Chris Lindstrom chats with Ben Turiano and Jarod Thurbur, both from Joe Bean Roasters (@joebeanroasters). They chat about the launch of Tailor Fit Coffee (TailorFitcoffee.com) - their new contract manufacturing service, which aims to provide tailored coffee solutions for local businesses and restaurants. Some local examples were discussed including Hydra Coffeehouse and Pearson's.

Mentions:

joebeanroasters.com - taylorfitcoffee.com - @HydraCoffeeHouse - @ilovepearsonsroc -@moka_energy

Mentioned in this episode:

Joe Bean Roasters

Joe Bean Coffee - Coffee that lifts everyone. https://shop.joebeanroasters.com

Pauly Guglielmo Show

Pauly Guglielmo is a former radio guy turned food business entrepreneur. While running a manufacturing facility is his day job, he likes to dust off his broadcasting skills once a week on this podcast and talk to entrepreneurs and other influencers. https://pauly-guglielmo-show.captivate.fm/

Behind the Glass

Podcast and gallery focusing on underrepresented artists utilize the space to amplify their work. Curated by @Richardbcolon @qua.jay. Check out the podcast or join them in person first Fridays at 240 E Main St, Rochester, NY! https://behind-the-glass-gallery.captivate.fm

I'm Chris Lindstrom, and this is the Food About Town podcast.

Rochester.

Well, why Rochester?

Chris Lindstrom was a hoot.

He was just so much fun.

He never stopped talking.

I mean, it was great.

Here's a good idea.

Have a point.

It makes it so much more interesting.

For the listener, and we don't need.

Any characters around to give the joint atmosphere.

Is that clear?

We can, because I'm a pro.

That's what pros do.

I'm a professional.

Look it up in the book.

But now, yeah, I'm thinking I'm back.

And we are back with another episode of the Food About Town podcast.

I'm here on what turns out to be the first rainy day in a goddamn long time, and I'm about to go on a trip.

But I'm here with some guests.

I'm really excited to talk about things.

Guests, why don't you introduce yourselves?

My name is Ben Tiriano.

Oh, hi, Ben.

Thanks for coming over.

Nice to see you.

Thank you.

And I'm Jared.

Let's.

Let's try that one more time.

Go ahead, try one more time.

Oh, your microphone is not working.

I'm gonna have you rotate all the way over.

See this, this is the fun.

Everything.

Everything changes while you're on the fly.

We're gonna rotate.

We're not.

We're not cutting any of this.

We're.

We're doing this all on the fly.

Oh, let's see.

Let's see.

How's.

How's Jared looking now?

And wait, how we doing?

Oh, there you are.

All right.

Yeah, that's.

That's.

That is the joy of live podcast producing.

So you guys are here from Chill Bean Roasters, delightful sponsor of the Lunchadore Podcast network.

But, Ben, why don't you tell me a little bit what's going on right now?

It sounds like some changes and you.

Expansions and other things going on.

Yeah.

So this has been a little bit of a long building project for us, but basically we're launching a contract manufacturing service, so kind of making bespoke custom coffee solutions for different needs.

Yeah.

And it's one of those things that if you look at it just from, like, the words that are being said.

Right.

There's.

There's a lot of.

There's a lot of businessy words within that structure.

But I.

What I've seen a lot is a lot of places, especially restaurants, restaurants and producers and food producers, having a way to raise the floor, a bit of production to make sure you have consistent volume and other things and Also being able to satisfy the needs of a lot of places that don't have the expertise of doing the kind of roasting that, you know, Joe Bean does.

I think one of the things that started to build this out over the last kind of two to two and a half years was taking a look at wholesale, taking a look what our core competencies are, what value we can bring to lots of local business, lots of local roasters, and really putting that into its own kind of arm of Joe Beam, giving it its new name, giving it a new brand still under the same umbrella, but saying, hey, we've got assets that we've already put time, 20 years of experience into.

How do we offer this to our community within Rochester and beyond?

And that's what we're starting to build out right now.

And we're talking about here today.

Yeah.

So separating that is also kind of a like, that's a different, like it's not there that there hasn't been stuff already contract roasted, you know, out of Joe Bean, but separating it as kind of an arm of the business officially, what was kind of the impetus for that, to separate that and make it more official?

I mean, I think that's just kind of been the natural gravitational pull for the past few years, especially as, I don't know, the cost of green and the way that importers like to function has shifted in the past year especially, but the past few years.

So the name of the game with all this stuff is really the more you can be thinking in terms of containers.

Instead of breaking things down into these little, you know, individual couple bag lots, things like that, everything just starts to just run a lot smoother.

So for us it's been, you know, we found these farmers and these kind of in country export groups that we really like working with.

So it's been trying to figure out, okay, how can we do more business with you and how can we make this whole thing just flow more efficiently?

Yeah.

And honestly, volume is the way to do it.

So that's been a huge driving force.

And then I think from the wholesale customer perspective, I think a lot of it too is people wanting things that are specific to, you know, their business and their businesses personality and how they're trying to present their products.

And it's not always the same as the way that we're presenting our products.

Right.

Yeah.

But making sure we can still accommodate that in a way that doesn't feel, you know, disingenuous to us or doesn't feel, you know, in congruent with our sourcing ethics, you wanting to feel good about what we're doing for sure.

But make it feel.

Yeah.

Like it makes sense for you.

Right.

No, and I think that's a very logical thing too is that this isn't right.

This isn't just getting, oh yeah, now we're just grabbing commodity coffee and we are, right now we're roasting that we're still carrying the same, you're still carrying the same ethics of direct sourcing and you know, equitable treatment, you know, keeping everybody intact as much as they can be.

But I think that point that you brought up about the logistics.

Yes.

Volume, volume pricing is a thing.

Right.

It's everybody that's involved in business deals with that.

But I think the other part of that that you mentioned is that just the logistics part of oh, you can just ship a whole container, it doesn't have to change hands as much in between.

