Latest / Coffee People Podcast / Roast! - Kyle Rosa, Bluetail Coffee Grove, Breakers Coffee & Wine

Transcript

Roast! - Kyle Rosa, Bluetail Coffee Grove, Breakers Coffee & Wine · Coffee People Podcast

0:10
Hey everyone. Welcome back to the roast West
0:12
Coast coffee podcast, where we interview the coffee
0:14
Professionals of the West Coast and sometimes we get a little
0:17
coffee smarter in the process. Today's guest is Kyle Rossa.
0:22
He is the farmer behind blue tail Coffee Grove.
0:24
In San Marcos, California and is opening his own Roastery, Cafe,
0:29
called Breakers continues. Coffee and Wine in Del Mar
0:31
California. The Del Mar location is still
0:34
under construction but they are on track to open in June or
0:38
July. Follow their Instagram account
0:40
at Breakers underscore, Delmar for updates on the Cafe's
0:43
opening day. Kyle's Farm is affiliated with
0:47
The Fringe network of coffee Farms that are popping up all
0:50
over, Southern California earlier.
0:52
This season on the show, I spoke to the founder of Fringe coffee
0:56
J russki. You should definitely check out
0:58
that show too and Link to it on roast westcoast.com.
1:02
When I booked Kyle for this episode, I did not really
1:05
understand how his farm was a part of the larger network of
1:08
farms. I somewhat naively thought that
1:10
a bunch of individuals had chosen SoCal to start coffee
1:14
Farms. All at the same time, blue tail
1:17
Coffee. Grove is about three acres,
1:20
which made me wonder how big a plot of land has to be to be
1:23
considered a farm. Turns out.
1:25
There isn't a specific answer to that question.
1:27
The USDA generally defines a small.
1:30
The farm as any establishment which produces and sold or would
1:34
have sold 1000 dollars or more of agricultural products during
1:38
the year. I'm not really sure what would
1:41
have sold means. They also sometimes quantify
1:45
Farm size by, total revenue, or by acreage a farm.
1:49
That brings in 250 thousand dollars or less per year is
1:53
considered small, according to one document.
1:55
And another says, that the average size of a small farm is
1:58
about 230. One Acres, which is obviously
2:02
significantly bigger than blue tail and yet, Kyle is caring for
2:05
thousands of plants on his Acres.
2:08
The more I thought about it. The more I came to feel that a
2:10
farm, can't really be defined by dollars or Acres.
2:13
Rather a farm, is a place where agriculture is grown.
2:16
It is a place where plants often ones that end up as food, or in
2:19
this case, drink are raised and cared for and eventually
2:23
harvested for the benefit of the rest of us who like to eat and
2:26
drink things. What I'm getting at is that I
2:29
have a lot of thoughts about farms and about food and about
2:32
drink. But for now, I'm just going to
2:34
fill up my coffee mug, and I encourage you to do the same
2:38
because it is time for the show. And this interview with Kyle,
2:40
Rossa coffee farmer, coffee roaster, Cafe, owner, husband,
2:45
and father, and will be be ready to go.
2:50
Kyle, Rosa, multiple roles multiple titles.
2:55
I believe you're the founder of blue tail coffee.
2:57
Rove and organic coffee farm, and Coastal California.
3:01
And you also started Breakers Del Mar.
3:03
A sister cafe in Del Mar obviously, is that correct?
3:07
So yeah. Yeah.
3:08
So Bluto Coffee Grove organic in San Marcos of Nails in North
3:11
County, San Diego. And then it's actually Breakers
3:14
Coffee and Wine. Is your name?
3:16
Look good. The company it's in Del Mar it's
3:19
in the Del Mar Highlands Town Center over on Delmer Heights,
3:21
Road. And what's the status of that
3:23
Café right now? Yeah, you know you and I'm just
3:26
going to say it's just won't come out.
3:27
A few weeks were talking in mid-april and so just where you
3:32
guys at with the cafe today? Yeah, we're luckily in
3:36
construction now, it's been a long process, you know obviously
3:39
we got halted last year with with covid in the pandemic like
3:43
everybody else did so we lost a year had to change locations you
3:48
know it was a really really big process didn't know if it was
3:50
going to happen after that but we finally got permits couple
3:54
weeks ago. We started construction last
3:56
week and We're going to be opening in June 20 21.
3:59
So just couple months. Yeah, great.
4:01
Very cool. That was something.
4:03
I was going to ask you about later and I'm going to get to
4:05
that, but just how the pandemic slowed things down for you
4:09
before we get too deep into what you're doing.
4:11
Now, I'm hoping to learn a little bit more about you.
4:14
Where did you come from? What before coffee?
4:17
You know, who's Kyle Rosa? Yeah, you know, pretty easy.
4:22
Pretty easy to answer, you know, just I was born and raised in a
4:24
small town and in the mountains of Vermont, we had 400 people
4:27
Mike in my town. So we had that General Store and
4:30
a softball field in the church. So kind of that quintessential
4:35
growing up that that life back there went to school at UVM in
4:39
Burlington Vermont. So I spent most of my life there
4:42
decided to make a move in my early to mid-twenties, wanted to
4:46
kind of see something new and I had some family in San Diego.
