Mike starts his journey as a broke college student looking for a job. Starting at a barista and growing from there, the opportunity to be a part of something truly special was too much to resist. Now Biggby Coffee stretches across 13 states with well over 200 locations. This barista turned co-CEO and Co-Founder shares his story along with his newest book "Grow" with us.

Links:

Mike McFall's website: https://michaeljmcfall.com

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It's not about building a widget and making a,

making an entrepreneur rich to okay, fine.

That, but that's not to me anything to necessarily aspire to.

What I aspire to and what I hope to encourage others to aspire to is build

powerful organizations that are doing really incredible things in the world.

And then figure out as a group how to improve the human condition.

To me that's next level entrepreneurship.

Hello everyone, and welcome back to another episode of

Total Michigan where we interview ordinary Michiganders who are doing

some pretty extraordinary things.

And today's guest would definitely qualify as someone who is doing just that.

Literally coming out of nowhere, his business has just been

going absolutely gangbusters, expanding now across to 12 states.

And if that wasn't enough, he actually took the time to put pen to paper

and write, not one, but two books.

First book is called Grind, the No BS Approach to Take Your

Business From Concept to Cashflow.

Next, he wrote the book called Grow, which was recently out.

and that's Take Your Business from Chaos to Calm.

Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome to the show, the co-founder

and Co-CEO of Biggby Coffee.

That would be Michael McFall.

Mike, how are you?

Mike McFall, Biggby Coffee: I'm great, Cliff.

Thanks for having me.

This is great.

Awesome, and I'm completely looking forward to this.

So why don't you tell our audience where are you from?

Where did you grow up?

I, grew up in Highland, Michigan, which

is a suburb of Milford, Michigan, which is a suburb of, Metro Detroit.

But I, graduated from Milford High School, and I, I spent my, formative years there.

Biggby was actually started in Lansing.

And Yeah.

How did you wind up going from Detroit to Lansing?

I went to my, my undergrad degree was in Kalamazoo.

And I spent a few years outta Michigan right when I graduated.

And then I came back and, took a job in Metro Detroit, in, in corporate America.

And lasted about nine months before I was summarily fired.

But I, I, but I took a job.

my mom was a professor at Michigan State and one of her colleagues

was a close family friend.

And I was preparing to go back to graduate school and he invited me to come work

on a really quite interesting, research project that he was in the middle of.

And so I went to East Lansing to be a research assistant on that project.

And it was only 20 hours a week.

So I went around and I applied at all the different coffee shops,

in East Lansing at the time.

hoping to, compliment some of my income there.

And, and luckily, fortunately, I walked into our original store.

And was hired to become a barista there.

And so I would work from 6:00 AM till 2:00 PM at the coffee shop.

And then I would work from 2:00 PM until, 3:00 PM till

five or 6:00 PM in the evening.

So that was Monday through Friday.

Now, I know you said that you were looking

for something to supplement your income as a college student,

Why was it that you decided to pursue maybe being a barista at a coffee shop?

For me it seemed cool, like a social, more

of a social engagement than work.

Ah.

And, that proved out.

I lo I loved working in the coffee shop.

And I talk about here I am 25 years later and, I still remember those days fondly.

And I think I'm still in this business, this industry, because

I love that time so much.

So you've gotten hired as a barista at Biggby.

So obviously we know the end of the story, right?

You're Co-CEO of the company.

So I'm totally curious.

I know that there's, you worked your way up or whatever it is.

Walk us through that story.

How did you go from part-time barista to all of a sudden now you're Co-CEO.

I, so how that went down was my partner, Bob Fish, and,

Mary Rosell, they owned the first store.

And they were working on a second store and they approached me about

becoming a manager for them in that business, in that second store.

And, I wasn't particularly interested.

I had my path charted.

and then, but we sat down anyway.

And Bob and I sat down almost like formal interview style.

neither one of us.

That doesn't work well for either one of us.

And so we ended up popping up and going for a long walk, like a four

hour walk around East Lansing.

And this was spring of 1997.

At the end of that walk, we shook hands and agreed to found

or start a company together.

As equal partners, Bob, Mary, and I, that we would use that would be the entity

that we would use to grow the brand.

we started this thing on a handshake, and that's the company.

so they own the first two stores.

