baristas right now. These certificates, it may sound
35:42
like what I'm saying is there's no value.
35:43
There's high value in this. I mean, you have, you have
35:48
something that says I've invested in this training and I
35:53
passed some assessments. So you know, I didn't just
35:57
attend, I didn't just participate, right.
35:59
I've shown that I retain something and can do something I
36:03
didn't do before from that. So there's value to them.
36:06
And certificates have a tendency to be most valuable in
36:10
marketplaces or parts of the world where they help you get
36:14
into an industry up or across the industry.
36:18
So our certificate programs are the most popular in Asia,
36:23
particularly South Korea and our Chinese speaking partners and
36:30
you know, other parts of Southeast Asia, Indonesia, parts
36:35
of Europe, United States is always, you know, in the top
36:39
list of, of those who are doing it.
36:41
We're a little less into paper here then maybe some other
36:44
places as far as having a certificate, but it still
36:47
happens, you know, and there's a lot of folks travelling around
36:52
the world to take these courses in different countries.
36:55
And so that is a little bit about this process.
37:01
All of it's built on job task analysis, right?
37:03
So this is meant to be training that's applicable in the
37:08
marketplace in in actual coffee operations.
37:12
And our curriculum development director is always working
37:17
towards engaging subject matter experts in a way that we're
37:21
staying informed of what's really being applied in the
37:25
industry so that it can better inform the content of these
37:29
courses that we have. One of your questions was where
37:33
the recommended people start. And a lot of that has to do with
37:36
what your career goals are. That should be the driving, you
37:39
know, force of everything is, you know, what parts of the
37:44
industry do you find attractive or maybe you don't know yet and
37:47
you want to take several of the foundation level courses to kind
37:50
of find where your passion might lie or what might best match
37:54
some of your natural skill sets or skill sets that you're
37:57
bringing to the industry there. But that should be probably the
38:01
first thing. And we've tried over the years
38:03
to maybe implement some things to help people build pathways
38:06
for that. And that's where the skills
38:08
diplomas come in, is meant to give people a better pathway, a
38:13
better road map and then better communicate what they've
38:16
invested in when it comes to their training there.
38:21
I know you've recently done some pretty extensive traveling and
38:26
obviously worldwide programming. Do you find that you're seeing a
38:31
more universal coffee language? To me, that language is such a
38:35
value to if I'm talking about something in coffee and you're
38:38
talking about something in coffee on the other side of the
38:40
world, we're actually talking about the same thing.
38:43
Are you seeing that in people that are taking these trainings?
38:46
It sounds like there might be some foundational things there,
38:51
whereas if you're not taking similar programs right or wrong,
38:55
I'm not passing judgement there. The language might be different
38:59
because you're learning as you go on the job.
39:02
Yeah, that's a really interesting question.
39:03
I believe that language, just English is constantly evolving,
39:10
right? But I think what's interesting
39:15
is in the past 20 years of being in this industry, I do think
39:20
there has been more of an alignment in the language that
39:26
we use for many reasons. I think that the early work of
39:30
this Specialty Copy Association of America and the Specialty
39:32
Copy Association of Europe before I got involved, in
39:36
addition to ICO, right, International Coffee
39:39
Organization and World Coffee Research and Coffee Coffee
39:42
Quality Institute, all of their activities I think have helped
39:47
lead towards more conversations. And the more conversations we
39:53
have, the more I think we find commonplace in the language that
39:59
we use. And that's before 2008.
40:05
When did Facebook start 2008 2007?
40:09
I don't know, it feels like it's always existed.
40:12
I feel, yeah, that's true. I guess maybe when adults became
40:15
aware of it, you know, before my mom joined, but after, you know,
40:21
the kids in school, social media, I think with the advent
40:27
of Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, others, you know, and
40:30
now TikTok and things that are like helped amplify the
40:34
conversations that we're having podcasts, right?
