Transcription
00:00:35:21 – 00:00:57:13
Robb Pearson
So I think the benefits in the Midwest are you know, there’s a potential here. There’s tons of growth potential for a company. There’s lots of untapped customers and people who haven’t got to experience specialty coffee yet. One thing that’s nice when we’re talking about producers and farmers, coffee farmers is that there’s a really a direct connection to a lot of Midwestern folks.
00:00:58:00 – 00:01:21:05
Robb Pearson
They’re either farmers themselves or have a history of it or have family members that work in agriculture. And so they know the pitfalls that can be associated with, you know, depending on an agricultural product for your livelihood. And they also value the work there. And so you look at Des Moines and central Iowa and Iowa and general as like kind of, oh, there’s space here.
00:01:21:11 – 00:01:32:00
Robb Pearson
I can build a coffee company and a roastery and and not feel so pressed by all the competition and so there’s that. I mean, that’s been the great part about Iowa.
00:01:32:08 – 00:02:02:07
Lucas Jensen
I mean, the reality of coffee is that especially as a consumer, you’re at the very end of a very long chain of people and steps it takes to get coffee there. So I think that you could be successful in this industry and not be relying on networks and relationships and partners is kind of foolish. If we didn’t have people like Daniel Bozman and Daisy Chain are doing care down and slow down running their business as well or Andrew and his family running Burgers Cafe as well and stuff like that.
00:02:02:08 – 00:02:27:13
Lucas Jensen
We want if someone Coffee Bean would be successful and if we didn’t have farmers and producers working their butts off in the fields and over generations of their families to make good coffee. We want you know, we can’t make a good product here if they don’t make a good product there. We have to rely on them and trust that they’re paying people well and treating the product ethically and that the exporters and importers are doing the same thing.
00:02:28:02 – 00:02:45:20
Lucas Jensen
And then we hope that when we sell to a business, they’re also doing the same trading, embraced in their customer as well. So yeah, now I’m looking at my R, which is the rate of X rated for ice. That’s how fast our temperature’s increasing. And it’s a little bit above what the profile, which is our recipe says it should be.
00:02:46:07 – 00:03:04:11
Lucas Jensen
So I’m keeping an eye on that trend aside when I should drop my gas down, which I just did, because I want to slow down that process. I don’t want to just blow right through the end of this roast the development phase, the end of the road is really trying to balance the amount of time after that first crack.
00:03:04:12 – 00:03:24:23
Lucas Jensen
When you drop it like you want to get to the end temperature. But I want to get too fast. If you go too fast, you’ll still under a lot of weird grassy flavors. So you got too long. Your coffee will be real muddy and like just nondescript and the flavor won’t be very clear for a drop. Tell my software to stop recording the roast.
00:03:26:05 – 00:03:45:00
Lucas Jensen
Save it and now just wait for it to cool down. And this is one component of our summer site called Groove Blend, which is two parts Guatemala, one part natural Ethiopia So once this is cool and dumped the rest of it in there to let it all blend together, and then it’s good to go and we can bag it up, send it out and people can enjoy it.
00:03:46:01 – 00:04:04:21
Robb Pearson
To get the best coffees that you just you get a really big net. And so we just work with everybody and we try to just try as many copies as we can. And you know, like we just we brought in a few Columbia lots recently, and I think we kept we bought three and I think we cut someplace in the neighborhood of 16 or 17.
00:04:04:21 – 00:04:26:15
Robb Pearson
So we pass on a lot of copies to find those great ones. What we’re trying to do is support specialty coffee growth. So yeah, our partners like those relationships are super important. We’re listening to like their needs and whether it’s, you know, the machines acting up and they need service or equipment or they’re really questioning like, hey, you know, how can we improve our margins?
00:04:26:15 – 00:04:59:12
Robb Pearson
Or I saw this new product someplace. Can you help us get it? Those are all the relationship kind of that work we’re trying to build on and we’re trying to work with folks The other thing when we’re talking about relationships is those producers and like I said, mentioned before, just kind of trying to establish year over your relationships and open lines of communication I mean, compared to 20 years ago, you know, you can talk with the producer, whether it’s on Instagram or WhatsApp, there’s not the level of disconnect between us, the coffee roaster and the coffee producer like there was.
00:04:59:18 – 00:05:23:09
Robb Pearson
And so you can really discover like, are they actually getting paid appropriately through the importer? Are they happy? Like, what does their day to day look like? Is there something that they need or want, or is there some way that we can help them continue to improve their product? So Iowa in particular, you know, there’s more and more local roasters, too.
00:05:23:09 – 00:05:38:12
Robb Pearson
So there’s lots of variety out there and places to try and kind of small like garage style operations that are always happening. And so it’s kind of, you know, it’s a burgeoning industry here. And so trying new things and watching and grow is kind of fun.