Then the company that we formed is the company, the platform we

used to really grow the business.

And so that's how it all started.

And so we, and that's the company that we, franchise within.

All of our contracts with all of our franchise owners

are with that organization.

and, and so that was how I went from barista to, to co-founder and now Co-CEO.

I wasn't the co, I wasn't the co-CEO then.

I think I, my first title was like Director of Operations or something.

Certainly I moved to, and but it was, I think in 2016 maybe, we, Bob and

I agreed and decided that we should become co-CEOs of the business cuz we

were, practically speaking, we were co-managing the business together.

So I wanna take a step back cuz this was something

that you mentioned before.

What did you get your degree in?

Economics.

Economics.

Okay.

Yeah, that's, we didn't have a, there wasn't really a business department,

at Kalamazoo College at the time.

but, So we got an economics, had some kind of a business, sub, sub, whatever

you call it, sub What do you call that?

Degree?

Sub degree.

There you go.

Sorry.

Yeah, like a minor or specialization or something?

Yeah, minor.

Thank you.

yeah.

Cuz I, I asked the question because you were talking before

about how, like initially you, you weren't interested in this.

And so I wanted to go back and find out what your degree was.

Cuz if you're going into economics, that's quite a little bit

different of a stretch going from economics to being an entrepreneur,

starting this brand new company.

But something appealed to you.

So during that four hour mysterious walk that you had, with Bob, something

appealed to you to say, you know what, I'm, I wanna start this.

What was that?

Mike McFall, Biggby Coffee: it was twofold.

the easy and simple answer is it didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what

was going on in coffee at that moment.

And so we, and then the other thing that, that, I also mentioned

that I, I enjoyed working there.

I really enjoyed being in the coffee shop.

Yeah.

The social aspect of it, really.

Sure.

Yeah.

The and I was really into hospitality.

And I loved making people feel good and so on.

but then the other major factor was, is that the Bob and Mary, were

doing something very different in coffee at the time than anybody else.

They had a very deep restaurant background.

And so they brought that experience to the coffee industry and we built out coffee

bars like they were high volume kitchens, not cute, quaint little coffee shops.

Ah, so the experience that, that they brought, what they had built

the system was and is truly amazing.

And so that is that I also sense the real opportunity because of that.

So then the question I gotta go back to, cuz you talk

about the real opportunity, right?

Which is, I'm gonna assume it's the power of franchising.

Why go the franchise model?

Why not just sit there and say, oh, let's open up a bunch of

shops and we'll leave it at that.

The franchise business model is a unique business model

and a, and an incredibly powerful one.

And we didn't know much about it at the time.

We had people calling us when we had two stores.

We had people calling us fairly regularly wanting to open a franchise

or asking if we franchised nice.

And so nice as a nascent little company, it didn't take too many

of those phone calls for us to think to ourselves, maybe we should

look into this franchising thing.

And then what happened for us was that we were very fortunate to be in Lansing

and have a woman by the name of Mary Ellen Sheets from two men in a truck

who was, willing to, mentor us and spend time with us talking about franchising.

And the other piece of that was that it really suited our mentality.

and, I, if I hadn't gone into this business, I'm 95% sure I would've

ended up in academia teaching.

And so as a franchisor, in so many ways, you are teaching, you're

coaching, you're mentoring, the franchise owners and my business

partner is very much the same way.

So the business model really suited us, our personalities and

how we approach the business.

And one of the things that I would like to explore

with you is obviously if people are wanting, are calling you up on the

phone and saying, Hey, I love this.

I wanna be a part of it.

Do you franchise?

Do you do something else?

Obviously at the core of this, you have a really good product.

Your coffee is really good.

And I really enjoy it.

And the question I got for you is that there's so many coffee

varietals that are out there.

You go around the globe and there's so many different types

of coffee that are out there.

How do you go about picking out the coffee varietal that is gonna be Biggby

signature coffee, the ones that you use in your espressos and everything else.

Yeah.

that's more my bus, my, partner Bob's side of the business.

And he's extremely good at it.

I put Bob probably top five, maybe top 10, people in, knowledgeable people

in terms of coffee in the country.

And I've been very fortunate cause I haven't had to build that myself,

that knowledge base because of him.

But I'll tell you that the, the actual bean that you choose.

it is a factor, in the end product.