40:38
All of this, these new methods of content and conversation that
40:43
are happening. I do think I that there is more
40:48
common ground when it comes to the language we use.
40:52
Not sure how far that should be taken.
40:57
You know, as far as like attempts to create a calibration
41:04
of sorts around the industry. I don't know what impact that
41:07
may have on promoting advances towards a more sustainable
41:13
coffee industry or stifling it. I don't know.
41:15
It's kind of out of my wheelhouse a little bit.
41:17
But I do find that it's not hard to have conversations about
41:24
coffee around the world. There's a lot more in common
41:28
that we have discussing com coffee than not in common.
41:33
So I don't the culture shocks that I experienced in my travels
41:38
don't have a lot to do with coffee.
41:40
That seems to be the commonplace.
41:45
One of the things I think you might be an expert on, you can
41:49
correct me if I'm wrong. Why is it that the Kansas City
41:53
Royals can win a World Series the Milwaukee Brewers can't?
41:57
I've been really struggling with this for about 40 some years.
42:01
What a great question and I don't know if I have that
42:03
answer. Yeah.
42:06
It's just just pointing out that you, you know, you're in the
42:08
middle of the country. You mentioned that earlier,
42:10
Midwestern, we have culturally some perspectives of the middle
42:17
versus the coasts. And, and a lot of that I think
42:20
is evened out and has become less so because of social media,
42:24
because of the Internet, because we're seeing things happening.
42:26
They're happening faster in the middle than they used to or even
42:31
first, you know, there's innovation, a lot more
42:33
innovation than people realized. I think it was always there.
42:36
We just didn't see it as often, wasn't getting attention.
42:39
I'm wondering kind of about that.
42:44
Obviously you've chosen Kansas City as you know, it's your
42:47
home, it's where you you're based.
42:49
Are we seeing that people are feeling like, hey, I don't have
42:52
to go to this bigger market to do something?
42:55
Are you seeing that, you know, you travel quite a bit or are
42:59
you seeing that, as you said, you, you got into coffee to to
43:03
create something in your community?
43:08
Are we reverting back to that a little bit especially?
43:11
I mean, this is kind of a bigger economic question about people
43:14
and housing and cost of housing, but finding their more
43:18
affordable communities and building the thing they want
43:21
there. Are you, I mean, that's not
43:23
related to your, you know, role in SCA or anything, but I just
43:25
find it curious to ask people in different parts of the world.
43:30
I may need I may need you to help me with that question
43:35
again. Sure.
43:36
I'm I, I go very broad. Do you see, at least in your
43:41
region, people looking to continue what you did say at the
43:45
beginning of your career, creating things in these smaller
43:49
communities, but with the benefit now of a lot more
43:55
awareness of what's out there? Yes, I should clarify it.
44:01
And I, I think that this is important for me to note.
44:04
Yeah, I get up at 5:30 AM, right?
44:07
And the very first thing I'm doing is reacting to my
44:11
colleagues in Asia, right? And so catching up with them
44:15
because it's about 7:00 at night for them, so I'm trying to catch
44:20
them before they're completely gone, right.
44:22
And then I'm working my way back in the time zones and I'm
44:27
probably 3/4 of a liter in on coffee by, you know, 8 O clock
44:31
or so. And so then there's a magic hour
44:34
where I'm online in meetings as the folks come on in California
44:40
and we're still trying to catch people in Dublin in the UK.
44:45
And so the morning time is kind of the magic hour for us to meet
44:48
and have these conversations, which means I drink a lot of
44:51
coffee at home, right? So I'm making, I'm consuming the
44:55
majority of coffee, especially coffee that I have from my home
44:58
setup, which pretty good, right? So it's good, it's fine.
45:05
And I find that I am really plugged in to the coffee
45:08
industry, right? It's what I do everywhere but
45:11
Kansas City. Like, you know, I've got still
45:15
have connections, still get out and teach some here.
