Category Archives: News + Blog

When it Rains it Pours

When you own a business it’s a sort of anything goes type of situation. Act and react. There are good days. There are bad days. Sometimes there are bad weeks… And as of calendar year 2019, we’ve experienced what I would call a somewhat bad quarter. I mean, bad is a relative and vague term. It could mean a lot of things. In this instance, we’re just talking the overall stressors that come with managing a growing coffee company. Sometimes you trust people and give them responsibilities and they let you down. No hard feelings, you just learn, adapt, and carry on.

When you’re a business owner, a good day is when fewer things go wrong than usual. You have a bit more recovery time between the punches. Bad days typically mean that the punches keep coming and leave little time for recovery in between. The last few months have been challenging as we’ve been on the precipice of implementing a few major changes that will ultimately make us a much stronger company. Along the way, we had some personnel changes that resulted in a lot of training having to take place in a short amount of time due to issues regarding our trust in certain individuals being taken advantage of. This made the planned transition into these changes a bit more difficult than we had anticipated. That’s fine. It happens. Just brush it off and move forward. If it was supposed to be easy, everyone would be doing this.

The real kicker came when the main sewer in our building decided that it was going to stop working and we had to shut down for nearly a week for repairs and cleanup. Definitely not a fun situation. Alas, we took that shit in stride (see what I did there?!?). It was a great team building experience for our new team. There’s no choice but to carry on as it’s what has to be done. The longer you’re in business, you either break… or you get increasingly better at controlling your reactions to things. Desensitization. That, and having a solid crew of employees that were willing to put in the time to help deep clean and reorganize the contents of a business that’s been constantly adapting for the past 5 years. We took a catastrophe and turned it into opportunity. We made it our bitch. Hats off to everyone that pulled up their sleeves and made it happen!

The thing is… You know it’s going to get better. It’s not always going to be a struggle. There are always brighter days ahead. So, you take the good with the bad and vice versa. We’re A-Okay and stronger because of it; but, man… it was some bullshit for a little while. So yeah… There’s a little update of what it looks like behind the scenes. Don’t let problems get you down. Just make them your bitch. Cheers!

Thirty Six

Tomorrow I turn 36. I feel every minute of it. Each second of tireless gravity crushing down upon my bones. Of course, I’m choosing to write this entry at 9PM after a long day, longer week, and even longer month. It’s at these times when you get straight to the truth… when we’re tired and hungry.

For the past five years, I’ve spent nearly every day working alongside my amazing and wonderful wife running a coffee shop with extremely high expectations. You know, living the American Dream proper, right? Don’t get me wrong, it’s been a fun and rewarding experience, but after five plus years of 7 day weeks with hardly a day off, both Lauren and I can feel a bit spent at times. Day in and out we are constantly busting our asses so that our community can enjoy some of the best coffee and service available. I want it to be known that by and large, we have the best customers on the planet. Now, you’re probably reading this and thinking that you work hard. I’m sure you do. However, the majority of you have no idea what it’s like to do this for five years. There are very few of us in this club and that’s because it’s fucking difficult. Most people either go out of business, or just quit because of the sheer overwhelming nature of the beast. We’ve put off dinners, weddings, parties, gatherings, funerals, and countless other activities for a long time now.

This year we’re going to attempt to change things up a bit. Simple shit… like trying to prioritize time for ourselves and begin to take more of a back seat at times. We’ll see how it goes. After all, we can do our best to make plans, but they are only good until life calls an audible.

I’m about to be thirty six and I’m not even close to being done with my conquests. So here’s to 2019 bringing great things our way. Thanks for reading.

Steve Albini Interview 2018

For those of you that have had the pleasure of working with me as an audio engineer… or perhaps you have been in the coffee shop and noticed there is a drink titled “Steve Albini…” this is the guy. He’s a solid mentor and I deeply appreciate his views on the music industry and the overall creative processes involved. I hadn’t seen this interview until earlier this week and now that I’ve watched it twice, I wanted to share it. Enjoy.

That’s enough rambling out of me for the moment. I’m going to go grill some chicken thighs.

DIY BBQ RABBIT HOLE

Not all heroes wear capes. Some of them just dress normally and spend copious amounts of time building smokers in their garages. Thanks to this video, I’ve now spent the last hour watching DIY smoker builds. Now I need to find someone to teach me how to weld.

Wow. Hello?

Holy shit. It’s been nearly a year since I last logged into this dusty old blog. Where do I even start? A year in internet-years is basically an eternity. Plenty of time to be completely forgotten in the digital realm. So, I guess now’s as good a time as any to start anew. Then again, I could try and summarize everything that’s happened in the last year in rapid succession. Let’s give it a shot!

It’s been a long and eventful year. So much shit has happened. I bought a small 2 kilogram coffee roaster and then proceeded to learn everything that I could about the art of coffee roasting. Kind of an ambitious task, but I felt up to the challenge, you know… because I’m not busy enough already.

We received the roaster back in February of 2018 and managed to get it up and running by early March. As with most humble beginnings, this one also started in a garage. A no frills and straight to the point layout with few distractions. It turns out that roasting coffee has a lot of similarities to the BBQ arts that I’ve been dabbling in for the past couple of years. It’s one of those things that doesn’t come easy and takes effort; like learning guitar or something of that nature. Anyone can roast mediocre coffee, but it takes finesse to be able to do it well… and I’ve been trying to do it as well as I am able.

I’m going to assume that the majority of people reading this, know little about coffee roasting. That’s fine. Up until a few years ago, I knew little as well. No worries.

Despite my strong start on this blog, I’m getting pretty tired now, and I’m not sure how much more I’m wanting to write. Perhaps I should start using my youtube channel a bit more. It would be far easier for me to speak than to take the time to type all of these things out on a regular basis.

For the Moms

This post goes out to all you moms out there. Doing the mom things that you do. Oh, and it also goes out to my mother-in-law who did a fairly good job on my wife. I don’t really have a relationship with my own mother (long story), so it’s nice that Lauren and I were able to invite her mom over and treat her to dinner. We opted to fire up the grill and make some classic americana in the form of hamburgers because it’s one of her not-so-guilty pleasures. We also opted for some grilled asparagus. It’s nice that she’s able to just come over and relax. She’s always putting the needs of everyone else first, so it’s nice for her to just take a moment and relax while we take care of the details.

So yeah, that wraps up our Mothers Day celebration. I hope you all made an effort to show the mom(s) in your lives some love and respect. After all, without mom’s, we wouldn’t exist. That would be the worst.