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Coffeeboy Elf Invasion!!

Climby Climbing Climb Climbers, originally uploaded by coffeeboy.

Before we could get our new shop open, it was invaded by elves!! View the security cam shots here.

Branded!!!, originally uploaded by coffeeboy.

Well, the new Coffeeboy coffeehouse in Fillmore, CA is coming along. After this was shot, we hung a neon open sign over the logo. If we hadn't hit a technical snaggle, we would have had all the anchors in the big gallery wall so that art could be hung easily and...er...artfully. We've lined up local painter Molly McGuire, who used to work in this shop in its pre-Coffeeboy incarnation, as our artist for January. Also, we began the adding of cool lamps last night and that gave the space a really great feel. So, in short its coming along. Here are some shots over on Flickr that we took today.

Is Your Circle Half Full or Half Empty?


New Coffeehouse Actualizing its Potential, originally uploaded by coffeeboy.

So, what has happened to our hero in the last two years of blog silence? Well, a lot, but I don't think it will come as much of a surprise to anyone who knows me or who even reads the previous (now ancient) entries of this blog, that I have returned to the world of coffee retail. I have purchased a coffeehouse in Fillmore, CA and am returning to my natural habitat- behind the counter that is. I've partnered up with my friend Simon on the project and as you can see we are making some headway, but have much more to do. I'll put more pics and a detailed autobiographical/philosophical justification over on my site. (www.coffeeboy.net)

The Indie Espresso Revolution

When I was a kid, I was a day-dreamy kind of kid. I wasn't the kind of dreamer who was quiet and melancholy, but the kind that tells anyone who will listen all the ideas and dreams welling up inside them.

I used to spend hours in the backyard of my Great Aunt's house in Desloge, MO trying to find the right combination of the same used lumber, nailed to the same old long-suffering tree, to bring about this Platonic form in my mind called "The Ultimate Clubhouse," that would be a place for all the kids in the neighborhood to come and be together. I wanted to be one of them and to be there with them, but more than anything, I wanted to build this place for them- a place to be and to be together.

On Sunday afternoons, after dinner, my parents would pile me into the back seat of their 72 Dodge Dart, that my dad described as "baby shit green" and go for long drives in the country, surrounded by the rolling hills of the Southern Midwest. I would be in the back seat dreaming and asking a million questions and they would be discussing their dreams of entrepreneurship. They would inevitably stop on the way in and out of town and peek in the windows of empty buildings. I recognized something common in what we both were doing. So, in the back seat of a "baby shit green"' Dodge Dart it happened. Those two ideas got fused in me- the forging of community and the life of grassroots entrepreneurship.

My parents ended up buying a gas station on the corner and, after selling that, they bought a liquor store on the corner of our small town. I grew up behind the counter, doing my spelling words, sitting a six cases of beer so I could see everything. I listened to my dad chat with people and remember what they drank, what they smoked, and that they were about to forget the diet soda for their wife that they always forget. I saw people's lives come together around the daily rituals of mundane commonplace commerce. This put the nail in the coffin so to speak.

I opened a skateboard shop the summer between my Junior and Senior year of high school. It was a massive failure and I knew next to nothing about business. It was taken from me in a way that nearly cost me my sanity at 18 years old. I was crushed, but that defeat led to me entering my truly formative years with something to prove to myself, to build this same thing that had been in my heart since a little kid. I became who I am.

I turned to religion, youth ministry, and eventually moved to Columbia, MO, the greatest college town in the whole world, and tried to build an innovative place for ministry, based around community and the arts. I spent whole days in Lakota Coffee Company, reading Thomas Merton books and counseling confused punk rock college kids, while trying to figure myself out by writing in my journal. But something happened again. I began to get glimpses of the value of the community that dwelled within the sacred walls of that coffeehouse. I began to recognize it as akin to the dream I had been chasing.

I'll bore you no more with my personal biography, but jump to the point. I am an entrepreneur at heart, but not the kind that does things only for money. I've just never been able to do anything for nothing but money for very long. I would quit or get fired. I am a horrible employee. Why? I'm a leader.