45:19
Obviously there's a lot of people have been in this
45:20
industry for a long time around Kansas City and, and they are,
45:24
they always have my back all the time.
45:27
But it's easy for me to go into a cafe and not know the person
45:31
behind the counter, you know? And so I don't get to visit the
45:36
shops in our community as much as I would like.
45:39
But when I become aware of them, I am so proud of what I see
45:44
happening in our community here. And, you know, when we were in
45:49
Chicago, right, visiting some places there where people
45:52
weren't just shooting for what they've seen and just being
45:56
like, I want to plug in at the status quo or, you know, like,
46:00
join the trend. But definitely a move towards
46:04
pushing it forward, right? Risking a little bit.
46:08
And I see that risk sometimes at risk doesn't work out, you know,
46:13
maybe sometimes it's a little too much and it goes past with
46:16
the community is ready to support, you know, just like
46:19
just take acidity and coffee. And sometimes we have a tendency
46:23
to engage so much in pursuing maybe a little too much acidity
46:29
for then what our paying market will get down with, you know,
46:34
risks like that. I see people taking right and
46:38
the experience and in the coffee itself.
46:42
So to your question, are people continuing to do that?
46:46
I think yes. And I think it's not different
46:50
than what I did. Like I don't think it's
46:53
different now. I just think that there's more
46:55
to draw from there was there weren't Google reviews, There
47:00
was no Yelp when I started. Like I came from the school of
47:04
you don't respond to comments. What a lovely world that would
47:07
have been. Yeah.
47:08
Now that's changed. Now you now you respond to
47:10
reviews or at least there for a while we did.
47:13
I think we've kind of moved past that now, but like I didn't have
47:18
that. So I think if I think about your
47:20
question, I still think people are doing those things and I'm
47:24
more, I'm going to use the term evangelical and I don't mean it
47:29
in a religious sense, but bringing more especially coffee
47:35
experiences with unique attributes to places where you
47:37
wouldn't expect them to be. So I think that that's
47:40
happening. And I think what you were saying
47:42
was, do they just take what they know?
47:48
Is that the way you phrase it? You were kind of speaking to
47:51
taking what they're learning and what they're seeing and applying
47:53
it where they are to create that sense of community and bring
47:56
specialty coffee to places that are kind of unexpected.
47:59
I think that that's absolutely happening.
48:01
And I think they have more available to them to be
48:04
successful now then certainly we did, you know, And like if we
48:09
talk about the extrinsic attributes of coffee, the things
48:12
that coffee can't tell us, right?
48:14
Branding, packaging, certifications, story, flavor
48:20
descriptors on a bag, those kinds of things.
48:23
I mean, when I got in roasters our size, trying to get coffee
48:29
where you knew more than just the country, like where you
48:32
could get it like from a certain farm or a certain Co-op or even
48:37
knowing where the dry mill was, like it was almost impossible
48:42
for somebody our size. Now the big boys, P TS, Grocery,
48:47
Intelligentsia, Broadway, like those who had a higher volume, I
48:52
mean, they had the power to be able to get that information,
48:54
but not us, you know, now, I mean, there's so much
48:59
information available where you can, you can leverage that
49:04
extrinsic information much easier now than you could have
49:09
before as a small operation, you know, and bring that connection
49:16
to the consumer in a way that we just could not do in 2005, 6-7
49:22
kind of in that area. Speaking to that, that community
49:28
building or that cafe that's opening up and having all these
49:31
new resources. Somebody comes to you in Kansas
49:36
City before they go down that path and they say, Ben, you
49:40
know, I respect what you'd done. You had the restaurant
49:43
experience, the cafe experience, you've got the training
49:45
experience. What advice would you give them
49:49
if they said, I'm want to get started?
49:52
You know, what's something you've learned along the way
49:54
that you feel is essential, that I know before I step off the
49:58
Cliff? Yes.