It can just go from place A to place B and then to you and that's it.

Right.

Well, you know, we're, everything's still running through importers and post Covid, but especially this past year, importers are becoming just more and more risk averse.

I can't imagine why.

So there's just not the same.

You know, for a long time it kind of felt like everyone got away with something that just didn't make sense.

Right.

And that we were all able to pick out these extremely expensive micro lots of coffees and importers were just incredibly willing to finance this stuff without a lot of guarantees and for you know, relatively high risk business.

Right.

Especially places that are mostly reliant on like foot traffic based income.

Right.

The fact that these massive importers are bankrolling all these people and willing to go through all this logistical headache of splitting containers, warehousing all that stuff, pulling itty bitty amounts individually.

I don't know, it makes sense that that had a little bit of a expiration date to it.

Yeah, I think that's, I mean it kind of sounds in a lot of ways like when you see startups coming out where they're like, oh, you can get this thing for $5 and they're just losing hundreds of millions of dollars every year by giving stuff away and then miraculously at some point the prices all go up because they have to actually make a profit.

Not quite as the extreme, but that kind of customization is expensive.

And when I'm sure they're spending so many resources negotiating with the ever changing tariff structures, like you don't have the bandwidth to do tiny things Anymore either.

Yes, that's, I think a huge part of it is just narrowing down, focus and saying, okay, this is in reality where 95% of our businesses.

So let's just focus on that.

You know, not that I don't want to speak on behalf of importers by any means and, you know, but I'm.

Making a logical jump there.

But I think, you know, based on my experience in my day job that involves logistics and other things like that, it's just so many businesses are going that way where standardizing, simplifying, leaning down and trying to keep the same standards while you have to tighten everything at the same time.

Right.

So, Jared, on your side, what, what is your, what's your role in this?

And just generally in Joe Bean at.

This point, I run the wholesale operations of Joby.

So, okay, this, this naturally is on my side of the.

The PNL sheet, and that's where I live.

And that's where we really have begun to focus.

And just listening to you guys chat.

Sorry, is that better just listening to you guys chat?

I mean, you hit on a couple of points that make sense for our transition.

It was sourcing and importers, it's leaning down, but it's also adding value in, you know, adding kind of our pick pack ship program so people can now who are just cafes, they can also take advantage of what we do in house for pick pack shipping.

Meaning we just added a revenue arm to your business that didn't add to your overhead, didn't add to anything.

So it gives you more opportunity to try and make some money in times where if you're not online, you should be looking towards online.

Well, I think let's.

Yeah, let's.

Let's take a step back and let's talk about like you started diving into the structure of the options.

I mean, let's talk through because I'm, I'm fascinated because I love, I really enjoy this side of things, you know, from a analytical perspective.

So let's talk about like, the different, like, options option structure that a business might have when working with Joe Bean from a wholesale.

So like, first, like they could buy Joe Bean coffee at wholesale at volume.

Exactly.

So over the last two and a half years, at least from when I've been here, we've been really jumping into data and seeing and understanding what our customers need.

So there is.

I love a spreadsheet standard.

Oh, you know who loves spreadsheets is Ben Tiriano also.

Yeah, we.

We've gotten along on spreadsheets and monochromatic color Schemes.

That's.

That's where it's at.

Oh, I don't, I do.

I do like a color, but they have to be judicious.

Ah, I like it.

Yeah.

But I think that the customer just listening to them, we really kind of fleshed out what we need to start doing and the fact that we could do all of the things our customer was asking.

So how do we make this an actual robust program?

And that's where we started moving.

And Ben's done a lot of the facilitating in the background of that.

And we're utilizing a lot more streamlined processes, utilizing airtable really for what we're doing on all of TaylorFit call coffee solutions.

Yeah.

But yeah, the programs were really built out by having a couple really cool case studies within Rochester that we currently work with that we could talk about if we want to.

We'll drop them those names later on.

Yeah.

Because I'm kind of intrigued.

So like, like there's, there's many different ways you could grab little pieces.

And I'm kind of, what I'm trying to understand is just like, like how much of it is picking, like pick and choose or their standard, like kind of packages.

Like, like somebody could just buy Joe Bean, like standard jobing coffee wholesale.

Whether it be the blends that exist or single origin stuff at volume at, you know, wholesale pricing.

Then there's the white label program.

White label is the next jump, which you could take one of our blends, slap your label on it and get to town, start selling.

Yep.

Or then, then it's customizing white label.

And it's customizing white label.

So again, you can utilize our in house blenders or you can come up with your own ideas.

Hi, in house blender.

And then you know, if there's, if you have robust ideas of where you want to take your coffee program, you're gonna come sit down with Ben and myself and we're gonna talk through what you can do through us.

You know, we like to control a little bit of that because we have the relationships with our importers.

We know what's coming down the pipe.

Ben's getting samples all the time.

And a lot of people we've talked to want to try and bring in spot coffee, which is getting tougher and tougher and tougher to do and expensive to do.

Ben could probably speak a little bit more on the toughness of that coming down the pipe.

But beyond that, then it's full customization, full program from the top down where you're not really using any of our products or we can replicate products that you want to try to replicate.

And that's something that we've dabbled a lot in over the last six months.

And I think stretched Ben's, you know, just looking at a coffee blend, you know, analyzing that and then trying to replicate that with our own either blenders or bringing some stuff in to do that with.

And he's done a really good job so far on that.

Well, and that's, that's a pretty robust suite of different options.

Right, for, for a business when they're thinking about who are we?

Who are we as a business?

And I think that's the real core question of what, what do they need is who are you?

Like, are you, are you this, are you, are you just a front end?

You want to make no decisions?

Do you want to make all the decisions but don't want to roast or deal with that side of it?

Or do you just want to have a simple, hey, we want the, you know, we want the bona fides for having, working with, with Joe Bean.

So the labels on all the things and there's so many different directions you can take.

