Latest / Coffee People Podcast / RECAP: Will Reif, President of Roastar Coffee Packaging

Transcript

RECAP: Will Reif, President of Roastar Coffee Packaging · Coffee People Podcast

• 0:25
  Hey there everyone. Welcome to our Coffee People
• 0:27
  podcast recap show. Thank you for being here and
• 0:30
  being a supporter of our Coffee People platform.
• 0:33
  I'm your host, Ryan Wolt. You can follow or subscribe to
• 0:36
  this podcast wherever you're listening, but you'll find all
• 0:40
  of our episodes, links, and bonus content on
• 0:43
  coffeepeoplepodcast.com. Please become a subscriber to
• 0:47
  help us tell the stories of Coffee People.
• 0:50
  That's Coffee, peoplepodcast.com.
• 0:53
  This episode is presented by Rostar Coffee Packaging, as are
• 0:56
  all of our episodes found online at rostar.com.
• 1:02
  If you head to rostar.com, you'll find examples of high
• 1:04
  quality, affordable, customizable packaging that they
• 1:07
  offer for coffee, tea, snacks and beyond.
• 1:10
  That's rostar.com. And coincidentally or not so
• 1:14
  coincidentally, our recent podcast guest is Rostar's
• 1:18
  president, Will Reif. I'm here to recap that
• 1:21
  conversation in case you didn't have a chance to listen to the
• 1:24
  full pod or you just want to reinforce a few important
• 1:27
  takeaways. For example, Rostar is a
• 1:31
  manufacturing company. It's also an e-commerce company.
• 1:34
  Those two operations don't always require the same
• 1:37
  strategy, which keeps Will's job interesting.
• 1:42
  Going back in time a little bit, right after college, Will wasn't
• 1:45
  quite sure what he was going to do.
• 1:47
  He went to Costa Rica to teach English.
• 1:48
  There, he visited a coffee farm. It was his first experience with
• 1:52
  how coffee impacted a community, and later when he got into
• 1:56
  packaging, that first coffee experience inspired him to look
• 2:00
  back at coffee as a potential industry to enter.
• 2:03
  There was a time when he was still kind of wandering about
• 2:07
  looking for what his career was going to be.
• 2:09
  But through it all, his father and family had been role
• 2:12
  modeling entrepreneurship and had been so since he was a young
• 2:15
  kid. Talk about the family business
• 2:18
  wasn't hidden, it was discussed optimistically over the dinner
• 2:21
  table. In the early 20 tens, while
• 2:24
  working for his father's company wasa Coded, he was exposed to a
• 2:28
  new digital printing technique. It's much more common now, but
• 2:31
  back then it was revolutionary, if not a bit controversial.
• 2:35
  That's how fast our tech has been progressing.
• 2:38
  Something that was revolutionary 1015 years ago is commonplace
• 2:42
  now. That new digital printing press
• 2:44
  back then just so happened to be the perfect size for a standard
• 2:48
  coffee gusset bag. Will saw an opportunity and he
• 2:52
  started talking to Coffee Roasters to find out if there
• 2:54
  was an opportunity in the market.
• 2:56
  What he found was that the packaging, pain points, speed,
• 3:00
  order, quantity, customization were the same ones the new
• 3:04
  digital printing technique could help alleviate.
• 3:07
  So Rostar actually made sense as an idea, and there appeared to
• 3:11
  be demand, but it wasn't until he booked a table at a coffee
• 3:15
  convention just to get the idea out to a bigger audience that he
• 3:18
  really knew this was going to work.
• 3:20
  They came away from that show with an award for best new
• 3:22
  product, and things have only grown from there.
• 3:26
  The small business with a handful of employees has grown
• 3:28
  into a company with marketing, sales, manufacturing, human
• 3:32
  resources and so on. Will went from being the idea
• 3:35
  guy and innovator to having to be a leader and a boss.
• 3:39
  More on that in a moment. Will was effusive in his
• 3:42
  reflection on being in Wisconsin.
• 3:44
  The Midwest is a hub for manufacturing, An ideal place
• 3:48
  really. But he was also honest about the
• 3:50
  challenging that faced the e-commerce out of the business
