Latest / Coffee People Podcast / Yoshawn Smith, The Pour-Up LA & Califia Farms

Transcript

Yoshawn Smith, The Pour-Up LA & Califia Farms · Coffee People Podcast

• 0:28
  There we go. I feel like I should have you
• 0:32
  introduce yourself but everyone seems to know who you are
• 0:35
  already. But if you wouldn't mind,
• 0:38
  there's only time you have to look at the camera.
• 0:40
  Tell everyone who you are. Yo Shawn Smith, professional
• 0:45
  coffee homie. We teach, learn, help out, work
• 0:51
  for Caliphia Farms, encourage people to do better.
• 0:57
  Yeah, it's all around good time and good vibes, you know?
• 1:01
  Yoshan has been on our show before, so he's a repeat guest,
• 1:04
  which you always appreciate. And I, I truly mean this.
• 1:08
  I look forward to seeing you at festivals like this because you
• 1:11
  bring all this energy. Thank you.
• 1:13
  And I know it's a coffee fest and everyone's like, oh, there's
• 1:15
  energy everywhere, but it's easy to get into festival mode and
• 1:20
  sales mode. You seem like you're just having
• 1:23
  a good time. How do you manage to keep that?
• 1:26
  So that's how I sell stuff, you know, like I get more interested
• 1:32
  in things when the person selling it is actually enjoying
• 1:34
  themselves doing that, you know, I like, I'm on, I'm on the sales
• 1:39
  team for Kalafia. But like me and them complete
• 1:42
  opposites, you know? So it comes like, I want to have
• 1:46
  fun. I want to treat an Expo booth
• 1:48
  like a coffee shop, right? We remember people's faces,
• 1:51
  remember what they drink. We ask them how they're doing.
• 1:54
  We play music that we want to hear that everyone can Just
• 1:56
  Dance to, you know. So it's a good time.
• 1:58
  Everyone's having a good time. If we're not having a good time,
• 2:01
  most people are probably having a good time.
• 2:02
  You know, we saw that the first day of New York Coffee Fest.
• 2:08
  Things went wrong at the booth. I wasn't having a good time.
• 2:10
  Everyone else, spirits went down, got up and running,
• 2:14
  changed everything, you know? Yeah, you guys struggle with
• 2:16
  some power and some other issues.
• 2:18
  Yep. And I but you can see people
• 2:20
  like circling, waiting and waiting, you know, for you guys
• 2:23
  to come back online. You what it?
• 2:26
  What are you guys making over there today that's kind of stood
• 2:28
  out to you? We have our signature.
• 2:31
  The ochata was super nice using proper simple syrup, vanilla
• 2:36
  extract and cinnamon espresso and hope, though, you know, it's
• 2:41
  a nice drink and mimics our chocolate a lot, you know,
• 2:43
  without being too sweet are just too much.
• 2:47
  And then we have our sweet cream latte just using our new almond
• 2:52
  or organic almond sweet cream Creamer, 4 grams of sugar, super
• 2:57
  nice, right? All flavored, not sweet.
• 3:01
  So we put that in there with the lots of put the milk that we use
• 3:03
  for a latte. Just do it up.
• 3:05
  People seem to be enjoying them on ice.
• 3:07
  We have our soy protein vanilla latte, which is also super nice,
• 3:11
  you know, So we just got a few things going on.
• 3:13
  People are interested in stuff. What do you wish?
• 3:16
  You know, there's a lot of coffee shops here, a lot of
• 3:18
  coffee roasters here. What do you wish people knew or
• 3:23
  that you could share about working in particular with the
• 3:26
  type of milk that you offer? Because there's so many
• 3:28
  different milk offerings now. Calafia Farms has a ton of
• 3:31
  different offerings. What's like a little thing
• 3:34
  you're like, man, if I could pass this piece of device on to
• 3:37
  those that are out there using it, this is what I would say.
• 3:41
  For Caliphia specifically. Or I mean, you've got a lot of
• 3:47
  coffee experience, so this is what you wish people knew about
• 3:51
  using milk based or milk alternative products in there.