And that's kind of why I was like, from the suite of options, I find it always interesting.

Where does it start?

Where does it stop?

Man, we've had, I mean, we have that kind of outline of what we offer, but every customer that we've talked to has a different request or a different need that now really expands upon what we offer.

But we sit down internally and discuss each and every need of these customers to see if we can add value to it, to see if we can actually facilitate it or if we've got a kind of, you know, consult with people on those things or send them somewhere else, because we can co pack other things also and we have those connections, things we don't want to do in house.

Yeah, well, and I think that's, that's something, you know, that over the years, listening to one of our lunchroad or podcast network members, Polygoogliamo, talk about with Kraft Cannery and the work he does out there was.

He had a lot of yeses for a long time and at some point he had more, more nos because he figured out over time this is the, this is the wheelhouse of what we do.

I think the way he described it is we make sauces and we put them in containers.

I'm like, okay, that, that.

And we, we make a high quality, you know, sauce type thing and we put it in containers.

I'm like, that is that is a very clear, very vague cloud of options.

But it does add clarity.

Yeah, well, yeah, we're not going to be like roasting meats and putting them into, you know, freeze dried bags.

Cool.

Like we know what we're doing, we know what part of what we don't do.

And I think that's part of a structure of learning, learning this whole thing.

But I think that's also like there's a lot of lessons from all the stuff that has been done over the last, you know, five years of kind of building this on the, on the, on the low side of things.

For sure.

Yeah.

I think saying no resonates a lot with me.

That's something we've gotten really good at doing and figuring out.

Stop it.

I don't know if we've gotten good at it.

I generally keep Ben from saying no as much as possible, but he does love to say it.

Yeah, but I mean that is a business that is.

Well, we're slightly antagonists to each other and it's good, it's good.

And I think I'm usually right though, right?

I mean, I don't, I haven't looked at the stats lately, but if there's data I could look at, I, I'd love to see it.

Is there a spreadsheet?

Maybe Chris has got one.

Oh, I'm sure we can do that.

Just, just a simple.

Is Ben right?

Yes.

No.

Again, I want to see the percentage.

Like I don't know what's on the table here, but yeah, I think it's a team effort.

Well, I think so.

I, you know, also like, I'm just relating to a lot of how I work in my day job is like I, for our applications and account managers, our sales team, I make all the schedules for all of those efforts.

And I always disappoint the project managers and I always disappoint the account managers because I'm the in between.

Right.

I'm always telling them I want more time and then the operations team will always tell me I didn't get them enough time.

And there's always a push and pull from sales account managers to engineer types.

Right?

Where you're, hey, this is the focus and this is the focus.

And there always is a push and pull.

But I think that's where honest, real communication comes in.

And also it also helps that like it's now you can throw over the wall at 20 different engineer type people.

You have, you know, a very small amount of engineer type people.

You can throw it over the wall at it does.

You can't just hope it works.

It's like, oh, we have to work this out.

Yeah, we do.

And there's no, there's no bureaucratic red tape at Joe Bean.

Yeah, it is a.

There's a couple bureaucratic yellow.

Yellow barrier.

Yellow barrier tapes you have to go through.

But bcqi, Isn't that what it is?

Whatever all the barrier tapes for.

Yeah.

All food safety.

All food safety.

That we love to do.

But yeah, I mean, that's.

That's one thing that they run.

Right.

Open and honest communication, whether it's combative or not, or it's antagonistic or it's.

No, we need to take a deeper look at this and we'll take a little bit more time to do so, but things move quick, I think sometimes too quick for the people we're talking to.

Yeah.

Because we will get back to accounts quite quickly and they're not ready for a response half the time.

Like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

I thought you're gonna take a month to figure this out.

Well, I think we don't need to.

Right.

That's also a, that's also a factor in.

Do places want to work with you?

They see.

And it's also odd sometimes, like when things are too fast.

Yeah.

People are like, did you really think about this?

Did you really do?

And I've seen quotes come back for things where I'm like, there's no way you really understood what this was going to take.

But I think that's also a systems thing too, is, hey, if you have the systems and you really understand your business, it doesn't have to take weeks to bring something like this to somebody.

Yeah.

And it's not, I mean, to the point of Paul, you know, making sauces that go in containers.

We roast coffee that.

That's.

It goes in.

Yeah.

So there's not that many permutations to it.

Right.

It's not, I don't know, it's not rocket science to figure out that kind of stuff.

Easy, Ben.

Well, and I think that's the thing is like, like you've also been deep into it for so long.

And all the things that, like at this point, the structures that are built, all the relationships you have, there's a lot of those things that are established and obviously need maintenance, but those are the things for people that are new, that are just like this impenetrable fortress of stuff that.

How do you even start.

Bordering on impossible at volume to make it worthwhile, which is a whole thing.

It's a tough industry to break into.

And it's been a tough year for the industry in general too with market volatility and everything.

It's.

I don't, it's hard to start for sure.

Yeah.

I mean, hard to maintain.

But it just seems like the wall right now.

I mean the environment is kind of primed for experts in the field that know what they're doing and can, can provide a service.

Well, and relationships too.

I mean we, we had a number of producers when the sea spiked this year.

We had a number of producers say, hey, we've been working with you guys for years.

We're not going to raise prices, we're going to keep stuff, you know, as similar as we can and then just kind of ride this thing out and see what happens.

We're not trying to be super opportunistic about this and that's, you know, made the world of a difference for us.

Yeah.

And also, let's take a step back.

So you mentioned the sea.

Just describe what that is for a second for the non familiar with the coffee supply chain terminology.

So coffee's purchased against a futures market and usually coffees are priced at a differential over.

Over futures.

Right.

So you're buying and selling futures.

There's a few different trading periods throughout the year and with, you know, tariffs and everything like that, combined with lower harvests last year, the sea's been on an upward trend for a while.

But it spiked really rapidly and then it's just been kind of going up and down like crazy.