4:49
So packed up my car and drove cross-country, but as far as I
4:53
could, possibly go and it up in San Diego, really didn't like it
4:57
at first. First, it was kind of a culture
4:59
shock to me, obviously, coming from such a small town to a big
5:02
city, but it grew on me. I learned to love it.
5:05
And I met my wife here and basically.
5:09
Yeah, the story's written from there.
5:10
We did spend some time up in San Francisco about three or four
5:14
years in San Francisco for work. Always thought I was going to be
5:16
starting to Vineyard up there, but you know, that didn't work
5:19
out, but that's kind of, that's kind of another story so, to
5:24
speak. So that's kind of my my body.
5:27
Oh, I've got time for stories. Weren't you working in Tech at
5:32
some point before this? I think I read, yes.
5:35
I've been I've been working in tech for over 15 years was
5:37
working in tech for 15 years. So from from college right out
5:41
until my early 30s. And you know, it was one of
5:45
those things where I went to college and I didn't necessarily
5:48
know what I wanted to do and, you know, at one point I needed
5:53
to pick a degree because it makes you pick a degree in your
5:56
three. So So I pick business because I
5:59
didn't know what I want to do and I kind of fell into
6:01
accounting and it was it was somewhat easy for me.
6:04
I'm a numbers guy. So is the path of least
6:07
resistance. I started down that road and I
6:12
worked, you know, mostly small companies, but keeping things
6:16
like that, I was a tax preparer. So doing income taxes, it turned
6:20
out to be really a great foundation for me because
6:25
without that without that business expertise in that
6:27
knowledge. Engine and understanding
6:28
accounting and taxes. I don't think I'd be starting
6:31
this business, you know, they would just be too much for me to
6:34
learn because I'm already trying to learn the coffee side of it,
6:36
and the wine side of it. So that Foundation was great to
6:40
have, but I did find that I was kind of following the path of
6:44
least resistance for my career. And you never really stop to
6:46
think what I wanted to do. I turned around and I was in my
6:49
early 30s and like, oh wow, I should probably should probably
6:52
pick a degree in life so to speak.
6:53
So me and my wife grew up in San Francisco.
6:56
At the time I was done. North America payroll manager
6:58
for Uber, and I kind of saw my next 10 to 15 years, laid out in
7:03
front of me and my career, and I didn't really necessarily like
7:06
it. So me and my wife, decided to
7:09
come back to San Diego, have a family, and kind of grow some
7:13
Roots down here, her family's down here as well.
7:15
And I got some family down here, so it's just kind of a logical
7:19
solution and we love San Diego. We love the lifestyle.
7:22
We love, you know, how slow-paced it is.
7:24
But if you want to kind of have a fast-paced life, you can down
7:26
here. So we just, we love The dynamic,
7:29
we're very outdoorsy. So we love the beach, the
7:31
mountains, the desert, you know, anything we want to do, is
7:33
within a couple hours of doing. So, you know, there couldn't be
7:36
a better place to grow up and raise a family in my eyes.
7:40
Basically, you know, coming back down here.
7:43
I knew I didn't want to be in finance, I knew I didn't want
7:46
to, you know, jump back into that world.
7:48
So kind of the, you know, funneling it down from there is
7:52
not easy. But I got to cross one thing off
7:54
the list but then there's a million other things to do and I
7:57
always, I need to open a Vineyard, I've always been very
7:59
interested in wine wine. Making my wife went to college
8:03
and Sonoma so we got to visit their lot.
8:05
We always thought we were going to open up a Vineyard and live
8:09
on the vineyard making wine. You know that that'll lifestyle,
8:12
but just getting a Vineyard up and running and winemaking
8:17
facility, it's just millions of dollars and you know, if you
8:21
want to be in a good region like Sonoma and Napa it's just it's
8:25
astronomical. So we weren't And take that
8:28
route, we weren't going to sync everything plus more that we
8:30
didn't have in to into something.
8:32
Not knowing what was going to turn out and you know the
8:34
markets pretty flooded for a wine as well.
8:38
So I started looking for alternative crops to grow and I
8:41
met a company called French in Santa Barbara Goleta.
8:46
And what they were doing is they were just barely starting to
8:49
sell coffee, plants, made to grow in SoCal, and I thought
8:54
that was very interesting. I've always liked coffee and
8:57
I've always In the similarities of coffee and wine.
8:59
So I went to a couple meetings with them went to a couple
9:03
expose, got to go up to Goleta and talked to a couple people.
9:08
You know, j.r. s Keys the founder and iman's.
9:11
The the co got to speak with him.
9:13
And, you know, they really sold me on the idea, so I decided
9:17
that was going to be it. I was going to be a coffee
9:18
farmer in San Diego, and this is about three years ago, so that's
9:24
where. That's where the story started.
9:26
What was that? Feeling like of knowing you were
9:30
going to leave a steady stable job with Uber but not knowing
9:36
necessary. I'm assuming at that time.
9:37
You didn't know yet, that coffee farming was going to be the way
9:40
you were going to go. So was there was there a moment
9:44
where you made that decision and then you kind of you thought,
9:48
I'm going to backtrack this. I'm gonna I don't know if I can
9:50
do this. Like you know it's a pretty big
9:53
jump from working with numbers and an office on a computer to
9:57
working with your hands and on the land.
