#20: Eugene Jung - Touring Coffee Roasters

[00:00:00] Welcome to the Drop Temp Coffee Podcast, I'm Tim. And I'm Terry. And we're two coffee rosers in the Pacific Northwest talking about the coffee business They joy being an entrepreneur, all things coffee roasting and our coffee culture And maybe coffee itself. Thanks for being here.

[00:00:20] We appreciate you listening. Hi everybody, welcome to the Drop Temp Coffee Podcast. I'm your host, Carrie. But normally you would hear Tim's voice. Unfortunately, Tim was not able to join us on this episode. But we are with some amazing people from touring,

[00:00:38] Coffee Roasters, I should say, in Portland, Oregon. So I'm sitting with Tato and Eugene. Really two amazing people. And I cannot wait to chat with them. And actually learn a little bit more about what touring coffee is all about.

[00:00:57] And we want to give it a shout out to our sponsors real quick for being able to help us out with our podcast. So we're going to give a shout out to San Chrisville Coffee Import, which imports coffee from Mexico and Ethiopia.

[00:01:17] And we're going to give a shout out to the Super great, super awesome. Thank you, San Carasible for your sponsorship. We are also going to shout out to Seattle Coffee Animation. If you are a small timid coffee roaster who is looking for a weighing machine

[00:01:33] but doesn't take up a whole lot of space and a whole lot of money. Seattle Animation is a great way to go. We also want to thank Primo, Roseding Equipment. The main sponsor, they have a wonderful lineup of different roasters that are made in the USA.

[00:01:50] They can custom build and do all kinds of great stuff with your roaster. And I feel like I, uh, coolly coffee. Coolly coffee is a new sponsor that is created a self-serve, poor over machine that is an automated machine. Uh, it's really super cool.

[00:02:10] And we'll go ahead and drop the links of our sponsors into the podcast. So let's get started here. Hi, Tato, hi Eugene, how y'all doing? Gary, thank you for having us. Thank you. We are both in our, uh, backgrounds as on this in our roasters.

[00:02:31] I'm in mind, and you guys are in yours. Um, and really appreciate you guys coming on. This is really exciting to have both of you on the podcast. Eugene, why don't you go ahead and take us through the journey of Torin Coffee of how you got started.

[00:02:48] And kind of gave us a history of walkthrough. Yeah, yeah. So I did not come from coffee. I actually came from right before Torin Coffee Roasters. Um, I own another business called Pips Abouts, which is a ping pong bar restaurant here in Portland, Oregon.

[00:03:11] Um, that my brother and I opened up in 2014. Um, just imagine bowling except with ping pong tables, um, which for some reason this country, there's a lot of bowling alleys, but there's not many ping pong places. So we wanted to change that up.

[00:03:30] And Portland was a great place to do that because half the year, it's gloomy and rainy and ping pong being an indoor sport. Um, really kind of catered towards the Portland people. So I would say for 2014 up to 2020, um,

[00:03:50] you know, I was really focused on that business growing that business, um, and right before the pandemic hit, um, we actually were about to sign for our second location in Minneapolis, Minnesota. And we actually got on Shark Tank, um, to franchise. Wow.

[00:04:11] We didn't get any investments because we didn't have a second location that I'm going to show the proof of concept franchise. Um, but they were highly interested. Um, but all of that went hard stop towards what was that March or April and in 2020,

[00:04:34] I specifically remember, uh, my story of how things kind of happened was, um, we had a taping party at Pips and Baps. We had a big screen TV, we were about to show Shark Tank. We had our most loyal customers come out.

[00:04:48] We basically had our own in-house party, um, and then we had like, you know, 30 minutes of, or I mean, the 30 minutes, the 25 minutes of fame being on the TV show. And we had the local news crew come out do the taping and everything.

[00:05:05] And then the videographer, I distinctly remember this as if it was yesterday. Uh, he was taping taping, taping with his videographer. And then he got a cell phone call and he saw the message on his phone. He's like, I'm sorry, like we have to go. This is urgent.

[00:05:22] And we're like, oh, something happened, like, you know, like, of course, naturally, you know, go take care of it. Yeah. He said we got our first COVID case here in Portland. Oh wow. So they left that taping that party of Shark Tank.