So if you're just straight up buying coffee that's priced against that, the coffee that you used to buy for relatively stable prices every year now is, you know, two, three times the price.

Yeah.

In most places you can't absorb that much and you can't charge customers twice what they were paying before.

So you're kind of stuck trying to figure something out.

Yeah.

And just as analogy for people, it's like when you're getting a mortgage, you're paying off of the prime interest rate and then there's an offset for that that your bank is doing to make their profit.

And coffee has that similar kind of not exact ratio, but off of the commodity market where this is baseline coffee that is bought, bought and traded at an insane volume that's hard to even fathom.

But everything kind of floats off of that.

Just like interest Rates float off of prime and obviously your credit scores and everything else.

It lives in that same world of offsets.

But, and I think that's the struggle too is especially for small, for newer sourcing or newer businesses or small businesses.

I know Carrie, my wife, when she was sourcing some stuff for her micro business that is sourcing stuff from, from different countries that the tariff variability was, oh, this is the difference in between me having to raise my prices by a third or I can keep it.

The same is the timing of when the order showed up.

And it's really scary for small businesses without those long term relationships that you can float these things as a team.

Yeah.

And I guess I should say most of the coffees we buy have historically not been differentially priced.

Mostly we're, you know, directly negotiating a price with the producer that we both feel good about and that just helps it stay stable for everybody.

But there still are some coffees we buy differentially.

And then when the market gets this high, even if we're, you know, doing standard flat rate pricing, at a certain price point, you know, some producers start looking, saying, well, wait a minute, like I'm going to make way more money if I just sell this conventionally versus selling to you.

Right.

So if someone's looking at those things, you can't say, hey, don't sell your coffee other places.

Right?

Yeah.

So again, we've had a number of places that said we value our relationship with you, we want to stay with you, but it's definitely mixed up the whole purchasing cycle for everybody.

And some producers are buying coffee that's more expensive and I'm just buying less coffee from them, you know.

Yeah.

And that's just reality.

And then hopefully next year we're able to go back to what we were buying from them.

But it's a tough, tough, I don't know, wave to surf or tough needle to thread or analogy.

Some sort of analogy.

Yeah.

It's the entire industry too.

Yeah.

It's not like small producers, medium producers, large.

It's everybody.

The entirety of the coffee industry is in a new world.

Yeah.

As we say.

So I think we're going to do, we're going to take a break, we're going to dive a little bit more into, you know, how the structure of this works and then kind of just talk coffee and whatever else for a little bit.

And we'll be right back.

All right.

And we're back with the second half of our conversation, talking with the Joe Bean Roasters team.

Ben, where can everybody find Jobean Roasters on the Internet.

Jobingroasters.com oh, jobinroasters.com you can also go, you can buy bags on, you know, on demand, or you can also do the Perpetual Joy subscription for coffee, which is freshly roasted just for you and provided either for pickup or shipments.

Go to joebeanroasters.com to get your subscription today.

Oh, yeah, didn't.

That sounds good, Dustin?

It was good.

Nailed that.

It's not bad here and there.

I can pull off.

I can pull off a decent ad.

Was perfect.

Seamless.

So I was kind of wanting to dive into, dive into some of the other sides of, you know, the wholesale side, because you've been doing the wholesale side for how long now with Joe Bean, but you were also doing some of stuff like this before.

Yeah, so I had a previous career in the alcohol industry and owned a couple businesses there and.

Which is where we met originally for.

Leonard Oaks Estate Winery, Steampunk cider, Linoken Farms.

But yeah, so I cut my teeth in the alcohol industry.

That is much tougher than the coffee industry, but also moves much quicker than the coffee industry.

Imagine that.

Yeah, highly caffeinated, but moves so slow.

But yeah, and that, that really, I learned a lot from that, you know, 15 years in the alcohol industry that I could bring some of that to Joe Bean, some of that insight.

But again, there's.

Even though they're, they're both kind of craft bev industries, they're wildly different in approach because we grew everything, we did everything in house.

We are reliant now with coffee on other countries, other growers that we're friends with and all of the uncertainties of our current economy.

So all those things, they don't necessarily translate to my previous career, but there's been some effect there and I've been there for two and a half years.

Yeah, because I think though it's always what lessons can you bring from, you know, similar aspects of it that, you know, are still applicable, but you know, it's not.

Sometimes it's never as clear as like, oh, I was in, like I was in aerospace then I'm.

Now I'm in automation.

They didn't work together at all.

But you know, some of the ethos of quality and other things like that, those are the things that carry over and, you know, making sure everything's documented properly and whatever.

So what, what I was kind of wondering is when you're, when you're working on this, I'm sure this is like the big thing coming in is what are you bringing to wholesale?

What are you bringing to sales when you're thinking about the launch of something like this?

We talked about some of the offerings, but where do you see it, like as a creative output too is how else can you, or would you think about assisting places with branding, with other things like that?

How, how does any of that come into play?

Yeah, I think so.

As my position goes and as, as what I bring to the table and it, and it.

The ethos that you speak on for us is relationships from the farmer on through to our customer.

And for me, my customer is another business.

Yeah.

And I get to listen to all of their needs, wants, dreams, blue skies.

And I have to translate that into what we can do.

And then I have to talk to Ben and Kathy and Dina and see if we're willing to do.

And then if we don't do it in house, when it comes to creativity, I think we've got the assets within our sphere of influence to bring to somebody else's table to say, hey, if you don't design yourself, we think it's a very important piece of any given product that you're going to try and sell.

We've got assets for you that we think are very good.

We supply them with those assets.

So the creativity for me just comes from me sitting down with Chris and saying, what are your needs?

How do I help you?

Slightly consultative, but moreover, relationship driven.

Yeah.

And I think that's the thing too is there's something about the way, the way my wife will describe me sometimes is like my favorite thing to do is just, you know, be at a place and talk to a guy and obviously a guy of any gender, but just sit in a place and talk to somebody.

Right.