9:58
I mean I think we all think we want to do stuff like that but
10:01
it's a different it's a different ball game to actually
10:03
go do it which you did. Yeah, for sure it's glorified
10:07
right? You see the positives in it but
10:09
nobody unless you're doing it sees the labor.
10:12
And the 110 Degree Days where you're outside 48 hours, working
10:16
and those types of things. But have there been times where
10:19
I guess I could say it like this.
10:21
If I knew how much work, it was actually going to be, I wouldn't
10:24
have done it but now that I'm doing it.
10:27
I'm so glad that I did. It's one of those things where
10:30
you just don't want to know how bad it is just so you can keep
10:33
moving forward. But with that said, I wouldn't
10:36
change it for anything, you know, just the experiences, I've
10:39
had the people I've met over the last three years.
10:42
And I, like I said, I come from a very small town in Vermont.
10:45
I got my tractor Safety license before I got my actual vehicle
10:48
license. So, I do kind of have a leg up
10:49
there. You know, we were surrounded by
10:51
Farmland, you know, some of my good friends are farmers, so I
10:55
did have experience in that regard, but doing it on my own
11:00
in San Diego of all places, you know, in terrain Coastal Desert
11:05
Mountain terrain, which I've never had experience with, has
11:08
been very, very different in coffee coffee.
11:12
He grows here but it doesn't come naturally here.
11:14
So if you know if I let it go for more than a week, you know,
11:17
bad things happen. So it does need attention.
11:21
It does need a lot of care and you know where we're not a
11:25
coffee growing region so to speak yet, but we're going to
11:28
become one. I truly believe that it's just
11:31
we have a lot of hurdles to overcome.
11:33
We don't have historical data here.
11:34
You know. All the techniques are going to
11:36
be very very different from other coffee growing regions.
11:39
We don't have rain that comes down every day like huh?
11:42
I to water the plants, we got to put the water on the labor cost
11:46
and San Diego are astronomical compared to other coffee growing
11:49
regions. So our Breakeven points are
11:50
going to be astronomical. So we need to produce the
11:53
highest quality coffee that, that, you know, we possibly can
11:57
for that to be able to sustain itself.
11:59
But we're seeing all these things happen.
12:03
I think it's really interesting because you just listed off a
12:06
whole bunch of things that sound like, this is a bad idea and yet
12:10
you seem really happy with the choice that That you've made.
12:12
So you must see that there's a there's an opportunity or
12:15
there's a future for this. I mean you just said that you
12:18
really believe that there's a future for this.
12:19
Why are you so confident in that?
12:21
And what trends are you seeing in your day-to-day work that
12:24
make you think you have? This is this is going to work
12:26
here. Yeah, there's its kind of
12:28
two-part, it's for me personally in my family will this work.
12:33
That's that's the first question and you know, we start, you
12:37
know, I started the coffee Grove and I just wanted to be a
12:40
farmer. I want to be out there.
12:42
Today on the farm working, but I did quickly see that, you know,
12:46
unless you're a millionaire, that's not going to happen, you
12:49
know. It's a three-year run time
12:50
before you can get your first crop and then what happens if,
12:53
your first crop small, what happens if the quality is not
12:55
quite there, you know, there's just a lot of things that could
12:57
go wrong. So I decided to start Breakers
13:00
Coffee, and Wine to supplement that to build the vertical just
13:04
to to say, okay, well with this doesn't necessarily work, you
13:08
know, what else can we do and it followed the same Sue?
13:11
I, you know, I've been Roasting coffee for years.
13:13
Absolutely. Let's a nice Starbuck stepping
13:15
up there. Thank you.
13:17
Yeah, you can make fun of my Starbucks cup but I think this
13:20
was a gift in like 2005 or something.
13:23
And it's got ya, the making the rounds ever since you know, it
13:27
just holds up. Yeah, I actually thought about
13:29
it when I pulled it out of the cabinet before doing this.
13:31
I'm like, he's gonna see my Starbucks up, but my normal mug
13:34
is my normally consoles, like coffee is like a mug is, is in
13:37
the wash. Oh, got ya.
13:39
Catch it. But now it's on record and
13:41
everybody's going to That I'm drinking out of a Starbucks cup.
13:43
Thanks a lot Kyle. But we all have our favorite
13:46
mug, right? We all have that one mug that we
13:48
go to. Yeah, I have the same mug that I
13:50
use every day and then the same. I won travel cup that I use and
13:56
I don't know why I like it. I just there could be 20 other
13:58
mugs in the in the cabinet but that's the one that I grabbed
14:01
all the time. Yeah yeah.
14:02
It's like that old t-shirt just fits, right?
14:04
Yeah. But to jump back into what we
14:06
were talking about. Basically the you know I've been
14:09
roasting for a couple years now. I I've absolutely fallen in love
14:13
with coffee. It's one of those.
14:15
It's one of those things that so closely, mimics wine coffee is
14:19
about terroir. Coffee is about to land and the
14:22
quality of coffee starts at the origin and I'm a firm believer
14:25
in Farmers first. When it comes to roasting when
14:28
it comes to the cafes I think the farmers need to be put first
14:32
the coops need to be put. First we really need to get back
14:35
to origin so that the quality cycle can continue the more
14:40
money that we put in the pockets of the Murmurs, the better.