[00:05:39] And, um, a week, maybe a week and a half later, uh, we shut down. We have to go. Yeah. And, you know, we spent all this energy, all this work, all this time and money to build this business

[00:05:59] and hopefully expand the way that we wanted to expand and then the pandemic just hit us hard and everything just stopped. Um, I had to lay myself off. I had to lay off my old entire staff, which was at that time. It close to 30 or 35 people.

[00:06:17] Um, and we really had no idea, um, what was in store for us. Uh, so this was like well before I was even thinking about coffee. Um, so during that time of basically us being forced to being home and not do anything.

[00:06:34] Uh, I actually applied to work at Amazon fulfillment because one of my staff members said, hey, they're hiring. If you need one extra money or do something like they, uh, they're one of the few people in the city of here, Portland that's actively hiring.

[00:06:51] So I was like, I cannot not do anything at all. Conciri, I was working, you know, 12 hours every day working on the business, working in the business, growing the business. Do we everything that I can and then I just had to mentally do something otherwise.

[00:07:07] I'd just be like going crazy at all. So in the, Amazon fulfillment, uh, my job there was to be a picker and what a picker is is basically pickings people orders. Uh, and maybe you've heard the stories of how the Amazon warehouses work, but basically we have,

[00:07:28] like, uh, like a pod each person has a pod with like a computer screen and like five or six bins. And then you have like these rubas that's like basically on steroids carrying a big tower of products.

[00:07:44] And when these rumors come to your pod, uh, basically robotics, uh, there's a light that's shown on which of the shelf area on the pod. And then on the computer monitor will show you the letter number exactly what you need to pull

[00:08:00] the item from, put in the bin, push it down a conveyor belt. And, you know, let me paint with picture. This is a million square foot warehouse. So it is this amazing, major production facility and, you know, we're just part, we're small gear in the caulk.

[00:08:17] But I did that for about six to eight weeks at the beginning of COVID, which was the world was kind of upside down. Yeah. And that experience actually led me to my coffee journey because in the first six to eight weeks

[00:08:38] of COVID, I got to see what people were ordering on their phones or other computer. And there's basically two categories that it was most popular, uh, pet food and coffee. That's what people were ordering, at least what I know in a small area of Portland, which

[00:08:58] I think I can safely say I can apply to most cities in the country at that time of the pandemic. Um, so I was kind of thinking, it's like, oh, this is interesting.

[00:09:10] This is a pattern that's emerging and then I think my entrepreneurial mind start to get into gear again. Um, and then I also heard the term that I didn't hear before when I was growing pips abouts

[00:09:26] was basically the COVID kind of determined which businesses were essential and which businesses were non-essential. And ping pong bark restaurant is in the non-essential category. The world can definitely continue on without pips abounds and or ping pong in the bars.

[00:09:45] But coffee, at least what I experienced at working in the Amazon was just probably almost, I would say, every 10 orders I picked maybe four to six of them were coffee. Maybe the other half was maybe pet food and the other things were just random trickets that people were

[00:10:05] by because they had nothing else to do. Though that kind of got to make gears running is like, okay, well, you know, the world is going to crap. This isn't my lifetime. This is what people ordering pet food and coffee.

[00:10:17] I'm going to look into this because I need a business that I need to know that's essential for the future. Um, did research how did you pet food within the solid 10 seconds completely lost it?

[00:10:31] I was going to ask like, how was the research on the, on the pet food? Uh, but you just answered it right there. Just solid 10 seconds. You're like, nope, not for me. I love pet food. I just don't have no interest in making pet food.

[00:10:49] But then coffee, you know, coffee everyone knows coffee. Everyone kind of knows the art and love and the lust for coffee because it's such an aromatic. It is such a century experience that people have to start their day with.

[00:11:03] And upon my research, the barrier of entry as you are probably many other rosers know is actually quite easy for a coffee. Um, you know, we all know coffee is probably one of the oldest industries in the world.

[00:11:19] I mean, coffee's been around forever and the technology, especially in the past, you know, that's a century or so like the access to making coffee is really about time and temperature is about as simple as you can get.

[00:11:32] But we live in an age where like, you know, you have these massive machines or we can even have like a popcorn machine and you can still make coffee. Yep.

[00:11:42] So I actually started off with a, um, I think they called it was a one pound roaster but I actually put three hundred seventy five grams and this little drum roaster and my heat source was a camp stove that had this analog dial. I don't know.