50:00
So zeroing in on just those couple pieces of advice is
50:10
always difficult and based on who's who's talking to you, you
50:16
know, those kinds of questions. Anyone who brings this up to me,
50:20
I'm going to spend some time trying to talk them out of it to
50:23
begin with, you know, and that that was a key thing that
50:27
happened when the whole economic collapse of 2008.
50:30
I had more than more than one might expect to come into the
50:35
cafe. And I'm sure other cafe owners
50:36
had the exact same experience where somebody come in the nice
50:39
hand. I'd love to sit down with you
50:40
sometime and pick your brain, but I'm going to be leaving my
50:43
job at X Corporation or I've been let go or I'm going to
50:47
retire early and just thought it'd be really fun to have a
50:51
cafe, you know, we thought maybe we would settle down and, and
50:55
just have this in. Those.
50:57
Retirees, I'm like, enjoy your retirement.
51:01
Don't do this. This is a terrible way to to I'm
51:05
sure there's some exceptions out there, but on the on the net,
51:08
it's, you know, not a great idea to take your retirement savings
51:12
and invest them into a, a single cafe.
51:15
And I would spend most of my time trying to be as real as
51:20
possible about the challenges that this can bring, just just
51:26
in a business sense. And then the risks that you
51:32
would have to guard against when it comes to your family, your
51:34
own mental health, some of those realities.
51:39
I think it's a lot of what the first discussion would be now
51:42
when it comes to the actual advice portion of things after
51:48
I've hammered them with all of the reasons why they shouldn't
51:51
do this if they're still sticking around by then.
51:54
I think something that I believed in from very early on
51:59
and I'm having a hard time remembering the name of the
52:01
book. It's dated now.
52:03
Oh, the E Myth by Michael Gerber, you familiar with this?
52:07
There's a, there's a piece of a concept in there which is that
52:11
the best model for any business is a franchise model.
52:16
And I'm not saying buying into a franchise, but building your
52:20
business in a way that if you had to duplicate it, you could,
52:25
right through processes and systems and thinking everything
52:30
through from from the moment they step on your property until
52:34
they're out, right? And thinking through that
52:37
process. I think approaching a business
52:41
from that point of view is super smart, right?
52:46
So that you're building it in a way that if you had to duplicate
52:49
it, you could. And so we would talk a little
52:51
bit about that and then as far as, jeez, other advice for those
52:58
who wanted to get into coffee. Well, I would.
53:03
I would just add on to what you just said, thinking about those
53:07
processes, but writing it down, tracking it.
53:09
Somewhere, yeah. Right.
53:11
I mean, that's something that I, I did think about those things,
53:14
but I didn't always write it down as I was doing it because I
53:16
was busy doing it. And I look back sometimes and
53:19
go, Oh my goodness. And then when you do take that
53:22
moment to reflect, you can't, you're, you can go through and
53:25
if there's 10 checkpoints, maybe you remember eight or nine of
53:28
them, but there's always going to be something in there that
53:31
comes up later, you know? In doing the math, we were just
53:34
talking about writing down processes and procedures, but
53:37
doing the math and writing down what your goals are like, What
53:43
do you want your salary to be like?
53:45
What do you want to take home? You know what's reasonable,
53:49
maybe have some levels and then back that out.
53:53
Yes, there's a lot of variables, right?
53:56
But if you don't know the goal, those variables won't matter.
54:00
And it's going to be easy for you to, it's going to be easy
54:04
for you to waste money as an owner, not realizing that every
54:08
time you spend more than you should have, you're spending
54:11
your own money that's coming out of your salary every time that
54:15
there's waste, you know, and thinking through the math and
54:21
making sure that you are, you know, financed well to survive.
54:26
Because when you jump off of that diving board, you take a
54:29
couple bounces and then you jump into the water.