14:43
Those Farms could become the quality could increase in the
14:46
cycle continues and really, that's kind of why I started
14:49
Breakers as well. Being a coffee farmer myself.
14:52
I was able to see firsthand, what, what hurdles you have to
14:57
overcome, how the Sea Market can be just, you know, devastating
15:01
at times, how climate change, is devastating certain regions, how
15:05
hard it is, you know, to get the money back into the farmers hand
15:08
because there's so many middlemen at this point,
15:11
whoo-hoo, It has to make it through.
15:12
So that is another big part of why I did Breakers is.
15:17
I want to see that quality cycle continued for for the farmers.
15:22
So you were talking a little bit earlier about just the the
15:26
higher expense of running a coffee Farm in the San Diego
15:29
area. Which leads me to believe that
15:31
the coffee served at Breakers will also be a little more
15:34
expensive or a premium product which which obviously lends
15:37
itself, well to the location you've chosen and to the wine
15:40
community. So the business is obviously
15:43
complement each other. What will be your role at
15:45
Breakers once? It's once it's open because it
15:47
sounds like you're, you're really invested in the
15:50
day-to-day of the farm. Yeah, I'm so I'll be The
15:54
Roaster. The head Roaster at Breakers.
15:57
I'll be the, the green coffee purchaser, and I will be the
16:02
manager. So I still have a lot of hats
16:05
and I'm going to be wearing at Breakers.
16:06
The farm were going to be coming into production next summer and
16:10
it's really going to start kicking off.
16:11
At that point right now where I'm probably up at the farm
16:15
three days a week working. And basically, what I'm doing
16:18
there is, I'm furtive gating, we're making sure our water
16:22
lines are clear. Weeding is a big thing, you
16:25
know, when we'd season right now.
16:26
So we just grind three feet a week and we got a knock them
16:29
back down, we're organic. So we're not using any, you
16:32
know, pesticides, herbicides, anything like that.
16:35
So, it does make things a lot tougher, you know, where I can
16:38
just go out there and throw around up on it, you know, just
16:40
know what we believe in. And we got our Organic
16:43
certification through see cof couple weeks ago, actually, for
16:46
the farm. So that was a very exciting time
16:48
in a long process but well worth it.
16:50
So everything up at The Farms hand touch right now, we're
16:54
about three acres planted. So we're just big enough where
16:58
it's almost impossible for me alone to do it.
17:01
But just small enough, where we don't want to hire full-time
17:05
work. So, it's kind of a weird Middle
17:08
Ground where in, and I'm hoping that we can really And after
17:12
next summer after we get our first crop going, get some cash
17:15
flow going and really start to expand the acreage so that we
17:18
can up production. How much coffee does three acres
17:22
produce? I'm originally from the Midwest
17:24
and so I think of like corn or dairy farms and their, you know,
17:27
hundreds of Acres at this point. What kind of crop do you
17:32
anticipate from three acres? It will be enough to sustain a
17:34
coffee shop. Will it be?
17:37
You know how I guess I'm wondering where that ratio goes.
17:39
Like, how did that number? Come about yeah.
17:42
I put as many trees in the ground as I possibly could
17:44
financially. That's where the three acres
17:46
came about. But basically a coffee tree is
17:49
going to produce about 12 pounds of cherries per year.
17:51
And then after the Milling processing, drying process, you
17:55
take an eighth of that to get your green coffee.
17:57
So, we're going to be producing just over 2,000 pounds of green
18:00
coffee year. That's plenty for a single
18:03
coffee shop. I was going to say that's plenty
18:05
for the house here, but, you know, whatever the beautiful
18:11
thing about. San Diego and SoCal and itself
18:14
as a coffee growing region is our is our climate.
18:17
So we have a Mediterranean kind of climate where we're at.
18:20
We have very kind of long and somewhat tame Summers, so the
18:25
coffee takes a long time to mature and what happens is the
18:29
sugars within the cherries itself, mingle with the bean and
18:32
it creates a very, very complex, very kind of sweet, acidic T
18:36
like coffee which is you know, those are the coffee's that at
18:39
the auctions are selling for astronomical rates right now.
18:42
That's the coffee's that are seeming to be bursting through.
18:46
You know, Ethiopian coffee is where we're coffee comes from is
18:49
acidic. It had follows that that similar
18:52
structure. So we're going to be getting
18:54
very, very high quality coffees from San Diego SoCal.
18:57
We already are the coffee's that are coming out or scoring in the
19:00
high 80s, low 90s. What we need to do is we need to
19:04
increase Supply because the demand is already there.
19:08
I mean, all the coffees are selling out as quick as we're
19:10
getting them. So, So, what we need to do is
19:13
get more Farmers on board. We need to bring more Farmland
19:15
on board for coffee in San Diego and Fringe, luckily, we have a
19:19
company like friends who is pushing that.
19:21
So if anybody listening to, this is interested in coffee or has
19:24
land contact, French and take a look, they'll be happy to hear
19:29
you say that I did interview Jay russki earlier.
19:32
This season will be a great complement to to them.
19:36
What about you what you mentioned.
19:37
You've been roasting coffee for years.