[00:12:02] To, to, you know, give more heat or not and that's how I learn to roast coffee. So I actually repurpose my kitchen and my ping pong bar restaurant until a little coffee station because I had this space.

[00:12:16] I have the time and I had a lot of miss trials of coffee so to say, a lot of smoke happened. Let's just say that a lot of burn.

[00:12:28] Yeah, you when you first start roasting coffee like when you're roasting coffee for the first time, you don't anticipate how much smoke you're going to make and how much of that moisture is going to really so the coffee bean. Oh yeah. Yeah, it, it gets a little gnarly.

[00:12:44] That's a really interesting part. Like I knew about pips and bounds, you restaurant there. That is so cool that you saw something that people kept ordering and it just kind of got.

[00:12:56] You're like, you said the entrepreneur will kind of like spinning like, okay, people are ordering a lot of coffee. You know, I'm going to dive into that. So that's great. So okay, let me ask you this though. You do the for when you're you were roasting coffee in your kitchen and you brew to cup a coffee.

[00:13:15] It looking back now. How would you rate that coffee? So we had, um, I had like this little coffee drive through. You know, they're all over here in Portland. They're basically a small little kiosk right.

[00:13:33] They just pull up window, you get your coffee, get your pastry and you know, you drive up. And when I worked at, you know, pips and bounds, I always had this one coffee kiosk. I went to it right next to the restaurant supply store where I got all my supplies for pips and bounds.

[00:13:48] I would be friend her and ask her for feedback of the coffee that I would be roasting, you know, in their early days. And I distinctly remember I gave her kind of one of my, maybe my second or third or fourth roast ever.

[00:14:05] And I, and she opened it. She's like, I can't serve this. I'm like, why not? She's like, it's so under a roast it. Like there's no way I could give this a customers. I'm like, oh, okay, I got I got.

[00:14:18] Would you rate it as a quote unquote white coffee then?

[00:14:23] Probably. Yeah, why coffee of anything else? Because I was, you know, in Portland is a city of there's so much rosers are so many, so there's so much good coffee. I just told them like a camp today that we are absolutely spoiled with probably the best coffee access in the country within a five mile radio saving.

[00:14:45] And basically we don't want to do my research and learning in the very beginning was like, you know, everything was light roast Portland loves light roast light roast light roast. And I was trying to figure out what constitutes as light roast because it's not an equation.

[00:15:00] It's kind of subjective. It's a lot of it about copying and century and all this.

[00:15:05] And I was trying to roast light in the very beginning, just trying to figure out what that is. And you know, my first feedback, you know, hard feedback was like it's too light and I'm like, okay.

[00:15:16] And then you just learn by your mistakes. You learn by your feedback of people who are actually having a business to sell the customers.

[00:15:25] And that's how, you know, this kind of business started is basically you learn by a trial and error. And then over time, you know, we became like, okay, I think we can start to maybe sell to friends in the family and maybe they want to buy it.

[00:15:42] And then probably took a, what year year and a half before we started roasting that we actually feel confident to sell to our friends and family. That would be about right. Yeah, something like that.

[00:15:54] And remember, like, you know, we got our first order where friends like, yeah, we want to have like three bags of coffee is like, oh my god, this is going to take us like an hour. Like, this is going to take us so long.

[00:16:06] And we were still on confidence of giving, you know, when you in this industry at food and beverage, you know, you're giving your product to somebody else to enjoy to taste and everyone is different.

[00:16:19] So like, you're suddenly giving your product to the masses, they're like, oh my god, are the actually going to like this or are they not going to like this. It's kind of a very awkward feeling to be a position to be basically judged, especially in a city of coffee.

[00:16:32] You made a great point here because as a new entrepreneur, when you are actually selling your coffee from the very first time outside of your family and friends. Right.

[00:16:45] And it's there is a little bit of that unsettled unsettledness. I guess you could say when you sell your product and you're like, okay, I hope they like it. I just sold this bag like you're butterflies in your stomach. So yeah, I totally relate to that. Absolutely.

[00:17:07] Yeah. And I would say the foundation of me kind of, I mean you and me can agree this it's not an easy business. This is something that you do not is no success is that is not a successful overnight. This is a kind of a long game business.