But there's about 15 factors that go into that cup of coffee.

I say 15 arbitrarily, but there's a ton of factors that go into that cup of coffee

in that cup tasting the way it does.

And so much of that is what I already referenced in terms of Bob's and

Mary's experiences, restaurateurs.

And you have to buy the right bean.

It has to be, it has to be imported in the right way, in a way that it's

not, has, doesn't affected by the, the importing or the, shipping process.

But then also, you have to roast that bean, to, In an appropriate way.

And so we had to ask Paramount Coffee, who's been our roaster now for 25 years.

We had to ask them to roast their, our coffee in a different way than

how they were roasting their coffees.

Then it has to be, then it has to be, stored, properly.

It's brought into the store in a certain way.

We, for forever, we roasted on Thursdays.

It's changed a little bit now.

But we've roast, we roasted on Thursdays and the coffee was gonna, that coffee

that was roasted was gonna be in the store at the very longest by the next Friday.

And we always had a one week, process from roaster to store.

But then you get into taking that bean and actually turning it into a cup of coffee.

And I, There's so much in that process as well.

Sure.

so it's really, I would, I give the, a hundred percent of the credit to the way

our coffee tastes to one my partner's knowledge and picking the beans and then

roasting, that bean properly, to his experience in the restaurant business

and everything that we, that he brought to the table in terms of consistency,

process, procedure, all of that.

it's what made us successful.

Why don't you share with us maybe one or two of the biggest

challenges, the growing pains that you had, just taking this from a single one or

two person, Biggby operation to now all of a sudden you're managing like the growth

of dozens of these every single year.

What were some of those big pain points?

I, that's what I, that's what I cover

in my book, I, but I think to try to pull out a couple of nuggets.

I think the biggest challenge for any entrepreneur is understanding

how they impact the team and then therefore impact the business.

And so growing as a leader is absolutely critical.

you can't be the same.

You can't approach the business in the same way that you did in the first,

three to five years when you were in startup, 10 or 15 years later.

you have to have evolved.

You have to have grown, as a leader.

So that personal transition for Bob and I, without a doubt was, is the most difficult

thing that, that we've gone through, to get the company to where it is today.

I think there's been, moments in time that have been awkward and difficult.

But I've always approached the business, and I write about

this in my first book Grind.

I've always approached the business from the perspective of a business

is like a really cool, hyper dynamic, three-dimensional game of monopoly.

and and so even the challenges that we face, even the things that

come at us that are hard, and there are, there have been many of those.

that's all part of it.

And you have to expect that.

And it's, and it's in many ways exciting and invigorating

to take on those challenges.

And I think that, looking back on it, there, there aren't these,

I've got the stories, right?

We got put in default by our bank.

it was brutal, right?

And right.

and so like stuff like that, like we all have those stories.

Every entrepreneur has these stories, I think that we've been really good at

just, you take that stuff on head on and you solve the problems as best you

can and you just keep moving forward.

And if there's one thing that my partner and I have been really good

at, it's we're, we're now 27 years into the development of this business.

And we feel like we're just getting started.

and it's always been that way.

we had 10 stores, if we had 20 stores and a hundred stores and 200 stores.

It's we always feel like right now is the moment where we're

really gonna get traction.

It's really gonna be amazing.

And we're ju and we're just getting started with it, and I think that

mentality keeps us fresh and keeps us engaged and interested and so on.

You bet.

For our audience, we're gonna take a quick break to thank our sponsors.

When we come back, we're gonna talk some more about, Biggby

Coffee with Michael, and especially talk about his new book, Grow.

We'll see you after the break.

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Hello everyone and welcome back to Total Michigan.

I'm your host, Cliff DuVernois.

Today we're talking with Michael McFall, the Co-CEO co-founder of

everybody's favorite cup of coffee, and that would be Biggby Coffee.

Michael, before the break, we were talking a little bit about, some of the

growing pains that you had to go through.

And I love the term that you used evolved.

And the reason why I say that is because I know that there's a lot of

companies out there where like the c the CEO who starts the company,

isn't the one who grows the company.

But somehow or another, you and Bob have defied those odds, like you said, evolved

to now to the point where you not only started it, but you've now evolved it.

So what I would like to do is I would like to, explore a little bit more about the

managing of the growth of Biggby Coffee.