19:39
What was your first kind of experience with coffee?
19:42
You know, kind of memorable moment where you said oh that's
19:45
that's something that I really enjoy or something that I like,
19:48
or was it just something that was always there for you?
19:51
Yeah, it's kind of a funny story.
19:53
It's not a typical origin story and it probably makes me look a
19:57
little worse off than I should say.
19:59
But I my first interaction with actual coffee was in my early
20:04
20s. I was living in a bachelor pad
20:06
back in Vermont with my friends and I think we were drinking the
20:10
night before. And we woke up the next day and
20:14
probably had a bit of a hangover and, you know, with any bachelor
20:17
pad we had nothing in the fridge, you know?
20:19
No milk, no, anything like that, no sugar.
20:22
But we had coffee. So we decided just to make the
20:24
coffee, black will drink it, whatever.
20:26
And that was my first interaction with black coffee
20:29
where I was like, well I kind of like this, I didn't know that's
20:31
what coffee actually tasted like, you know, because we just
20:34
pour sugar sugar and milk in it after that, it was kind of a
20:38
slow burn until my early 30s. When I really do Vin, Coffee
20:42
when I started to see the intellectual side of it, when I
20:44
started to see the process side of it.
20:46
And like I said, I'd always been very interested in wine and
20:50
wine. Making did some wine making
20:52
myself just at home and I wanted to see what that life was like
20:57
with coffee. So I started, you know, I was up
20:58
in San Francisco. I started going to the blue
21:00
bottles, those types of things. I started reading up on it as
21:04
much as I possibly could and like I said a very slow burn
21:07
until until basically move back to San Diego and I decided to
21:11
make Get my life. It wasn't one of those aha
21:13
moments. It was it was one of those.
21:18
It crept up on me until it was there and then it was like, okay
21:21
coffees it, I love coffee. This is what I want to do.
21:24
This is what I want to immerse myself in.
21:26
It's the best of everything that I want, I could be outdoors.
21:30
I can go to new regions and visit new places exotic places,
21:34
meet great people I can make something with my hands every
21:37
single day by roasting it. I can share it with the world so
21:40
it's just it was one of those things that They just made sense
21:42
for me. And how is the, how is your
21:45
family adjusted to it? You know, you your wife move
21:47
down here and I mean, is she on board with it?
21:49
Or is there days or she's like, all right, like this, get to the
21:52
wine part. Yeah, she she, you know, she I
21:56
had to be signed off from the very beginning.
21:58
So I hold her to it because I kind of made kind of thing
22:01
where, you know, you sign off, sign this sign and date this
22:03
letter right here, just saying that you're willing, because we
22:07
knew it was going to change our lives.
22:09
We knew it was going to be very, very different from Um, the
22:12
lifestyles, we were living at the time and obviously we're
22:15
going to be sinking everything we had into it.
22:18
So we really wanted to make it go, you know, opening up a farm
22:22
in the same time as opening up a coffee shop.
22:25
You know, it's it's financially a huge burden and we're trying
22:29
to do everything we can on our own and we're trying to keep
22:32
labor costs down. I'm the farmer as well as a
22:35
manager at Breakers. My wife is pregnant again, so we
22:39
have a two-year-old daughter and she's pregnant we have a Boy on
22:42
the way. And I don't know how this
22:44
happened, but the due date is the same data is opening the
22:46
coffee shop. So it just when it's one of
22:50
those things that just worked out that way to me that seems
22:54
like an easy. We're going to, we're going to
22:56
open the coffee shop on a different day.
22:59
I feel like that's the right move, right around right.
23:02
Where did the name? Blue tail Coffee?
23:04
Grove. Come from.
23:05
Why not just name? The cafe blue tail Coffee
23:07
Roasters. Yeah, so the name Breakers came
23:10
first Lee I didn't name the coffee Farm until very recently.
23:15
So Breakers is a double meaning. You know, our logo is ocean
23:20
oriented. It's a wave crashing over with
23:22
another wave coming up. So you know out past the
23:25
breakers was kind of a theme. We were going for.
23:27
But also, when you're copying coffee, your first interaction
23:30
with that coffee is breaking the crust.
23:32
We really kind of wanted to build as much into the name as
23:35
we possibly could, for Breakers blue tail.
23:39
We named it after this lizard. At the the farm that are,
23:44
they're just all over the place up there, it's the orange
23:45
started, whiptail. And their tails are they can be
23:49
neon blue and it's just the craziest thing to say.
23:53
So I decided to keep it, you know, very, very local to the
23:56
farm. I want to name it after
23:58
something indigenous, something up there and you know, we have
24:00
road runners up there. So we're looking at those and
24:03
and, and everything. And I just thought it made
24:06
perfect sense to call it blue tail.
24:08
And it was just such a different name so to speak.
24:11
So, So I felt they would stay. I agree with that.
24:14
I think that there's a is a nice symbolism that you are
24:17
connecting it to the land and that the name came organically
24:20
to you. It wasn't like you went in like
24:22
okay, we're Breakers over here, we're going to do Breakers over
24:24
here, it was, no, this land is is reflecting this story back to
24:28
me, in the form of these lizards, which is pretty cool.
24:31
We were talking earlier about how long it takes to produce a
24:33
cup of coffee or to produce the, the beans to go into the coffee.