[00:17:27] But my experience at Amazon, the tiny little window at the beginning of COVID which the world was, you know, when crazy is basically my biggest driving motivator that this business.

[00:17:42] If you do it right and you do it well, that it works. And you can't really say that to businesses in general. There's no guarantee to compete. Yeah, this business is going to guarantee to work. You cannot say that at all.

[00:17:57] You are actually leading, leading into something that is really awesome. And I would love to circle back on that. Yeah, sure. But I, Tatto, you are the head racer at your in coffee rusters.

[00:18:15] Tatto is amazing. She is great at what she does. She is a bronze medal winner for Goldenbeen, North America last year. You won your first medal at a resting competition.

[00:18:28] Tatto, I loved it. Kind of get a little bit more about how you know you, how you became the head raster. And just kind of like just kind of talk about what you enjoy most about roasting coffee. I'd love to learn a little bit more about that.

[00:18:51] So, Tatto is a tennis instructor. She's actually very accomplished tennis player. She is from the Republic of Georgia. So she might be a little shy in a public setting and or podcast setting when you're talking to public audience.

[00:19:10] I'm just because I'm sure if I was at her shoes and a foreign country that you know, I probably wouldn't speak that well either. But I met Tatto on a tennis court. She was actually my tennis instructor.

[00:19:23] I played tennis when I was a junior. She was a tennis coach here and the house working at Pipsen Bounce. When you work at in a bar rush ride, you eat awful food and you don't exercise.

[00:19:37] So I was like this is given to the point of no return. I need to exercise. So I actually started to play tennis again and that's how I met Tatto. How many years did you think that is seven years ago?

[00:19:49] Yeah, seven years ago. And then I distinctly remember when COVID happened because I would probably see you what maybe once or twice a week at the tennis center. Yeah, something like that and then she you got I got laid off.

[00:20:06] So we both basically had nothing to do and I just basically asked her because we actually played a couple doubles tournaments together that we actually want a few of them.

[00:20:21] We have this side that lot of battle. Yeah, like we have this tennis ball that you can see right here. That is one of our. It's here in the back. Yeah. That's what do you want to drop these?

[00:20:33] Is there a tennis ball on top of what is a Turkish. Oh, it's still a kishko. I love it. Yeah, and I'd be like this aster because I knew she had nothing else to do.

[00:20:45] And I asked her's like, hey, do you want to roast coffee with me? Because I'm bored alone and it would be nice to have some company and we just basically just started doing it together.

[00:20:57] But I think a turning point when we were doing this journey together was basically we signed up for a Q grade class. Yeah, the official Q grade class is one that houses that was actually being held in the beginning and COVID.

[00:21:12] So that's because you know when you have more than two people in the room, it gets weird when you're sharing like spoons and or like you know dining equipment at this get weird.

[00:21:22] But this Q grade happened and the short story of the Q grade thing that it's a part of the short story of the Q grade because it's a pretty extensive course. I was probably like last place of 15 people in my course, like just bomb it.

[00:21:44] Whoa, to the where I was taking some of these tests because I think you take like 30 tests or something something crazy amount of tests. And I think like the last like hour of the test, I don't even know how many tests it was.

[00:21:57] I always just like whatever, whatever, whatever, whatever, loss patients. I'm like this is the stupidest thing ever of so tired and exhausting trick is so much coffee.

[00:22:06] I couldn't tell between a Columbia or Ethiopia or Guatemala doing this in the black room and a red light on like this is ridiculous. Wow. On the other hand, Tato completely aced it on her first go for a Q grade. Yeah, I love it.

[00:22:22] Oh, so good on me. Oh wow, Tato that's pretty rad like Katah. That's awesome. And then that's already fine. You can cheat off where I still couldn't pass like that's how bad it was for me. Wow. Oh man. That's insane.

[00:22:42] I think you guys are the first people well, I've met several people who were certified Q graders but I didn't realize that you guys actually went through the course and like based upon what you're telling me, like I knew that Q grading courses were pretty intense.

[00:22:57] But you guys are so much factored into it. Yeah. He's not going bad. Yeah, I know where I am not good at but that's where this partnership for touring coffee rose was work because she is the roaster.

[00:23:15] She does the sensory cupping, the aromatics and you know, making sure all the coffee is whether the standards of what she knows, what she wants. I rely on her on that and vice versa. Like, you know, I kind of take care of the business.