Because we're in Michigan, but all of a sudden now we're outside of Michigan.

You're in, we're in 12 states now, right?

Biggby coffee's in 12 states.

yeah.

I think it's, I think it's 13 now.

13.

Oh, see, I can't even keep up with you guys.

You guys are just on fire.

So talk to us about, about, about managing that growth while trying to

keep the integrity of the brand intact.

It's been a, it's been a learning curve for sure.

And we, I don't want to go too much into the weeds here, but, we're a franchise

company and Bob and I started having real anxiety over the stores that

were geographically removed from us.

And maybe we weren't servicing stores, the way we should and so on.

And I'll tell you, the sense of obligation and responsibility.

For the two of us when somebody signs on to become a franchise

owner, it's a big deal.

It's, a lot of people are putting a real serious percentage of

their net worth into these stores.

and we started having some anxiety.

And what we did is we followed the same, we built the same mechanism.

We had a, I should, another part of the story is that we had a pretty

deep relationship with Fred DeLuca from the Subway Sandwich shop chain.

Yes.

and so he, he.

Coached us, in, in many aspects of the business.

And one of the things that we decided to do is we decided to adopt the same

structure he has, which is they have what are called Development Agents,

and they have development agents that own are granted geographic areas.

And those are experienced franchise owners of the business.

and they take over a geography.

And they service that geography the same way we would.

And so they are our defacto representative in the marketplace, right?

And so they're the ones that build the relationships with the franchise

owners in that geography, support that owner in every aspect of the business.

And now in a geography, and we try to keep those.

Geographies to somewhere around a million people is Guy is how many

people that have, that, we call them area representatives that an AR an

area representative is responsible for.

And so now a franchise owner in a remote marketplace like let's say

Indianapolis, that franchise owner now has somebody local who's experienced,

who owns stores, who's developed stores.

And so that's how we have been able to, over the last, probably five, six

years, have grown the organization in a way so that the f the franchise

owner, who may be remote geographically has the support that they need.

And then we are responsible for taking care of that AR and ultimately

then therefore, the franchise owner.

And I think that's absolutely brilliant cuz I, the

other coffee chain that shall remain nameless, it seemed like their entire

expansion business model was, if our customers have to wait five minutes,

we need to open up another store.

And then of course that came back to bite 'em in the butt cuz they wound

up closing a lot of stores because they're, their business is hurting.

And so I think that this concept of having these, I think you call them area reps.

Yeah, they ours.

Yeah.

These area reps in the area like that to let these, franchisees know, Hey, you're

not on your own, we're not some nameless corporation just sending you coffee.

We're here to support you across, multiple angles.

I think, is that something that you, is that something that you were able to get

from, the gentleman from the subway model?

I'm sorry, his name escapes me.

I.

Yeah.

Yeah.

so he, okay.

He dev he developed that, many years ago, in Subway.

and then we adopted it.

And, and so it was, it's based on the same concept.

Great.

What I would like to do is I do wanna spend some time, talking

about your new book Grow.

And so when I was going through your book, it's unlike any other business

book that I've ever been exposed to.

if anybody in your audience wanted to check it out, I would almost say

this is Business 2 0 2, it's not 1 0 1

. And you spend a lot of time in

and you referenced this before when you were talking about, evolving.

And this is like a lot of the contents of your book when you're going

through is how to manage people.

And if you're lacking certain skills, then maybe you need to

hire somebody with these skills.

So why, first off my question is why did you feel that the

marketplace needed this book?

Mike McFall, Biggby Coffee: I, I think that, the more.

The more that we write and the more, that people have available to them

when they're starting a business from many different perspectives.

Mine's just one perspective, right?

And, but the more that's out there, the more that it's helpful, to people.

But I think the thing that I try to bring, which I believe is fresh,

is this concept of due diligence.

Everybody listening to this understands what due diligence, and it's a term

that's used constantly in business.

We do due diligence on just about anything and everything we can think of in advance

of starting a company or a business.

But we leave out the most important form of due diligence.

And that is due diligence on ourselves.

Ooh.

and so I start out, both of my books.

The first chapter is about due diligence.

Due diligence on you.

And so the key there is to understand how you are, and I mentioned this earlier,

how you are going to impact that business.

So what are your strengths?

What are your weaknesses?