• 3:54
  Have always have a barista who's willing to try it out with you
• 4:00
  all call or next to you just having only an R&D team do it
• 4:06
  doesn't cut it. You know, you need that extra
• 4:08
  hand because because the reality is, whether you are a roaster
• 4:12
  operator or a cafe owner or you work for a company that's making
• 4:18
  a product, if you don't have an actual barista there who's going
• 4:23
  to use this in an everyday life, your products not going to do
• 4:26
  well, right? Because The thing is, science
• 4:30
  numbers can only show you so much.
• 4:32
  But the reality of it is once it gets into a shop, it's like a
• 4:36
  free for all, right? But if you have someone there
• 4:38
  who understands everything that can happen within the aspects of
• 4:41
  a shop, they can they can give you more insight as to how to
• 4:45
  make the product function that, you know, that's one thing like
• 4:49
  just have it, even if it's not, whether whether it's for milk
• 4:52
  based products or coffees, more like grab and go things.
• 4:56
  Have someone in the real world aspect trying it out before you
• 4:59
  put it out. You know, you're going to get
• 5:02
  real feedback, real emotion from it and you're going to get a
• 5:08
  bunch of other people like now, like, oh, well, this person said
• 5:12
  it actually worked. Why not?
• 5:14
  You know, good thing about about coffee people, a lot of us don't
• 5:17
  lie about the product. So if we don't like it, we'll
• 5:20
  say it. But if we do like it, but hey,
• 5:21
  this is good. Try it out.
• 5:23
  It's great. Here you go.
• 5:24
  That's going to help a lot of people.
• 5:26
  But take your time too. Don't try to just go into things
• 5:31
  like always, like, oh, I know how to do this.
• 5:33
  I've seen oat milk before. Not every oat milk is the same,
• 5:37
  right? Not every almond milk is the
• 5:38
  same. I tell people treat treat plant
• 5:41
  based milks like whole milk. Right?
• 5:44
  But understand the little things that make it different and
• 5:47
  you'll go so far with it, it'll be great.
• 5:51
  I know you as a West Coast guy. Yep.
• 5:55
  We're here in New York on the East Coast.
• 5:57
  How do you fit in with the vibe here?
• 5:59
  How do you? What do you feel about New York?
• 6:00
  I know you can't be like but. I mean, like, it's weird because
• 6:07
  my first time here was two years ago and I didn't think, I didn't
• 6:12
  think I would like it until I walked outside one day by myself
• 6:16
  and it was like, no one bothered me, right?
• 6:19
  No one tried to like, hey, you want to buy this?
• 6:21
  Hey, let me take a picture. I guess I just fit in and I was
• 6:24
  like, it's cool. I was like, all right, so New
• 6:28
  Yorkers show it's great. The weather is not for me.
• 6:30
  It's very anti yo Shawn in the winter because right now in LA
• 6:35
  it's like 90°. Anti Yo Shawn, that's amazing.
• 6:39
  But New York at their site, the food's good.
• 6:42
  The people are the My Coffee homies.
• 6:44
  Everyone at the you, everyone at this Expo are chill.
• 6:47
  I love seeing y'all you know do. You do you bring your skates
• 6:51
  along. No, no, because it's Winter
• 6:56
  sale, you know. There's not a lot of snow on the
• 6:59
  ground. I've seen just little.
• 7:01
  It's not but but me. It takes a long time for me to
• 7:04
  get warmed up, and the last thing I want to do is skate back
• 7:07
  to my hotel sweaty. Yeah.
• 7:09
  So, you know, I'll bring my skates along.
• 7:12
  Yeah. Plus, I don't have time.
• 7:14
  I could. We're too busy with this.
• 7:16
  Maybe one day. Maybe.
• 7:18
  Probably for San Diego. Yeah.
• 7:19
  We'll see how that goes. I'm really excited to go back.
• 7:23
  I don't know if I told you, but I moved up to Oregon.
• 7:26
  Oh yeah. So this will be my first time
• 7:28
  back to California, so I'm pretty excited.
• 7:32
  Anything else going on in the world of the ocean that you want
• 7:34
  to share with us? Yeah, we offer.
• 7:38
  I am now doing trainings at Kalafia Farms office on Fridays.
• 7:42
  I know we talked about that was going to be happening and.