• 3:53
  and the need to create flexible opportunities in an effort to
• 3:57
  attract the best talent. The remote boom during COVID
• 4:00
  made it much easier to hire employees who may not be based
• 4:03
  nearby. It also made it easier for tech
• 4:06
  Ford employees to relocate to places that offered
• 4:09
  affordability in relation to coastal tech hubs, not to
• 4:12
  mention a swath of other appealing amenities.
• 4:15
  For Rostar, being Midwestern is one of their values.
• 4:19
  When I talk to their customers, one of the biggest points of
• 4:21
  feedback I hear is how when they need help with a packaging plan,
• 4:25
  a person answers the phone and walks them through the process.
• 4:30
  In our discussion of digital printing, Will was open that
• 4:32
  while it works for a lot of customers, it may not be for
• 4:35
  everyone. It offers certain values that
• 4:37
  are appealing to some, but may not always be as cheap.
• 4:40
  But that's what you get in exchange for the customization
• 4:43
  and the order quantities and the speed.
• 4:46
  Will's motivation as a boss has changed over the years.
• 4:49
  The first few were about growth, innovation, being nimble.
• 4:53
  But as the company has grown, he's learned how to run a
• 4:55
  business. His focus had to change for that
• 4:58
  team to succeed. In 2018, he adopted a new
• 5:01
  operation system called Traction because he saw that some of the
• 5:05
  steps to operating a business, a new or small business, have
• 5:09
  already been done. Anyone can access paths that you
• 5:12
  can follow to create business stability and professionalism.
• 5:16
  Those types of structures can aid in keeping your focus where
• 5:19
  it needs to be. Big companies can afford to
• 5:22
  build their own structure, but it doesn't have to be an
• 5:25
  impediment to your company growth.
• 5:27
  Will used some of that time gained from the restructured
• 5:30
  business operations to spend time focusing on how to become
• 5:34
  the type of boss that could best lead a growing business and also
• 5:39
  what learning style would work with his personality.
• 5:42
  Not everything is plug and play. I'll leave you with a quote that
• 5:46
  Will shared from the famous UCLA basketball coach John Wooden,
• 5:50
  who, and this is a bit of a paraphrase, said you haven't
• 5:54
  taught until they've learned. I want to express my thanks to
• 5:58
  Will for appearing on the podcast.
• 6:00
  In addition to uplifting our platform as our presenting
• 6:02
  sponsor, Rostar is also helping grow and educate the people of
• 6:06
  the coffee industry, both through the Coffee People
• 6:09
  podcast and directly with their customer first efforts.
• 6:12
  I'd also say that I appreciated that when Rostar employee Nick
• 6:15
  Schmidt suggested Will Rife as a guest on the show, no one ever
• 6:19
  reached out to give me a directive on how to run the
• 6:21
  episode or what questions to ask.
• 6:23
  Wouldn't be entirely unreasonable to hear from a
• 6:26
  marketing partner. But one thing that Will has
• 6:28
  learned is that he trusts the people that come in under the
• 6:32
  Rostar banner to do what they do.
• 6:34
  The important links from this show, like the one to rostar.com
• 6:37
  is in the episodes, show notes and of course on our Coffee
• 6:41
  People podcast newsletter, which you can subscribe to and I hope
• 6:44
  that you do at coffeepeoplepodcast.com.
• 6:48
  You can also find our show on YouTube, Spotify and Apple
• 6:51
  Podcast. Thank you for giving it a
• 6:54
  listen, for hitting the follow buttons and ideally giving us
• 6:58
  those five shiny stars that we're all striving to get.
• 7:01
  Thanks again to our friends and partners, including obviously
• 7:04
  roast our coffee packaging, civets, roasting machines
• 7:07
  spelled SIVETZI, say, a coffee source, relative coffee company.
• 7:13
  And of course, all of you to everyone out there, thank you
• 7:16
  for listening. Please tip your baristas and of
• 7:20
  course drink good coffee. Cheers everyone.