How do you supplement your weaknesses and compliment your strengths?

and that to me is something that we all need to understand is that we

are the most important ingredient in the success of our business.

Now when you say we, you're talking specifically about who?

The entrepreneur, the founder, the, yeah.

so What we have to be doing is constantly evaluating and becoming more and more

aware, self-aware of our behaviors, of our nuances, and understanding

those so that we can, so that we can, counterbalance everything that

we bring to the table in a way that is the healthiest for the business.

And so that to me is one of the, one of the fresh takes that I put into this.

I've never heard that before in the world.

Talking about due diligence on ourselves as leaders and entrepreneurs.

Yeah, I think the closest that I've ever heard is,

being an entrepreneur is the ultimate self-help journey because like you

said before, you can't be stagnant.

You always have to be, evolving to take on the changes of not only that's happening

inside of your business, but you know the economy that's going around you.

And how the local economy, different than the national economy and how

you're gonna be expanding and all of this other stuff and all, regulations

that are, could, possibly change that could impact how you're building your

stores and all of that other stuff.

With your book Grind, when you write the book, what would be like the

one thing that you would hope that people would walk away from it with?

I, I get asked, often when I speak, How have

you been able to get the business to the point where it is today to, to

the level of success you have today?

and, I always reply with one word and Grind is a book about business

startup, and that's the first book.

and I reply with my one word is focus.

And so I think that, if I have to attribute where we, Bob and I have been

able to get the company today, it really is that we woke up every single day for,

20 plus years trying to sell one more cup of coffee tomorrow than we did today.

Yes.

and that's all we ever did.

That's all we've done.

Now, I'm, I, we're, we've moved on from that to some degree, a

meaning, I'm writing books and he's traveling the world sourcing coffee.

And so we're not running the minute to minute.

But we did for 20 plus years.

And so we didn't do anything else.

We didn't, and that's the bane of most entrepreneurs.

And I write about it extensively in Grind, which is, I.

If your, you have to figure out what your primary product

is, which isn't exactly easy.

And it took us a little while to get there to understand that our

primary product was, flavored lattes.

We weren't selling cappuccinos and macchiatos and cuanas and all these

traditional Italian coffee drinks.

We were selling what we reference nowadays, it's a party in a cup, right?

it is.

it's got whipped cream and caramel and, sprinkles and whatever it might be.

But you have to figure out what your core product is, and then you have to become

world class at delivering that product.

And then focus on that process.

core product delivery, and you iterate on both of those over time.

It's not like your core product today is gonna be exactly

the same 10 years from now.

And so that to me is how we were able to make the company successful.

So I just probably learned more in the last five minutes

than I have in the last three years.

So where should I mail the check?

That was brilliant.

you're too kind.

I love that.

No, I, like I said, I don't get to hear the stuff very often, thank you for that.

Sure.

and, I do wanna explore this too, and you opened up the door for it

because, you've got this knowledge.

You've obviously, you've had the time to sit and think about it.

You've written a book about it.

But also in, on top of everything else that you're doing.

You also teach at the Entrepreneur Center at, University of Michigan, correct?

Yeah.

Here in Ann Arbor.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So talk to us.

Talk to us about that.

What's it like being a teacher?

I.

Well, if you recall, I, I said if I hadn't done this,

there's, I think there's probably a 95% chance that I would've gone into academia.

Yes, you did say that.

And so I moved to Ann Arbor 10 years ago.

And I, I always had this notion that someday I would approach the

university and try to, try to teach.

Because I've, I, I.

I love the challenge of teaching in a class.

It's it, and so when I came here, that was always in the back of my mind.

I wrote Grind.

And then there's a gentleman here, who's been teaching a class, at the Center

for Entrepreneurship for I think, Gosh, it's eight or nine years, maybe longer.

And so what happened is his co-teacher became a regent, here

at, the university, Paul Brown.

And so he couldn't be an employee of the university anymore.

And so Brian approached me, Brian Hayden, approached me about co-teaching.

He had read Grind.

He liked it.

And he approached me and he said, Hey, I'd really like to

have your voice in my classroom.

And I went from not really having any kind of a plan.

And then the next thing you know, I'm in a classroom teaching and

co-teaching the class with Brian.

So that's how that, all that came to be.