• 7:45
  Now it's happening. We just did 2 full months of
• 7:48
  trainings because the the the access to it was too good to
• 7:54
  pass up for a lot of people. So I had schedules packed up, 15
• 7:59
  people a class. I had classes outside of the
• 8:01
  office as well, and now we're doing consulting for some other
• 8:08
  shops and stuff like that, right?
• 8:10
  Because they can't make it on the Fridays.
• 8:12
  Offering Monday courses as well for shops only, you know?
• 8:15
  So like just the team comes in, we train them in all aspects of
• 8:19
  espresso, milk, cement, gauging temperature by hand,
• 8:22
  understanding what to listen to and like observing your shot
• 8:27
  pallet development, all the good stuff, you know?
• 8:30
  How do people find out about upcoming classes or how do they
• 8:32
  get signed up if it's something they're interested?
• 8:34
  In my Instagram, no, the poor up LA.
• 8:37
  That's all. That's what I put out there.
• 8:38
  I have Eventbrite links sent through the stories and it's
• 8:42
  first come first served because it just goes so fast.
• 8:45
  You know? 60 + 60 plus people in like less
• 8:50
  than an hour was insane. So it's nice, you know, it's
• 8:53
  good, it's good. And Kalapia, we're trying to
• 8:57
  expand it throughout the rest of the US, So we're figuring it
• 9:00
  out, trying to slow in LA or rat fast in LA because it blew up so
• 9:04
  fast. We're going to expand it down
• 9:06
  towards San Diego, offering different places like here in
• 9:10
  New York, Florida, probably Chicago or Texas.
• 9:14
  And then like the Pack, the Pack W, you know, we're just figuring
• 9:18
  stuff out. That's great.
• 9:20
  Congratulations. Thank you, Yashan.
• 9:22
  I always appreciate your time and your energy.
• 9:24
  Thank you. Thank you for.
• 9:25
  Being and thank you for that drink you made me earlier
• 9:28
  because that was a lifesaver. Nice.
• 9:31
  I'm glad because yesterday, man. Yeah, it was like the electric
• 9:35
  was out and then I think there was a.
• 9:36
  Water issue that so. Oh my goodness.
• 9:38
  The car went out and we realized why the.
• 9:43
  These are like some connectors weren't touching.
• 9:45
  Something was happening so the machine has a fail safe on it
• 9:48
  which I don't think anyone knew about.
• 9:52
  And when the when the surge protective blew, the surge
• 9:57
  protector was only rated for 15 amps right?
• 10:00
  Even though on the packaging it said like 25 or something.
• 10:02
  So the machines giving out 15 amps, we got a grinder plugged
• 10:06
  into it giving out five and then we had the pump for the water
• 10:09
  for rinse sink giving out like 5 extra amps.
• 10:12
  So it's like it was overloaded. That's something it's still
• 10:16
  recording you, but if I share that last little bit, that's
• 10:20
  something I feel like people don't realize, especially when
• 10:22
  they get into coffee or they want to start a card or
• 10:24
  something, is how to know your your wattage, know your
• 10:28
  electricity. That part scared the crap out of
• 10:30
  me. When I started getting into
• 10:32
  doing stuff. We were doing a lot of side.
• 10:34
  I was doing a lot of pop up shops and that sort of thing,
• 10:37
  but not knowing where I can plug in and how much power I need.
• 10:42
  You got to know for your machines, your everything.
• 10:44
  Yep, it, it's, it's always scary.
• 10:46
  It's like a terrifying thing to be like, all right, let's do
• 10:49
  this set up right. And then everything turns off.
• 10:52
  It doesn't want to function properly when it turns back on.
• 10:56
  So that's what we're dealing with.
• 10:57
  But we, we figured out what the reason was.
• 11:02
  Spend more money on surge protectors because they're going
• 11:05
  to help out. Like don't cheap out on that.
• 11:09
  Or plug your machine into a stand alone like a plug.
• 11:13
  If you can't, if it's a wall, plug it into a wall.
• 11:15
  If it's a extension cord, use that only one.
• 11:19
  You don't need the surge protector for that.
• 11:22
  And then your grind yourself will be fine in the surge
• 11:24
  protector. This is New York though.
• 11:26
  All of the outlets have been painted over like 45 times, so
• 11:29
  nobody knows what's behind I. Know I may just chip it away,
• 11:32
  stop pulling it off.