Is my absolute favorite thing to do.

But it's always about that micro relationship.

And I think the other thing I've really found I enjoy is when I have like minded people in my life that need to be introduced together.

Sometimes it'll come up, sometimes I'll bring it up.

But that opportunity to share those resources with people for a designer that happens to be really good is just one of the great things.

One, it feels good.

Two, it's building this whole community of like minded people and then also expanding.

What do you offer?

How can you offer more without having the same infrastructure?

I think our network, I think everybody's network is an important piece to the equation, especially from a business.

If we can't do it, I'm going to get you somebody who we have already worked with.

We understand the costing that They've put forth.

We had an account this year, Mocha Energy that we're doing, you know, that we're in this process with which I.

Heard like talk about that for a second because I heard about it and it is such an interesting idea.

It is a coffee and chocolate based food product.

It's a chocolate bar.

Yeah.

Or I think he calls it a coffee bar.

Yeah.

A great concept.

You know, it's a clean label, everything, clean ingredients.

We sat down with them from to front and now he's.

He's gone live with at least our beans as a companion product and as bars are about to hit market.

But working with Tom, who is a networker himself.

He's a salesman for packaging company but he hooked us up with people that have saved us money already.

So this partnership has gone both ways.

Is that we're helping him create his product that he's been dreaming about and his other investors.

And we've taken him from zero to a hundred.

He's now got the website, he's now moving product.

He's able to go out and take another round of investing in because he's got viable product on the table.

But in turn, any moment he gets.

He's hooking us up with his network also.

So we hooked him up with designers, bag producers, printers.

That also helped him get to where he's at now.

Yeah.

And that's the other thing too.

So side note, if people want to hear more about that story because this is where I learned about it was on Polygoogliamo show.

He did a full hour with.

With Tom and it was, it was a really, really good interview, especially for somebody who was pivoting and doing something different.

And to hear the other side of the story, I think to hear the other side being very similar to.

Yeah.

Where everybody.

Hey.

They just, hey, it's a good idea.

What do you need?

How can we help?

How do we do this?

I think being mouthpieces also for the people that we're working with, you know, as long as they okay that.

And just like Paulie, Paulie, if he loves what you're doing, Paulie is the biggest mouth.

He walks around with a bullhorn always.

And I love that.

Or Chris, you guys walk around with bullhorns and we can, we can also offer that and that's what we do.

If we can talk about your successes and how we work together.

Those things are important in a small community.

It's better for everybody.

And so I kind of want to talk about some of the other like because you Know, mocha is one which is new, like people don't know about yet.

Well, it was a food product, but.

It could be huge and it could be this big product and I love that.

Hey, that's a relationship that could be built, that raises the floor of production and everything else.

Well, yeah, these are slow moving monsters right now.

Yeah.

So.

And that's.

The whole industry moves a little slower, but it pushed us into a different realm.

Like coffee is a food product.

Not something that Ben would have ever dreamed of being a part of.

But again, back to the how does this relationship work?

I get the idea and the dreams.

And I go to Ben, Kathy and Dina and say, hey, what do you think about doing this little thing?

Well, I think we can do that and if it fits into our system and it fits well, let's do it.

Yeah, because there's like we talked about some of the other structures.

I know there are some like notable, like local Rochester places that use jobing roasted coffee.

I know one of them, which, you know, it's on the bags is, you know, Hydra Coffee House over on Monroe.

Yeah.

So that's kind of that first step into, you know, your own coffees.

That's a.

It's kind of a white label account.

So they took one of our base blends, they added, you know, their own labels to it.

They chose what they wanted.

And that's what they've been carrying at Hydra since inception.

Yeah.

And it's a cool little shop too.

Love it.

And I think it's also.

That's a clarity of focus.

Right.

We just wanted, you know, it's a cool environment in an area that didn't have a local, like a local place right around the corner.

And I think we're just seeing that more and more where like, you know, the coffee shops are less destination places and a lot of them are just serving a small neighborhood or a smaller swath of space.

I know on dialed in, we just had Colin from Montgomery Court over who's, you know, doing.

Trying to have a shop that's running and it's in a small area that isn't near lots of other things.

And I think we're just seeing the fragmentation and everybody wants to fill these little spots of coffee that we saw in beer.

Right.

We saw beer expand so rapidly and that everybody wanted the brewery experience at the smallest areas.

And then we saw, you know, everything else happen as well.

But I think that opens up all the opportunities for, hey, people need support, people need these kind of things.

What kind of other examples do you have, like, you know, of how this, how this works.

I think one of the most robust examples we have is with Pearson's.

This is what, two.

A little over two years now that we've been working with Pearson.

So they came to us when there was a change in ownership, change in branding, and John Swan just came and sat down and said, here's the deal.

And we were just starting to dabble into the concept of this and really it's where we cut our teeth on this, all of this programming, because we've, we've gone from just supplying their coffees to their spec to, you know, ramping their sales through, you know, I think it's six or seven places that John Swan has now that he utilizes the beans for all the restaurants and spaces.

And then now we've, we've, we've not only helped grow that, but also now he's grown into distribution, which we've helped facilitate that with our processes and efficiencies.

And it's allowed him to grow from 7 Wegmans to now 22 Wegmans.

And I think their velocity is very good.

Through that, we've been able to uphold our end of the deal, you know, with consistency and quality.

And I think that relationships really pushed us into making sure that our processes are clean, concise, and now we can kind of take those and make that program for Taylor Fit Coffee and say, hey, we've done this.

We know exactly how it looks, we know where there's failure points and that's really what we've, you know, we're thankful for that relationship just for that reason.

I mean, that much learning, right?

Like, there's a lot of learning with that kind of process.

It's not, oh, we start now, we're perfect at this relationship.

It's never that simple.

No, we knew that from our own perspective.

But working through somebody else's business to achieve the same things, that's.

Yeah, there's a bit of learning there.

Yeah.