But I'll tell you, you'd asked about how we got this thing to

where it is and so on, but I am an absolute advocate, passionate

advocate for the visioning process.

And we've, we've written a book at Biggby.

I co-authored a book, called The Moonshot Guide Book.

And it's all about visioning.

And I had always visioned being a teacher at the university level.

And I wanted to do that in my life.

And so here it is, I'm doing it and I love it.

And it's one of the more invigorating things I have in my life.

it's just three hours a week on Thursdays.

And, I just, I.

It is so invigorating to be with students.

Oh, I bet you it is.

One of the questions that I got for you is that, you're a wealth of knowledge.

and that's that right there for you to take the time to actually share that

with other people highly commendable.

The question I have for you is, obviously you've got a lot of experience

in the coffee world and you've got experience in the franchising world.

So I, so my question for you would be, How is it that you're able to take this

very, like coffee vertical, so to speak, and now tr transfer it so that way you

could almost apply it across any vertical?

how do you make that leap?

I think that comes from, I, I've read a ton.

And so am I always thinking about I, how my world, applies to other worlds

and how other worlds apply to my world.

And, the books I've written I hope are, incorporate a ton of what I've learned

through reading other people as well.

And I've got a whole chapter and grow that is about that, right?

That, that I can't, I just can't fathom people who say they don't read.

It's here we have, we've got the smartest people in history.

Who have had the most dynamic experiences, who write books.

And all of their knowledge and experiences available to us.

And so how is it that we don't read that?

and I just love, I love biographies.

I love reading biographies.

I love hearing the stories of people that have done amazing things.

And so I think that's one of the, probably the primary way I've been

able to take my insular little world of coffee, and maybe make it broader, and

more applicable to, to, more people.

and I will gotta say, cuz you know, you're talking

before about writing books.

I'm starved for books like all the time.

So I was thinking like, you know this gentleman, he's written

Grind, he's written Grow.

And then I wrote underneath of that, maybe his next book should be, Get

Out, how to Sell Your Business and buy a Tropical Island somewhere.

Mike McFall, Biggby Coffee: Yeah, I do have a third book,

so this is this from the outset.

This was meant to be a three book series.

And so there's a third book, that I'll, I don't know when I'll start writing it.

Probably 20, 24.

and, but it's, for me, a big part of being an owner of a business

and managing a business is not that goal, which you just mentioned.

Right, which is not the, Hey, let's build it, scale it, liquidate it, and go be

rich somewhere, And I call it Go play.

Go play.

Who's richer at the country club, and by the way, there's, I have no,

there's nothing wrong with wealth.

but what I want to do is I want to, and grow talks about this, but this

is really what my third book is gonna cover, which is I want to talk about

the impact that we can have as, as owners of organizations like this.

The positive impact we can have on the world.

Yes.

By building powerful organizations with dynamic teams of people.

And so that is, to me, that's next level entrepreneurship.

it's not about building a widget and making a, making an

entrepreneur rich to okay, fine.

That, but that's not to me anything to necessarily aspire to.

What I aspire to and what I hope to encourage others to aspire

to is build organizations.

Powerful organizations that are doing really incredible things in the world.

And then figure out as a group how to improve the human condition.

To me that's next level entrepreneurship.

Oh, maybe we should have led with that.

Cuz now my head's full of questions, but we're at the time now where I

have to say, Michael, thank you for so much for being on the show today.

If somebody wants to connect with you, find your books, see what you're doing

on the social, cuz you're like Mr.

Adventure Guy as well, which we didn't even have time to talk about that topic.

But what's the best way for people to connect with you?

I just launched a website this month with Grow.

It's michael j mcfall.com and that's where all my links to all my social

media, and then they've, I've got a classroom section in there with

different stuff that I've put together.

And there's a fair amount of content there.

So that's the best place to connect is michael j mcfall.com.

Mike, thank you so much for being on the show today.

I've thoroughly enjoyed this conversation if you could not tell.

But it's been absolutely great.

So thank you once again for taking time to talk with us today.

Thanks, Cliff.

Thanks, for the opportunity and thanks for having me.

Certainly, and for our audience, you can always

roll on over to total michigan.com.

Click on Mike's interview and get the links that he had mentioned above.

We will see you next week with another story of, ordinary Michigander doing

some pretty extraordinary things.