54:33
It's all about making it back up to the surface before you run
54:36
out of air, right? And I feel like a lot of people
54:39
aren't calculating how high the diving board is before they jump
54:45
in and whether or not they're going to be able to make it to
54:48
the top. And I, I, we're kind of talking
54:51
retail, but I, I feel like a common thing that I see.
54:57
And it's been a few years. I mean, shoot, it's been close
54:59
to 8 years since I was selling green coffee to coffee roasters.
55:02
But the number of people that I, I saw by A2 to 3K roaster,
55:10
sometimes A5, right? They'd have that roaster, they'd
55:14
have Scott Rouse book, let's go. I got AI got a name, I've got
55:18
these three things. Let's do this and start off and
55:23
not know how many bags of coffee they're going to need to sell in
55:29
order to upgrade to that 12K that they, they think they're
55:33
going to be able to make money to get.
55:35
And unfortunately that's possible.
55:37
I'm seeing it happen rarely. But the amount of roasting that
55:43
you're going to have to do on A2 to 5K machine to bank money to
55:51
purchase other equipment is going to be such that it's going
55:55
to you're, you're going to have spent so much time roasting and
56:00
so little time selling that coffee that you never really
56:05
catch up, right? Does that make sense what I'm
56:08
saying? It does.
56:11
I think that there's, First off, when other entrepreneurs tell me
56:15
that they have a certain salary they want, I say, wait, you're
56:17
getting paid. I send you goals, doesn't mean
56:23
that you're going to get them anytime soon.
56:25
But I think, I think where I was kind of going off is I started
56:30
doing math in my head of it's not just the math for what I
56:34
have to do today. It's the math for what I'm
56:36
expecting to do a year from now, five years from now, 10 years
56:39
from now. Am I looking, is my goal that
56:41
this is my life for the foreseeable future?
56:43
Is it a short term play? And, and ultimately, I think
56:47
there's just so many variables. I, as we, as you're talking, I'm
56:51
going, oh, well, what about this, what about this, What
56:53
about this? And you're right, it's a general
56:56
piece of advice, but I think it comes back around to where we
56:59
started, which is if you give people the reasons that they
57:03
shouldn't do it and they stick around, that's like your first
57:07
Test. But if it's easy to talk you out
57:10
of it, you really probably didn't want to do it in the
57:12
first place. You know, it's just this
57:14
romantic ideal. Yeah.
57:17
And I think that just happens. Small business is hard.
57:19
I mean, it's just hard. I mean, even, I mean, and I'm
57:23
not just limiting that to coffee.
57:25
It's just difficult to compete with corporations.
57:32
And I'm not saying, I'm not saying corporations in a bad
57:34
way. But if you're competing with a
57:37
company that can produce cups for half a cent, you know, or
57:45
like 2 pennies and you're spending, you know, anywhere
57:48
between $0.35 and $0.65 per pay per cup.
57:52
And that's hard, you know, to expect to have a level of
57:58
success where you're able to pay yourself and get a reserve where
58:03
you can then grow. Going back to that roaster
58:05
example where it's like there is a, there is a minimum capacity
58:11
or a minimum scale that I think sometimes both roasters and cafe
58:18
owners don't prepare themselves to have the capacity to do it.
58:24
For example, like only having one barista at times where you
58:35
might need 1 1/2 instead of just going for that too, to make sure
58:39
that the customer that you have is taken care of in a reasonable
58:42
amount of time, you know, to go on out and assuming that you're
58:46
going to be able to grow later. I'm not some extremely
58:49
successful cafes that the only limiting factor to their daily
58:52
take was the size of the parking lot.
58:54
If they had 10 more spaces, they'd have 10 more cars
58:57
rotating in and out of there, you know, But I mean, that's not
59:00
a really great example to go from breeze to the parking lot.
59:03
But like taking a look at those goals and making sure is the
59:08
scale of your operation, can it ever help you achieve that goal?
59:13
Sure. Where's your ceiling?
59:15
Yeah, at this level and can you breakthrough it if you need to?