And especially, especially a place that, you know, people knew in different iterations as, as a roastery.

I mean, our friend, your friend John Cannon, you know, doing roasting for a long time and, you know, people knew that from.

They knew it as a roastery.

And, you know, perceptions are always perceptions.

But I think when I, when I originally heard about all this, you know, a long time ago, was how happy I was to see, hey, we're not going to do what we're not great at.

We're going to do something we're really good at, running these things.

We're really good at marketing.

We're really good at running, you know, running a cafe or running restaurants.

We're not the back end of this.

Of this side of it.

I think that is good business sense and also bringing experts in to do that.

And, you know, speaking of, like, hey, we're.

We're talking about the coffee side, right.

Hey, that's the branding, you know, the backbone, the logistics.

But also, hey, they had a style and a profile that people were familiar with.

When.

When you're diving into that, Ben, that's.

That's a different challenge as well, because you've had, I'd say, a pretty consistent profile of roasting for the entire time that I've known you.

It has to be kind of a different challenge to flex into.

You know, hey, we want to mimic this style.

How has that process been for you to learn how to work with them and do different things?

Yeah, I mean, that was a pretty easy one.

They had very specific.

They came in with roast profiles.

They came in with very specific asks.

So then it's just a matter of, okay, this is what you want us to do.

We'll follow exactly what you want us to do.

Yeah.

So that's not.

We've had other customers where we're being given a product and they're telling us, well, we're not totally sure what's in this, but can you make it taste just like this?

And that's.

That's a more difficult thing where you're, you know, sitting and sorting beans and saying, okay, this looks like this.

This looks like this.

And, okay, I think I can do this.

And then you tasting everything and reconstructing from scratch, which is fine.

Right.

But when someone comes in with a very specific set of, here's what I have.

I'd like you to do this in this exact way.

That's okay.

You got it.

Well, I think that's.

That's kind of like.

That's the dream in many ways of, like, oh, yeah, you know, what you want from a technical side.

Yeah.

Because that.

That's a technical thing, not just a flavor profile.

We know the tech of what's going into this.

And, yes, you have to translate from roaster, you know, different roasting machine to your roasting machine, but at least it gives you a baseline of, here's what's going on.

For sure.

When you do get the.

The cloudy idea of, oh, we want it to be.

I'm going to use terms that are frustrating for me as a coffee fan.

We want it to be bold.

We want it to be smooth.

We want it to be friendly.

We want it to be, you know, these things when, you know, when, let's say, a customer that doesn't know quite as much is coming in and you're trying to.

You're trying to work through that process.

And I know it's probably both on the sales and both on the, you know, the tech side, the roasting side, when you're trying to get them to answer the questions to get down to what they really like.

How does that process.

How's that process gone?

I think doing this has been a learning curve.

This is the challenge.

Yeah, no, it is.

It's the hardest thing.

And what artists and tech people struggle with.

So vagaries.

What we found works the best is if we can sit people down with a bunch of options in front of them.

And then the question isn't, does this match this descriptor?

It's just, all right, here's A, here's B.

Which one do you like better?

Okay, got it.

Here's C. Here's D. Which one do you like better?

This one.

Okay, got it.

Right where you can go.

You can taste through things together, give people some choices.

And then I think people aren't always necessarily great at articulating why they like something or what they like about a thing, but people are really good at saying, I like this, I don't like this.

And that's an easy one to be like, okay, got it.

Yeah, it's true.

I think that's what we finally landed on, is this kind of process.

And we've been through quite a few different processes to try and match these, you know, dreams and.

And theories on coffee.

But, you know.

Yeah, I can just, you know, I see Ben's face when I tell him these things, and he wants more information from me, but I'm like, I can't get it out of them.

So what can we do here?

And then we have to start throwing darts.

And, you know, dart comes back.

No, it wasn't chocolaty enough, or it wasn't this or that, and which, again, is easy to say, but that's why this A, B, C, D, E, F thing works.

And I think it's going to work into the future.

We're just going to sit you down and we're going to have all of these situations where you and your staff can come or you and your decision makers can come and talk.

So I can almost pull myself out of the middle of trying to translate this information, and Ben doesn't have to look at me.

Kind of.

And just eating my soul.

As I tell in these things, he'll do it with a smile, but I can tell what's behind the eyes.

Well, I think.

Look at him right now.

Look at him.

Well, well, because here's the thing, right?

I mean, like Ben and I was.

We've always gotten along in this because I have.

Although I live in the world of gray areas, I'm a purist with many things, coffee amongst them.

And you know, Ben has polluted my soul and my taste buds with purity.

And polluted with purity.

Wait a second.

And it is, it's.

I love that side of it.

Right.

I love the nerdery and the.

Can we make the simple perfect?

How do we.

How do you take the simple and make it, you know, exceptional?

And then there's all of the gray area of, oh, we're carrying our ethics.

We're doing all these things and building this, building this profile.

And I think that it's, it's the little things, like, I know, like here in the studio, we'll have people come in that are very nervous, right.

I don't have to worry about that today.

So we didn't go through the whole routine.

But I'll have people come in that are nervous to the point of I'm not sure I want to do this.

And they'll be shaky.

You know, it'd be a panel thing.

And it's like the easiest thing you can do is talk for 10 minutes.

Well, maybe you shouldn't be intimidating.

I know, right?

But often what I'll do is I'll set them and say, hey, hey, we've done this a lot of times.

We've had a lot of nervous people.

Here's what's going to happen.

You're going to be quiet when you start and that when you hear other people talk, you're going to see that they're having a good time.

You're going to start quiet.

You're going to get louder.

By the end, I'm going to have to turn down your microphone.

Nice.

And that you're going to walk away having had a good time.

I thought you just gave them bourbon, but that's.

That it's happened, but really it's.

It's setting that expectation in their head that they are taken care of.

Yeah.

And when you're talking about that process of, oh, how do we get them to understand it?

We taste and you say, hey, we've done this.