[00:23:30] I try to do the sales, you know, I try to do the walk the walk and talk and talk and I know the foundation of the company is based on the coffee being which this hurt. So it kind of works that way.

[00:23:45] But she always reminds me that she is the, she's a better roaster than I am. I just kind of fried her tail on the roasting part. Oh. But it's so great to hear that because obviously you didn't use, you went through through the courses.

[00:24:05] Like, okay, this this obviously is not my pack and you guys in a way kind of found. In the partnership, what who has to strong the strong skills and each part of the business.

[00:24:23] So like you said, you do with the sales and the emails and administration side of things where a tattoo. So to talk to you, you're officially a certified curator. Is that right? Yeah, you're a certified curator. You are also the lead roaster.

[00:24:41] I don't even have a curator certificate and for you to have that, that is amazing. That is wonderful.

[00:24:50] I did want to circle back on the point that we were talking about earlier Eugene was kind of leading into how we were just talking about Portland and the different kinds of things.

[00:25:00] And the different coffee roasters out here. There's so many different coffee books out here. Listen, Portland, the Pacific Northwest in general is a mecca coffee.

[00:25:10] I don't care if anybody says I Portland is greater than Seattle come come at me bro if you, you know, but that that personal opinion, you know standing out from the crowd right is And one aspect, you're putting yourself out there like going to markets going to events.

[00:25:31] Like I actually met you guys at the unique market unique markets. Like it was an indoor market for local vendors and we actually met there.

[00:25:43] I forgot how I found you guys. If you guys found you guys on Instagram and then I started following you, then I met you in person. I was like, oh no no no no.

[00:25:52] That's how we met. But in a way though, the size to the markets branding I think branding is really the huge key thing when it comes to establishing yourself as a coffee brand am I right?

[00:26:11] No, 100% and the beginning of this whole coffee was basically you know, I will go to a store like a local probably high in grocery store. And I would look at the coffee section and you know, you see all the big players.

[00:26:27] Stomptowns, even the bigger ones, the Starbucks and even the small roast, the small local rosers that have bag, you know, on their shelves.

[00:26:36] And this is to coming for me is, you know, when I looked at the name of either the roaster or the name of the bag it was pretty it was just not tangible.

[00:26:51] I remember one roaster which I'll keep, uh, nameless, you know, their bag name was like a kayak or canoe or something. Just it was kind of unmemorable and as kind of thing is you know what there's there's a story that can be told by just a name of the bag.

[00:27:12] And my personal interests, I do a lot of motorcycle. I do a lot of camping. I love traveling and I have memorable places that I would love to go back to or they have stuck in my mind from these travels.

[00:27:28] Sounds like why don't I think about maybe naming some of these bags based on places that I've been to that elicit some sort of emotion, whether it was dry, whether if it's wet, whether it was rainy or something that might connect to the beat or to the destination of the name of the bag.

[00:27:51] So for example, you know one of our early, uh, probably your first bag was our was our Guatemala and this guanamala we wanted to approach this roaster basically wanted it. It just a solid coffee nothing to experimental nothing to dark is very just smooth well balanced no surprises. This is how we approached our guanamala which is still to this day the same being or how we approach it.

[00:28:21] But the name of the bag is called Hawksnast and Hawksnast is basically a small little area in the new Jersey waterfront river or something that when I lived in New York City that we were always visited to as a motor shark. This is basically a cliff or a mountain one side, a value on the side and it's just a road that snakes through between them. And it's just a fun place that be in especially in like in the fall time or like you see the trees are just basically on the side.

[00:28:51] And I don't know if I can find it through the wall of colors and I'd like to think that most of America has never heard about this place called Hawksnast.

[00:29:00] And I wanted to have these names where probably most people have not heard of people are heard of yellowstone, you know, some of the big ones by wanting to find something that was kind of unfamiliar to people.

[00:29:11] And they look at the back of the bag and they have a little story about my experience at this place that tried to connect it to how we do the profile roast of the bag.

[00:29:23] And trying to make that cuss will be like, oh I want a little hawksnast. I've never heard of it in you know this bag was found in New York City's like, oh that's actually not far away.