59:19
Then we've already gone well past the time I expected today.
59:24
No, don't apologize. I feel like we could do a Part 2
59:26
easy enough, but I want to make sure that I get to the last two
59:30
key things, which is 1. Did we miss anything?
59:33
Is there anything today that you wanted to tell people that we
59:36
didn't get to well? As I think about the advice part
59:38
of things, I think a lot of what I've been learning lately is
59:42
about opportunities when it comes to training and things
59:46
that we can be doing in our cafes and our operations that
59:51
can make training a little bit better.
59:53
It's a whole nother conversation though.
59:56
But I think as I look back on my experience, I think there's a
1:00:00
lot of things I did really well when it came to training.
1:00:02
And I think there's a lot of things I've learned in the past
1:00:05
10 years where I'm like, if I ever, if I ever did it again,
1:00:09
here's how I would approach training a little bit
1:00:12
differently. But let me take a look at this
1:00:15
list. I don't know if I no.
1:00:19
I think it's I've enjoyed the conversation.
1:00:21
Oh well, thank you. I know that we've spoken in some
1:00:23
generalities here. I hope that that hasn't been
1:00:25
frustrating for. You, No, I think you know, you
1:00:28
know, we get an hour to start, usually 45 minutes and you know,
1:00:32
maybe come back someday and we can delve in a little more
1:00:35
specifically when you are out travelling, you do get out of
1:00:39
the house. What do you order at the coffee
1:00:43
shop? Oh, coffee.
1:00:44
Oh yeah, so my favorite, my favorite.
1:00:48
Like I love, I love it when shops order, offer two different
1:00:55
drips on tap and then also manual brews in addition to that
1:01:02
of a menu that I can choose from.
1:01:04
But I love it when they offer those two.
1:01:06
And so typically, I'll choose one to drink in a full cup and
1:01:12
then get a sample of the other, especially if they have one
1:01:14
that's a little more adventurous and one that's a little more,
1:01:18
more like a hug and a high 5, you know, I'll choose between
1:01:21
one of those and then get a sample of the other abroad.
1:01:25
Name of your next coffee shop, A hug and a high 5.
1:01:28
Yeah, there we go. Yeah, TM, that's me.
1:01:31
Yeah, Copyright. That's that's if drip is
1:01:35
available. But I, I just, I, I really love,
1:01:40
I love, I love drip coffee that, that's kind of my jam.
1:01:43
And then if that's not available usually in Americano in places
1:01:48
where there that's the option. I'm not not really into cold
1:01:52
brew, you know, I'll do it for quality control purposes or, you
1:01:56
know, you know, to try it for someone.
1:02:00
But it's not something that I would order.
1:02:03
And I've been kind of cutting back on dairy a little bit when
1:02:06
it comes to those. But if I do order, if a place
1:02:10
makes macchiatos with half and half or does their cappuccino in
1:02:15
a six ounce with high milk fat, you know, milk, high fat content
1:02:23
milk, then I'm in for that, you know, but not much of A latte
1:02:28
drinker, I would say. We've spanned the gamut today,
1:02:32
Ben. It's been just a real pleasure
1:02:35
chatting with. You one.
1:02:36
Thing I like about this conversation has been that it's
1:02:39
sent my brain off into a million different directions that I'm
1:02:42
going to be marinating on for the rest of the day.
1:02:44
I'm sorry, no, that's the best part of it.
1:02:48
Everyone else listening, you can find all the links we chatted
1:02:51
about in today's episode, including the one to Education
1:02:55
dot SCA dot coffee in our podcast notes in our newsletter,
1:02:58
which comes out every week. You can find the show on Apple,
1:03:01
Spotify, YouTube, all the places like and subscribe.
1:03:05
All those algorithms sort of work together, I think now.
1:03:08
Shout out to Rostar. Thanks for enabling us to tell
1:03:11
these stories and talk to people like Ben.