We've done this a lot.

We are experts in roasting coffee.

We are experts in Tasting, we're just going to walk you through.

You just have to answer honestly.

You don't have to know about everything.

You don't have to know the coffee flavor, you don't have to know origins, you don't have to know about cupping process.

But if you sit there and taste honestly and openly, you're going to learn something and that you're in good hands.

And I think that's.

It's the hardest message to portray other than confidence without being a con man.

Right.

It's like, hey, you're building that confidence in somebody that, hey, we know what we're doing.

And I think the tasting makes that difference too.

Where you're sitting down and, hey, just taste.

We're not pressuring anything.

Yeah.

Ish.

Yeah.

You know, coming from the wine industry and then, you know, also tasting in the coffee world, they're similar.

People walk up to it.

Like you just said, it's this.

I can't say this smells like hot dog water.

Sure.

But you really can.

And there's nobody that's going to judge you for that other than Ben behind his eyes.

Well, I mean, like, in the wine industry, like, there's legitimate tasting notes like, oh, this Sauvignon Blanc has notes of cat pee.

Right.

That is a legitimate tasting, legitimate nose note.

And people say in the wine industry, there's no, there's no irony, there's no laughter.

Just is.

It just is what you get.

Whatever your memory is.

Yeah.

Of those things, I mean, I think not having to describe is a huge, you know.

Absolutely.

The more you can make it just a. I like this, I don't like this.

Versus, like, well, what does it taste like too?

That's the, like.

All right.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

Burnt Marshmallow on a 90 degree day in Costa Rica's lower plains.

Yeah.

Then you get really, really heady.

Yes.

I just listened to this interesting book about neuroscience in regards to music, but I think it's very similar with taste as well.

But they're talking about how essentially our senses don't just go to our cerebral cortex, but it goes through your cerebellum.

Right.

And sound especially so.

But our senses are linked to these, like, very, very base parts of our brain.

Right.

That we process on a very primal animation, animal level.

Right.

And then there's also the higher thinking stuff, so you don't have to engage the higher thinking brain all the time.

And I think there's a lot of power in just that, like, base gut response.

So grunts for A or grunts for B.

And we move.

Now we're getting into, like, just crowd yelling.

Yes.

Like, absolutely.

Hey, yeah.

Yep.

Or some binaural beats in the background where it's just, you know.

Yeah, yeah, you got it.

I got it.

I know where we're going with this.

Yeah.

If you start playing music to start pushing people in different directions, I'm going to know you've gone down the rabbit hole.

Turn down the temperature to 64 degrees, we turn it up to decibel 8, we do this, and all of a sudden we got 18 new counts.

Last week is working well.

No, it's.

That's.

That's why I kind of want to talk about it, because I find it really interesting.

How do you make people not just comfortable and to end up being successful and being happy and learning how to do this and feeling like they have a choice in what's going on?

I think it starts with you being comfortable yourselves.

Yeah.

And Ben does taste differently than most people.

And Ben's gonna pull out because he's been doing this for 20 years.

A lot more stuff.

But if Ben starts talking about what he's tasting, it does create a. I gotta kind of keep up with you.

And that it doesn't.

That's where you start to see a little bit of nervousness.

And even from me, because I've tasted a lot of wine, it doesn't directly translate to the way that I taste coffee.

Well, it's a challenge, right?

Like, it is a challenge.

And I love it because, like, you know, I think, you know, both of us have done extensive tasting of many different things, from wine to spirits and coffee and other things.

Each of them has a different challenge of tasting.

And, you know, beer too.

Right.

Different things like, oh, what is your knowledge base?

How do you isolate everything?

And coffee has a key.

You have to get through a certain.

A certain level of tasting to be able to start to isolate things.

And I, like I said, I love that side of it just because, one, I love the nerdery, but two, I think it's that.

That focus of customer.

It's the people first.

It's not just the tasting nerdery.

Right.

Like, I can tell people about the nerdery of, you know, controlling all this stuff here, but it's about making a person across from me feel comfortable.

And, yeah, it's about making.

Making the sale, making the next podcast and getting the recommendation, but if it's also done with real honesty.

And, yeah, we just want them to pay if they want to work with us.

This is how we do this.

We know we can do this well.

And I always love that side of things.

Yeah.

And I think it's.

It matters.

It does.

And I think that's where I have to come in.

As you know, I create because these are kind of my relationships till they get to our place and they get to meet Ben and Kathy and Dina and Alex.

So creating that level of comfortability, walking into our space, and then Ben being able to dive, you know, four levels of why deep, if they choose to.

It's a recipe for success.

Is that comfortability, all the information you might want, that you can also translate to your own staff, because these are businesses that have tons of staff.

Also, that if we give them good information and a good way to approach a tasting and understanding what Jobean's doing for that company or Taylor.

Taylor Fit Coffee is doing for that company, it just.

It works very well, and I think it does relax the situation that you're speaking of.

Yeah.

So I think I just want to pivot just to finish out our hour.

We'll put out all the plugs for, you know, tailor fit in detail at the end, but.

So I'm kind of tricked.

So, Ben, has there been any coffees recently that have come out that you've just been really excited with that?

Hey, this year's coffee has been exceptional, or just a coffee you were really excited to have back in the roster this year?

Yeah.

The Mexico we're sourcing from Dionysia just came back in this year.

That was like, when I had that last year, it was just right now, such an exceptional coffee.

Yeah, last year.

I love, loved it.

Yeah.

So it's been.

We've been trying to find a producer to work with in Mexico for a number of years, and we've gotten really good coffees.

But then just for whatever reason, the logistics of getting from that same producer has not really worked.

So Azahar Coffee, who primarily runs an export group in Colombia, they've been working to create a second export group in Mexico.

So this is our second year sourcing through Azahar Mexico.

Yeah.

And the coffee's great.

Really, really nice.

Super floral tea, like, got like, a ripe mango thing going.