That sounds arrogant to say, no? But, Jamie Buckingham says, in his recent book "The One Thing You Really Need to Know" that the leader is someone who looks at the present and sees what it can be, not what it is. They are future oriented. I realized that in my gut, the unspoken presupposition in my mind, no- in my heart, all those days in the backyard, in the back seat, in the skateshop, and in the coffeehouse, is that things are not the way they should be. Now, this goes far beyond confines of my role in the business world. That nagging in my gut has steered the course of my philosophy and religion. It has moved me toward certain writers, painters, and poets. It has made me trust mystics, because talk about the world we can't see.

So, what in the world is all this doing in a blog entitled "The Indie Espresso Revolution?" Well, glad you asked. Because I am, in some ways, re-designing Coffeeboy, but more accurately, I am returning to the dreams that I had when I started it.

To that end, I spent much of Friday on the phone with the small coffeehouses around my home town in Southern Missouri. (For you that don't know, I live in Ventura, CA now.) I wanted to talk to them and find out what their lives were like. I was pleased and surprised to find that small indie coffeehouses are popping up all over the area I am from. This didn't just make me happy because I found new potential clients, though I do enjoy making money and have become strangely attached to living indoors, eating food, and not walking everywhere. But it wasn't the fact of their existence that delighted me so much as the people who are building them.

Now, coffeehouse owners are a different breed and I love them. (If any of you folks are reading this- I love you all.) Why? Well, I am close with most of my clients and as small businesses joined in a mutual attempt to survive and flourish, we become more linked than you and the guy who sold you your copier. But, that's not the point. Coffeehouse owners make places. Very few people in this world set out to make a place, but these people do to a fault and I saw that that is true in Ventura, CA, but it is also true in the beloved podunk towns of Southern Missouri. They tell you about their place and what they are doing and what they are dreaming of doing and for whom they are doing it. (I know that sentence was ungrammatical, leave me alone- I liked the cadence of it.) They will tear out their heart and sew it on their sleeve. They are making a place, a place for others, to be and to be together.

So, I could go on a diatribe about the ratio of small shops to ugly corporate chains, or about the fact that machine suppliers seem to assume that every shop will have a fully trained espresso tech across the street that can fix an overly complicated machine that will in fact break down. I could dream about the fact that Italy is roughly the size of California and has 200,000 espresso bars and that 85% of the country hits one every day, while America has, last I heard, barely 20,000 or so. (The market is far from saturated.) I could proclaim from my bully pulpit, as the Chief Espresso Evangelist of Coffeeboy Espressoculture, that indie shops will take over the world, but I will stop just short of that and talk about the people.

Here is a snapshot of the people I talked to. One guy left a computer networking job for a Fortune 500 bank to open a coffeehouse. (They open Tuesday, so pray for them.) I talked to lady in a small town, with a community college as its only anchor, who proudly told me she had "bat wings" sticking out of her headband. (She has a headband for every season she told me.) I talked to a nice lady who bought a snow cone kiosk and put an espresso machine in it. I talked to the manager of a shop that is in a small space carved out of a building attached to a salon, with 5 tables, in the town my parents live in. I caught a lady at home, after hours, and she talked to me for an hour, read this blog, and wrote me a quick note pointing to her blog. I realized we were on the same page. These people don't make a whole bunch of money. These people make something better than money- they make place. They are "other-oriented." They see their town as a blank canvas on which to paint what stirs within them. A place to be, to be together, and to experience the mundane daily luxury of great cup.

You ask if that is the revolution- coffeehouse culture penetrating into the nicks and crannies of the heartland? That's part of it. Is it that we are re-tooling Coffeeboy to do more than provide great coffee at a fair price, but to solve the problems that distract these beloved place-making souls from the task at hand? That also is part of it. But, the real revolution coming out of the world of indie espresso retail is that these people are modeling a way to do business- a way to think about your business. That way is to "create" your business- to "make" in the raw human universal kind of way. They are showing how to live the entrepreneurial life in a way that is human and enduring and worthwhile.