[00:29:32] I kind of give the idea of like destination that inspires people based from coffee. And that's been kind of how I've been rolling this whole business out with that idea and I think

[00:29:45] From customers they all say like, you know, hell's Canyon which is an you know, Eastern Oregon they've been there. They like, oh they love it. It's you know a beautiful place. I'm like yeah, it is quite beautiful. So there's a connection to that. I want to have with the customers

[00:30:01] that you know, I think I had the little story as opposed to something that could be like, you know,

[00:30:06] Intangible could be like a dust or a lamp or something and I'm like that's that interesting to me. So I just wanted to have an emotional response to some of these name, no bags.

[00:30:18] Wow, that is fantastic. I absolutely love it. Yeah, that do that's so like so deep. But at the same time you're absolutely right. It's it's making that emotional connection with customers. It's I think the connection in general has to be genuine and authentic.

[00:30:42] And if you can obviously roasting great coffee is one thing, but when you have a brand that's really strong and you when it comes to actually naming your coffee.

[00:30:54] Not only are you trying to connect with the brain, the main brand what you're having, but there's also a story in each of the roasts that you're doing.

[00:31:03] And I absolutely love that. I am on board with you on that. I think that is as an entrepreneur starting very early.

[00:31:14] That was one of the hurdles that I had to deal with myself and my company for the first couple years, because I realized there was disconnection happening with consumers.

[00:31:27] And when I did my rebranding, I had to make sure that there is an emotion and a story behind the different, the different coffees that I offer. Now, I am curious for touring coffee. What you guys do you have any plans going on?

[00:31:46] Any big new exciting projects that you're taking off with tell us what's happening in touring coffees world right now. Yeah, so a year and a half ago we moved into our full time roasting facility which was a huge step in the business.

[00:32:09] Because there's a moment where you have to take a chance and a risk. And one of them was we, you know, before we're in a current space, we were in a co-roasting facility, which you know, I thought many people start off with.

[00:32:27] Because you just basically rent the roaster or you rent the space for about an hour or whatever, you need to do your thing.

[00:32:35] So we were in one of those spaces and then for some reason, one or the other, the owner that space decided to not continue with that business.

[00:32:46] So that kind of left me and a bunch of other roasters kind of like out in the coal basically, what do we do? How do we find this? Other options here in the Poland area of other co-roasting facilities.

[00:33:00] But that was kind of a lesson learned from me that touring coffee roasters was dependent on somebody else's decision making. And then, you know, I took the leap of faith with Pips of Bounce and took the leap of faith of starting a coffee roaster business.

[00:33:17] And I'm like, all right, this is a moment where either we have our space or we still kind of figure out what another co-roasting facility and try to figure out a schedule.

[00:33:27] And we're working for us and discover the challenges and the limitations. So kind of gather some of the troops that were in a co-roasting facility that weren't the same position as me and it's like, hey, I am looking for my own space.

[00:33:42] Are you interested in maybe being part of my facility?

[00:33:47] They were all on board luckily. And, you know, a few of us came with me to my new space which, you know, I come in here basically every day and I'm like, I like the space, this space works that big is that beautiful but like it works in a very efficient manner.

[00:34:05] And I think it's a great first step into really throwing ourselves into this roasting project. So that was the first big leap of faith for the business.

[00:34:16] And second is basically, you know, first year is always trying to figure out how to get this off the ground like any other business.

[00:34:24] And we survive, where this space is all year and a half. And now we've come into the point where we've almost outrun our space. I literally can't, I'm looking out our space right now. There's really no empty space that we have.

[00:34:37] That's not something that's coffee or a coffee could be related.

[00:34:42] I don't know, not interested in moving out of the space. But I kind of want to align myself with one of the sponsors is getting a bigger roaster which is pre-mo, which is something that is on my radar and it's getting to the point that we're roasting enough.

[00:35:01] And we're kind of having some long days of roasting where like there's no shortcuts in roasting and the wish for cut is is investing into a bigger roaster.

[00:35:11] So I think we're almost at that point where like okay, you know either we can roast 14, 16 hours or we could just get a bigger roaster. And I think the bigger roaster will definitely make our lives look more balanced in terms of having the super long days of roasting.

[00:35:30] So that's probably our next step which actually probably leads us to be in your roasting facility that you share with him because that's where you guys roast on your pre-mo.

[00:35:41] And we've been talking about this for a while and just get our hands on that roasting equipment, it's just to see if it makes sense for us.

