Start Your Coffee Business

I first met Tim and his daughter Frankie at one of Boot Coffee's Q Grader classes. As a proud father myself I admired that this 12-year-old is following her father’s passion for building a coffee brand. Yes, they both attended the Q Grader class, but that is a story for next time. Tim is not new in the business world,...

This is a small shoutout to all the coffee roasters out there. People take their morning coffees for granted. It is always on the shelves of the supermarket, it is always in the kitchen waiting to be brewed. But how did it get there? How was the seed of a fruit transformed to the most popular beverage on the...

 My guest in this episode is Stephen Ezell. Stephen is my old buddy, who together with Jonathan Shepard started Sequential Coffee. Jonathan is the business brain and Stephen is the coffee brain of this operation. It is a dream combo for every coffee nerd out there. Lucky Stephen! In this episode, we talked about the first steps and challenges when starting...

I am not sure whether it is Joey's fascinating story or the current global situation, but this episode got a bit personal. https://player.vimeo.com/video/127070109 Joey first started trading in “commodities” as a drug user and later dealer. Today he is the CEO of Cafe Kreyol -- a direct trade coffee importing and roasting company based in Manassas, Virginia. His path was not...

Mitchell Popadziuk managed to fall into a perfect team. He is the business mastermind, his brother Tristan brings the coffee passion, and their mother Kelly is the soul of sales and marketing. I am jealous! In a good way ... :) is a very young but dynamically growing company which, despite to the fact that Mitch is a podcast...

Nick Walton is a rebel... was a rebel. He grew up on a milk farm, but his revolutionary attitude towards his parents drove his dad to say "enough! Time to grow up!" Nick's coffee story starts with sleeping in a car while homeless. Was this the push he needed to take life seriously, which finds its conclusion in a...

We are back with a great new podcast featuring a really cool new innovation in coffee roasting - the Bellwether Coffee Roasting Machine. Bellwether has developed a new type of small-batch electric commercial coffee roaster. It doesn’t require ventilation, a gas line, or even a contractor or complicated permit to install. It features tablet based roasting software, and the company...

 We are back with part 2 of our discussion with Umeko Motoyoshi, coffee entrepreneur, social media expert, educator, and author. In this episode we continue last week’s discussion with the author of The @wastingcoffee Guide To Not Wasting Coffee and purveyor of the Umeshiso Cupping Spoons. This week we share the results of a super fun and enlightening consumer experiment...

This week we talk with Q grader, author, educator, entrepreneur Umeko Motoyoshi. This is part 1 of a two part episode with Umeko, the creator of the Umeshiso rainbow cupping spoon and author of The @wastingcoffee Guide To Not Wasting Coffee. We discuss how making the cupping and tasting environment more inclusive and accessible can draw customers into the discussion...

In this episode, we interview Rick Appleton (Boston) and Abdulrahman Qurban (Saudi Arabia), students attending the SCA Sensory class at Boot Coffee Campus. What were the hardest parts of the course and what was the ultimate takeaway? Valerian tests Rick's newly acquired ability to evaluate coffee by applying his skills tasting his skin contact natural wine. How does Rick do? What...