1:03:14
Anything else, Ben? Yes, Can I, can I?
1:03:17
Yeah, absolutely about something.
1:03:20
You know, you mentioned some of the travels that I've had
1:03:24
lately, including our Educator Summit, which I talked about a
1:03:28
little bit. But the Educator Summit is an
1:03:30
event we do to help people who teach coffee teach better.
1:03:34
There's a lot of events out there that help people increase
1:03:39
their subject matter knowledge of coffee, but this is all about
1:03:42
helping you be a better trainer and a better teacher.
1:03:45
That's been an amazing event that we had two of in the United
1:03:48
States and then one in the exact same program in Korea, South
1:03:54
Korea, Thailand and Taiwan. There's going to be a whole
1:03:58
nother season of those in 2025. But a most recent recent trip to
1:04:03
World of Coffee Dubai, we are starting to roll out a new
1:04:07
Lesson plan for a workshop. And I'm bringing this up because
1:04:11
it's going to be accessible by everyone.
1:04:14
Ryan, you could raise your hand and say I would like to be a
1:04:16
registered instructor for this workshop and then do some
1:04:20
studying, pass an exam and you would be given this entire
1:04:23
Lesson plan. And it's an intro to cupping
1:04:26
workshop within the perspective of the new coffee value
1:04:32
assessment system. So it's approaching tasting
1:04:35
coffee through the active cupping, through both our
1:04:40
descriptive assessment and an effective assessment.
1:04:43
So what is this coffee objectively and who might value
1:04:48
it, right? Who likes what this coffee is?
1:04:51
Me. And then also my expert opinion
1:04:54
for other markets. And I, I just want to share that
1:04:59
this exists because I think it's going to be valuable for anyone
1:05:05
who works for a wholesale roaster and does education for
1:05:08
their wholesale accounts and introducing people to the
1:05:11
sensory analysis of coffee through cupping and those
1:05:15
things. I think it's going to be pretty
1:05:17
exciting. It's a ready made three to four
1:05:19
hour workshop that people are going to be able to get really
1:05:23
easily compared to anything else we've done before.
1:05:27
And so I just wanted to share that that's something that I'm
1:05:30
particularly excited about. I did a beta test of it here in
1:05:33
Kansas City with about 18 baristas and roasting employees
1:05:38
and then did the pilot project in Dubai.
1:05:41
And that's going to be something that's launched around Expo in
1:05:45
April. And I think anybody who's
1:05:48
interested in having that ready made workshop for their
1:05:50
operation, that's what this is designed for.
1:05:54
Very cool, Ben. I'll make sure that we get that
1:05:56
information out to people and the links when it's available,
1:05:59
of course. Awesome.
1:06:00
Thank you to everyone for listening to us share another
1:06:03
story of a coffee person. And thanks to you, Ben, for
1:06:05
being here. Yeah.
1:06:06
My pleasure, thank you for having me.
1:06:09
Everyone else, please tip your baristas and be sure to drink
1:06:12
good coffee. The.
1:07:02
Hey there everyone. Thank you for coming back for
1:07:04
another episode of our podcast. That's the show for today.
1:07:08
Thank you to our guest for sharing their time, their story,
1:07:11
and for dropping some knowledge on all of us.
1:07:14
You can find a recap of this episode in our newsletter online
1:07:17
at roastwestcoast.com. That and all the links we
1:07:21
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1:07:25
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1:08:22
Thank you. Thank you to everyone listening
1:08:25
and watching this show for asking questions, for sharing
1:08:28
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1:08:31
This show, the Coffee People podcast is part of the Roast
1:08:35
West Coast Coffee Network and this episode is was has been
1:08:39
written, produced, researched and recorded by me.
1:08:42
Ryan, Walt, wherever you find yourself today, I hope it's with
1:08:46
a fine cup of coffee. Thank you for listening to us
1:08:50
share the stories of Coffee People.
1:08:53
Cheers everyone.