So, your homework, dear blog readers, is to get an old Merton book, your journal, and an old friend, and go to that litttle place on the corner. Let them give you what they've made...and some coffee too. Oh, and while you're there, hug the super hero behind the counter and thank him/her for making a place to be and to be together.

New Coffeeboy Online Store!!!

Well, you've been wondering what I've been spending my time doing instead of blogging. So, here you go! We've been doing some major work "under the hood" of our online store. I know, it looks the same right? Don't be fooled dear friends, we've made some major changes and we've got a whole lot more up our sleeve.

For starters, we've created a new strategic partnership and fired up a new roaster deep in the heart of my old stompin' grounds- the Midwest. Our coffee can now reach 22 states in 2 days or less via UPS. Cool, huh?

Also, this new roasting facility roasts and ships Monday thru Thursday, so you can get your Coffeeboy fix faster than ever. Add in that we now have about three times the number of coffees available, that some of those are world exclusives, and our cool new gear and accessories section has everything from french presses to home espresso machines and things start getting exciting.

Not stoked yet? OK, we've brought the wholesale arm of Coffeeboy online and created a cool new program called TEAM COFFEEBOY so that you can get free stuff for helping your local indie coffeehouse. My next two blogs will be indepth articles on why we are doing this.

So, head on over to the New Coffeeboy Online Store and help fuel the indie coffee revolution.

PDA=Public Display of Affection?

Hipster PDA
Originally uploaded by coffeeboy.

I would like to give an all-out full-on endorsement to the site 43folders.com. For those of you that are into Apple, Getting Things Done, Moleskine, or anything lo-fi and cool, go immediately to this site and have a blast. It is the coolest mix of GTD, tech nerd stuff, and little lo-fi life hacks that make real sane life, in this hectic world, a possibility. One super cool thing is the Hipster PDA, a little stack of index cards, a binder clip, and a big idea that just may replace your nerdy little Palm Pilot. It is ran by a cat called Merlin Mann. He seems to get more done in a day than I do in a week, so either he sold his soul or knows something we don't. I offered to give him some free coffee for making my life better, but he replied without disclosing the location of his Super Secret Personal Workflow and Indie Rock Fortress of Solitude, so I guess he will go without the Coffeeboy hook-up until he comes clean with his location. Rock on and High five to Merlin Mann!! (I'd just like to point out that in honor of Merlinn Mann I have a set a new record for links in a blog.)

Are you looking for a fight?

blueoceancover
Originally uploaded by coffeeboy.

I have been reading Blue Ocean Strategy by W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne and it rocks! The idea is basically an ancient one and usually Eastern. The best way to win is not to fight at all. How's that for business advice? "Don't compete!" They show that the business ideas that have changed the world and been very successful were the ones that created a new marketspace and made the competition irrelevant. This is more than adding value to the same type of thing or raising the technological bar to newer and faster. It is centered in a process they call "value innovation" in which you ignore the rules of your industry and create something different for people left out of the current equation, resulting in a lowering of costs for you and raising of value for the customer. Cool, huh?

This idea is at the core of Coffeeboy and all our talk about using the Northern Italian espresso tradition to distinguish small indie shops from Starbucks. Instead of trying to do the whole "giant cup with dark bitter espresso covered up with syrup thing", do the "little 6-8oz, naturally sweet creamy cappuccino thing." Let Starbucks have the wall-sized menu with 32 flavors of blendies and strip down to the 5 to 7 drinks of Italy done perfectly every time. You can't be better than Starbucks at being Starbucks, so don't try. Do something better, more genuine, and dramatically different. Is there a market for that here? There are over 200,000 espresso bars in Italy, a country the size of California. There are under 20,000 in the whole United States. People come back from Italy every day saying, "I don't really drink coffee here, but over there it is soooooooo good. We had a cappuccino every morning." Let Starbucks and their clones fight it out in the red ocean full of sharks and blood. We, on the other hand, will paddle out into the glassy tubes of the untapped American espresso market- Lo-fi style!