24:37
And for you guys, I think you were anticipating your own
24:41
coffee. To be ready next year, right?
24:44
Yes. So we're going to have our first
24:47
blue tail Harvest next summer, / fall.
24:50
So we're looking forward to that, but we'll probably only
24:54
have about half of our half, of our trees will probably be in
24:58
full production. The other half were just going
25:00
to be coming up. We did have a couple of events
25:01
in the first year. In the first winter, we got hit
25:04
with a frost, which was extremely rare.
25:06
So, of course, it hit on our first year and we lost 37
25:10
percent of our trees. We were able to To replace them.
25:12
We were able to come back from it.
25:13
Luckily. Luckily we had coffee tree
25:16
insurance and I believe I was the first one of the first
25:20
people in the u.s. to get coffee tree insurance on the contiguous
25:23
us they had to build the plan for us.
25:26
So luckily that came through in time, we replace the trees and
25:29
then this last winter, we got hit with those 50 mile, an hour,
25:33
winds for two days in February and those, you know, annihilated
25:37
another couple hundred trees for us.
25:39
So we lost Seventeen percent. That's last winter.
25:42
It's kind of an iterative process where, you know, we'll
25:45
have two thousand trees out. There will lose 500, replant
25:48
them and then out of that 500 will lose 250, replant them,
25:51
until we kind of get to full production and they're all at
25:54
different places in their in their process.
25:57
So, knowing that your future crop, it was out there, you
26:00
know, after this year and then living through and watching what
26:05
was happening in the coffee industry.
26:06
During the pandemic, was it a relief to know that your crops
26:10
weren't anticipated that You were planning that far out was
26:13
it what was the emotional impact of that?
26:16
Like knowing that this is the industry that you're in and
26:18
seeing what the world was like? What was it like to go an entire
26:22
year watching this and knowing that you are your farm is going
26:28
to be ready to produce after this hopefully ends.
26:32
Yeah. So for the farm you know to be
26:35
honest it didn't make much of a difference on the farming side.
26:38
We saw we saw the big shift from wholesale to direct sale.
26:43
We started at people who are still buying coffee, we saw that
26:45
people were still very excited about San Diego in California
26:48
Coffee in general. So, it didn't really hit me as
26:51
hard. They're in terms of the farm
26:52
where it hit us really hard was Breakers.
26:55
We were actually going to open in March of last year when
26:59
everything shut down. So Really.
27:02
We were going to be opening in Cardiff.
27:04
I live in cars, we're going to be opening right down the street
27:07
and you know, the pandemic, hit everything locked down, our
27:12
least, fell apart. And you know, one thing led to
27:15
another and then all of a sudden we're we're a coffee shop
27:18
without a shop. Nowhere to go.
27:21
And obviously we weren't going to push forward not knowing what
27:25
the future entailed. So that was extremely scary in
27:30
terms of what do we do now. You know, we had planned on
27:34
opening up, we had planned on that entire year of starting to
27:36
get some income flowing, some cash flow going.
27:38
You know, that that relates to the farm as well, since we have
27:41
the vertical, you know, how much money can we now put into the
27:43
farm? You know, because that revenue
27:45
streams gone from the coffee shop.
27:48
So we didn't really know where we were going to land there.
27:51
We didn't know if we were going to continue with Breakers or if
27:53
we would just push wholeheartedly into the farming
27:55
itself. We kept at it and actually the
28:01
Del Mar Highlands one of the Brokers reached out to us.
28:04
And said they had a space specifically where they wanted
28:07
Coffee and Wine right next to the Skydeck.
28:10
That was the use that they wanted and I don't know how but
28:13
somehow they they knew that we were looking for a space so that
28:18
started a three-month negotiation to you know in the
28:22
middle of a pandemic to see if if we could come to terms and
28:25
make something work. It probably worked out in our
28:29
favor, you know, during the pandemic to be able to negotiate
28:32
a lease but also we didn't know when things were going to let
28:36
up. We didn't know when things were
28:37
going to get better. If they were going to get
28:39
better, if life was just going to be changed, going forward for
28:42
retail restaurants. So we took the Gamble and signed
28:46
the lease and and luckily, you know, everybody knows what's
28:49
happened since then and we were able to get permits and
28:52
constructions going and we're hopefully going to open in June
28:56
hopefully and everybody you know is going to maybe start
29:00
venturing out again, who knows, but we have seen the devastation
29:04
that is done to, you know, to other people and have any
29:08
clothes shop for so long and maybe that gave us a way into
29:14
the market. You know, because San Diego has
29:17
a lot of good coffee shops. And I know, you know, that
29:20
because you've been interviewing them all.
29:22
So you know, to get into this Market, it's not easy with some
29:25
of these bigger players. So Might have been might have
29:28
given us a little leg up to be able to squeeze into the market
29:31
so that we can start to get our our quality coffee out there.
29:35
The thing I was thinking about what you were talking and also
29:38
listening. I'm also listening but I was
29:40
also thinking about how a year ago a year and a month or so,
29:46
the uncertainty level things are still uncertain now but at the
29:50
time there was this is it a week, is a two weeks.
29:55
Is it a month? And then after that first month,
29:57
Month, that kind of shifted and it was, is it a year?