And I think, you know, having.

Having had it last year, when I.

When I was describing it to people is this is one of the most singular Mexican coffees that I. I had ever had.

It was unlike anything I'd ever had from Mexico.

And that it felt very specifically, oh, these are the people that made it.

They made it.

You know, they were able to make something really special.

But also, the story is pretty special too.

Yeah.

And I mean, just finding single producer coffees can be really challenging, I guess, in, you know, going against everything I said earlier.

Right.

Like we, the, the core of our, our brand subscription program is still small lot, single origin coffees.

And some of these, like the, the ones we're bringing out of Colombia, we're able to bundle that stuff with their larger community lots.

But in, in the instance of this, you know, this is a single producer in Mexico we're working with.

So it's a little bit of a logistical miracle that that stuff can still happen.

And especially Mexico as a producing country, they had issues with leaf rust in the past and things like that, which really damaged some of the logistics in the coffee industry.

So Azahar has kind of gone in and they've done a great job of rebuilding some of these, you know, logistical supply chains and are doing an awesome job like finding producers that are doing good work and making sure that those producers, coffees are valued higher for the degree of quality that they're producing.

Yeah.

And something like that is.

I know, I'm sure when you tasted it for the first time, you're like, oh, it's just, it sparks something that's like, oh, I've never quite had that.

And it's really cool.

Yeah.

I mean, to be honest, they sent us a number of coffees and they were all, they were all like that.

That's awesome too.

It's hard to, you know, it's hard to pick sometimes.

Those moments are hard to come across too, when you see just that level of quality.

Because I know, I'm sure we've all had like, oh, we go for a tasting and, and we have one out of 10 things that are good and you're like, oh, oh, can I trust that they're going to be consistent the next time I go in?

But when you just get mauled with quality over and over again, you're like, ooh, that's exciting.

And makes it fun and hard to choose.

Yeah, yeah, I agree.

So I kind of want to end off with, you know, and we talked about in a prior episode talking about some of the work that Jobean's done, becoming, you know, certified B corp and all that stuff.

But I know something that had been worked on a lot was, you know, the packaging and working towards, you know, having more recyclable packaging.

And I know from, you know, a sales perspective having all these different, you know, quality things that Jobean does, having recyclable bags and being a B Corp is part of sales, but it's also part of building that.

Continuing the build of stack of who are we and why do we do what we do?

Like, that has to be a nice thing as part of the sales program to say, hey, we are a B corp. We do care about these things 100%.

Every tool in the chest is best.

And again, some of those are now a little bit being led by some of our customers.

Yeah.

For kosher certification, organic certification.

If we, you know, they have needs that if we can meet, we will.

So, yeah, if I can get Ben and Dina and Kathy to, you know, if that fits into our model, we're going to go ahead and do it for you.

Especially if we're working together on a contract.

We're absolutely going to take the time, do the, do the thing so that I do have that for not only them, but for future clients.

Yeah.

There's no bigger tool in the chest than to say, I have all of these little things that you can pull from and use as needed.

Again, this is a conversation we have every week about all of the tools, what we can use, what we can add to that.

And they're more than happy to, as long as it's, you know, cost effective and not too much more bookkeeping.

So I guess I want to end off before I do the plugs.

Are you excited about what's going on?

Thoroughly.

I was excited to come on board two and a half years ago.

I love, I love Joe Bean as the family of ownership and what they stand for.

They don't move from it, which is rare.

And the excitement is that we've got this new arm that really we see and we've.

It's been proven to really start to take off.

And although it's a slow go, I think once you get the train moving, it starts to really chug along.

I think it's a new world for them.

It's a.

It's a little bit of a new world for me.

I've got more process in my life that I've ever had.

Thanks to Ben Tiriano.

I know the process so much.

Lovely.

I'm much more of the salesperson where I, you know, I want to talk through it all.

We're going to Blue Sky.

Ben's like, let's put a process to it.

I'm like, perfect.

Great.

Do both of these things together.

So that's the exciting bit.

And just the family themselves, we don't work on weekends, and that's really nice.

I think that little bit different, right?

It's a little bit different than putting in 100 hours a week.

And I think that's valuable for not only the lean machine that we run over there, but just for your own soul and for your own, you know, go out there and play music or go out there and ride a bike for two days straight, things like that.

So, yeah, it's, it's all there.

And I'm happy to come to work every moment I can.

Nice.

So once you get the official plugs out for TaylorMade, how can people find out about it?

Where can they learn more and if they are a business, how can they, you know, how can they reach out?

Taylorfitcoffee.com is, is the new contract manufacturing side of Joe Bean Coffee Roasters.

You already know that website on there, you will be led through all of the information and then at the end you'll get me.

If you decide to contact us, that's my ugly mug.

Gonna sit there and talk to you for a while.

So that's exactly how you get a hold of us there.

That's awesome.

And then if you still want to, you know, as a person or a, you know, somebody just wants to, you know, get some great coffee for your restaurant or something else, you can reach out for, you know, Joe beanroasters.com if you are just buying bags for yourself, you know, definitely use the perpetual joy subscription gets a little bit of a discount.

And make sure fresh coffee is always at your house.

Ben, if I missed anything, I'm sure I have.

I mean, that's.

That's all we do.

So that's it.

That's all we do.

Beans and bags.

Buy beans bags.

Nice and nice and clean.

So.

Ben, that's all we do.

That's all we do.

Oh, God.

That's all we do.

No, it's great.

It's great.

It's good.

I just want to do one thing and do it, you know, 300 times in a row and just zen into.

That and just be great at something.

Yeah, that's the dream.

Get your flow.

I love stuff like that.

So, boys, thank you so much for coming over.

Thank you, Chris.

We are, you know, lunch doors, so pleased to be working with Joe Bean over a long period of time.

And I've been a long, long fan of everything going on there.

So Definitely go to joebeanroasters.com support a great local business, support Lunchador, and get some great coffee in your life.

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