[00:35:51] And that's one of the perks of being in Portland that you got to access to something different roasting equipment just like kind of you know spend some time on it and see if it makes sense.

[00:36:01] Yeah, by the way, Christian Brandon, the co-owners of pre-mo, if you're listening, you gotta talk with Tato, Eugene, make a happengap and so shout out to pre-mo for that.

[00:36:15] I think all three of us relate on on you know some levels, you know I wish her space was a little bit bigger because we have three coffee roasting companies under one roof. We're going to be with Tim from Blind Coffee and then Capital Press Coffee Company.

[00:36:31] And things are getting a little tight because all three of us are growing our businesses but not enough where we can expand our footprint at the moment.

[00:36:41] But I personally love being in Hillsborough. I really like it. We love our customer base, we love our customer set come in and get a lot of taste and stuff too.

[00:36:52] Like success doesn't happen overnight. And even if you do have the success there are different tiers of success that each business can achieve.

[00:37:02] So obviously the situation that y'all are having is that you have your space but you need a bigger roaster because you're spending longer hours on the current machine that you have. And then with us, we have a decent size machine. Yeah, the score footage. Yeah.

[00:37:21] It feels like it's getting smaller and smaller. Can we just, somewhere in the middle? Yeah, yeah. Right. I agree. A thousand for a set like just, you know if we can meet in the middle, that'd be wonderful. For sure.

[00:37:36] So that's really great news that you guys are looking to invest into getting a bigger roaster that means your volume is going up. That is fantastic. Is there anything else that people should be aware of? Yeah.

[00:37:52] I mean, it's so coffee is found in many different shapes and forms and locations. When I was starting this business at the beginning of COVID, it was basically my model was to focus on grocery stores because that's where people were shopping to get their essential products.

[00:38:13] And a still part of our big focus now is to be in grocery stores. I can say right now, we are not interested in doing a brick and mortar or cafe, knowing that my experience of having another business as brick and mortar.

[00:38:30] It just requires a lot of manpower, a lot of labor and for myself, my experience, it kind of spread me to that. And I do want to do that right now because I want to focus on the growth of the business.

[00:38:42] So what we can do in our roasting facility, which is basically kind of distribution or the reshipping. That being said, you know, the business has evolved from just grocery stores.

[00:38:55] We've got into offices where people are kind of going back to offices and we're supplying coffee and equipment to these offices, which is an interesting opportunity.

[00:39:10] And then we have this really cool product called the porover pack, which I kind of did the research towards the beginning of our journey.

[00:39:20] It was basically the question I asked myself, why would anybody buy touring coffee rosers on our shelf because it's one of hundreds of different rosers in the area. And I found out how do people drink coffee different parts of the world?

[00:39:36] And I came across as porover pack, that's a single serve that is a ground coffee that's in a filter that's a porover. And it basically just unfold over the cup and when I saw this, it just screen the Pacific Northwest camping.

[00:39:54] Because I camp a lot and when I go camping in the morning and the coffee is not made, like it's just, it's just an ordeal.

[00:40:02] Only the water of who has the French press is the coffee equipment out, why the water book for everyone on the ground for every while it's just a hot mess.

[00:40:11] So this porover pack was kind of that solution for why thought or camp coffee was basically a single serve.

[00:40:18] I just bring a multiple package of an a plastic bag or whatever in a campsack and I just have hot water ready when people wake up and just have the coffee ready whenever they feel like it's just a much simpler way to start off your camp day.

[00:40:36] And that product has evolved into many different ways largely I get a lot of that online e-commerce sales, through that product. I'm discovering that we're getting into hotels, really popular at retail stores especially specialty gift stores.

[00:40:54] Being able to move a lot of product is just so unique and it's biodegradable it just makes sense.

[00:41:00] Compared to all the other single serves that kind of in the industries that are plastic or just kind of accumulate in the landfills that I know when I sell this product that I actually feel good about it.

[00:41:15] That when it's being used that not you know doing any harm to the environmental climate because of kind of the real thing that we're all kind of challenging with with you know this whole climate thing so.

[00:41:28] This one thing I feel good about that is here to stay for for touring coffee with coffee roasters, which is this poor over back yeah. So right on that's super amazing and I've seen the packs in person I that is a great quick simple.