30:00
Is it five years? Is it to nobody really knew and
30:03
at the beginning the projections for any sort of vaccine was like
30:07
three to five years and so we really didn't know if people
30:10
were going to be opening up again or how things were going
30:14
to change and we've had this kind of rolling.
30:18
This rolling expectation of the calendar of the timeline of when
30:22
things are going to happen and and some things are happening
30:25
now with opening, you know, it seems like whether they're the
30:28
smart decision or not. They're happening with covid.
30:31
And some things with covid, we just don't know yet, because it
30:35
really hasn't been a long enough time.
30:37
And so to continue down this process and to find opportunity
30:42
to meet kind of takes a lot of guts to say, I'm going to, yeah,
30:46
I'm going to sign a lease and Self to this.
30:49
That's all I want to say good for you.
30:51
Thanks. Thanks.
30:51
I appreciate that. It, I wouldn't have been able to
30:54
do without the support of my family.
30:56
You know, without them without them behind me and saying follow
30:59
your dreams. You know you're good at this.
31:01
You know. This is something that could be,
31:03
you know, why not share this with everybody if you can kind
31:05
of thing. So I think without the support
31:08
of them you know they called me crazy before.
31:10
I mean we still do call me crazy but you know it's one of those
31:13
things where they understand, they understand the craziness
31:16
whereas maybe some Other people, wouldn't they get it?
31:19
And I think everybody's got to be a little crazy to get, you
31:23
know, to follow their dreams and get what they want out of life.
31:26
Well, I'm just to be in this particular industry.
31:29
I mean, there's not a lot, you need to have a certain
31:32
personality to say, I want to open a farm in 2021.
31:36
I mean it's just a it's not the first thing you think of when
31:39
you think about stability and as you mentioned, you know, these
31:43
first two years, you've been behold into a pandemic to
31:46
weather events too. Different things so year on a
31:49
whole, there's that covid calendar.
31:51
And there's life calendar, and then there's that farm calendar.
31:54
And that's an entirely different animal.
31:55
If you're going to have a cup of coffee, if you could go
31:58
somewhere else, you go to one of those other shops in San Diego,
32:01
that are so good. What are you ordering?
32:03
What are you getting in? Just your outside of work life.
32:06
Yeah, right now, I am drinking as much coffee as I possibly can
32:10
without od'ing on caffeine. You know, I just, I really, you
32:14
know, right now. I just, I need to see what's out
32:16
there. I need to familiarize Myself.
32:18
There's so many great coffee shops around here, doing so many
32:20
great things in to be able to be in this market.
32:24
I need to understand, you know what others are doing and what
32:28
we're doing. Comparatively and, you know, we
32:30
want to be a little different, you know, we don't want to, we
32:32
don't want to be status quo. We don't want to be comparative
32:36
to to other places. We want to be Breakers, we want
32:40
to be blue tail, we want to be stand-alones.
32:42
So we want to be integrated into the system but also apart from
32:46
his. So with that said, I'm literally
32:48
just and my wife will will yell at me because we have so many
32:52
bags of coffee around the house and they're just stacking up.
32:56
And then, you know, we have my sample roaster that I'm roasting
32:59
on daily and my, my roaster actually, is currently in the
33:04
garage until we move it into the facility.
33:07
So I'm in the garage roasting, you know, 10 pounds at a time,
33:10
we have nowhere to put it. So I'm giving my friends, Home
33:14
Depot, buckets, full of coffee and they don't, Know what to do
33:18
with it. So there's just there's coffee
33:20
strewn about everywhere at this point.
33:23
I feel like you need to start like you on your email list, you
33:25
know, come by with your, you know, your lunch pail, and we'll
33:28
fill it up with coffee, but all you gotta do is sign up on our
33:30
email list, exactly. Anything, I didn't ask you or
33:34
that we didn't cover about either blue tail or Breakers or
33:37
you that you think listeners should know.
33:40
Yeah, you know, for the farm, where the beautiful thing about
33:43
the farmers were growing different varieties and I'm
33:46
really excited about some of the We're growing.
33:48
We have two varieties that are kind of on our similar Spectrum.
33:52
We have the Geisha. Now the geishas a coffee that's
33:56
natural so to speak. It's not a hybrid and geishas
33:58
right now. Are just all of us, they produce
34:01
a very T like a very complex, sweet set of coffee.
34:04
So we're trying to grow geishas up at the farm.
34:07
It has been one of the hardest crops to grow.
34:10
They're tall. They're thin their spend lead.
34:12
Not a lot of lease. So they die quick.
34:14
If they're not getting exactly what they need, even they die,
34:16
even if they're getting, Exactly what they need, they've been the
34:19
hardest to grow, but they have been producing and will produce
34:23
probably the highest quality coffee, the others that we have
34:26
is the Rojo. And basically the Rojo is the
34:30
opposite of that. Where it's kind of shorter.
34:32
Fatter tons of Leaf cover and they grow the best.
34:35
We lose very little of them just because they're so well
34:38
protected, they are a hybrid, so they make up more than 50% of
34:41
our farm. Currently we have others, like,
34:44
pop Kamara. We have a Mario, Caucus and one
34:49
that I'm very excited about is called Lorena.
34:51
The Lorena is a naturally have caffeinated coffee.
34:55
So for people who are susceptible to caffeine or who
34:57
may want a coffee later in the day, they don't have to get you
35:01
know, the process decaf coffees. They can get something like a
35:04
Lorena and you know, just really enjoy the taste of it without
35:09
all that processing that goes into making a decaf.
35:12
So that's something I'm very excited about up at blue tail
35:15
that we're working on right now, the Decaf thing is something.
35:18
I've been learning a lot about I think I used to have a maybe a
35:23
preconceived notion that it just wouldn't taste as good or that
35:25
there was something wrong with it.
35:27
Hmm, but because of this show, I am drinking a lot of coffee and
35:31
there, I could use some decaf. I truthfully will get similar
35:35
in. He's like, yeah, yeah, I've been
35:37
learning a lot more about about that about that process and how
35:40
much harder it is. And so I'm actually just this
35:43
week. Started ordering some decaf
35:45
coffee is from around town, just to see how it compares.
35:47
As quality wise because I can honestly say that I've done that
35:49
before. Drink a decaf next to a non
35:53
decaf side by side. So it'll be really interesting.
35:56
Kyle, I really appreciate you just taking some time to talk to
35:59
me about blue tail and about Breakers.
36:01
And I'm excited to see what happens in June and hope that
36:05
you guys get open and that it's not on the same day, that your
36:08
baby is born. Maybe the day before or the day
36:12
after I'll be kind of cool, you know, before we'd be good, after
36:16
would be tough. So we're open for before.
36:19
And if you guys, if anybody wants to follow us, we're on
36:21
Instagram at Breakers underscore Delmar for the shop and then at
36:25
blue tail underscore, coffee underscore Grove, if you want to
36:28
follow us up at blue tail and kind of see what we're doing up
36:31
there. Yeah.
36:32
Very cool. And I'll make sure that we link
36:34
to all that in the show's notes. So, anyone who's listening,
36:36
you'll be able to find it. All right.
36:38
Kyle, thank you so much for joining.
36:40
Being me and I hope you have a great day, man.
36:42
Thanks Ryan, you too. I want to let you know that I
36:50
just heard from Kyle this week and he and his wife did recently
36:53
welcomed a son, Austin into the family.
36:56
Congratulations to all of the Roses.
36:58
I'm happy for them, and I'm really glad they didn't have to
37:01
simultaneously open the cafe during the show.
37:04
And as happens on lots of these shows, Kyle referred to the Sea
37:07
market price, which I'll remind you is the average cost of a
37:10
pound of green coffee being sold on the Commodities Market.
37:15
The coffee being bought and sold at Price is not actual physical
37:18
coffee. Yet it is a contract for coffee
37:21
called a Futures Contract, meaning the seller is agreeing
37:23
to provide the coffee in the future at a specific price.
37:27
And the buyer often a coffee broker is agreeing to buy it
37:30
similar to the stock market, buyers, and sellers of these
37:33
contracts are hedging their bets that the price will go up or
37:36
down in the future. Your small local roaster.
37:38
May not be engaging in these types of contracts directly
37:41
because the prices are based on the amount of coffee which fits
37:44
into a shipping container. Estimated at Thirty-seven
37:47
thousand five hundred pounds. But if they are buying from
37:50
green coffee Brokers, they are still being impacted by those
37:53
contracts. And if they are buying directly
37:56
from a farmer, the sea market price can still come into play
37:59
as a barometer for what the market price.
38:01
Is today's see market price is about $1.50 per pound which
38:07
seems insanely low when thinking about what a farmer goes through
38:11
to get those beans to the market in the first place.
38:14
And all of the other people that it goes through to get from the
38:17
Into my coffee mug, be sure to follow at Breakers underscore
38:21
Del Mar and at blue tail underscore, coffee underscore
38:25
Grove on Instagram to stay on top of all of the opening plans
38:28
for Kyle's new Cafe and to follow along the growth of those
38:32
coffee plants that he has in San Marcos.
38:34
Also, check out Rose to westcoast.com for pictures of
38:38
the orange throated whiptail. Lizard, the one with the blue
38:41
tail, thank you to everyone who has been listening to the show.
38:44
It is hard to believe that we are already in.
38:47
Week 8 of season 2 and there are only two more interviews to go
38:50
next week. I talked to the team at codel
38:52
coffee and we closed out season 2 with an interview specifically
38:56
about coffee and beer with my carquinez foremost or coffee.
39:00
If you've got questions, please, feel free to reach out to roast
39:03
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39:07
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39:11
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39:15
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39:17
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39:21
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39:24
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39:30
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39:35
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40:00
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40:21
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40:26
listening. Thank you all for listening
40:28
today. Roast West Coast will be back on
40:30
Friday with a new episode of coffee smarter.
40:33
And my friend Chris O'Brien from coffee cycle he'll dive a little
40:37
more into the background on domestic coffee farming.
40:40
The Sea Market and the impacts we as coffee drinkers have on
40:43
Farmers worldwide this episode of the roast West Coast podcast
40:48
was written produced and recorded by me Ryan Walt.
40:51
I hope this episode has found you happy healthy and with at
40:54
least enough sanity to make it through the day and please
40:59
always be sure to drink. Good coffee.