Chris Baca: 9 Years of Cat and Cloud. Good Company Culture Makes Life Easier for Everyone!

(upbeat music) - Welcome back to the coffee show, everyone. I'll tell you what, we're going back to back big time interviews in the last week. Last week we interviewed James Hoffman this week. Chris Barker from Santa Cruz, California, is it? - Yes, that's right. Thank you for having me. - How are you doing, man? - I'm solid. It's a solid Monday, so Monday's all about owner meetings, getting the week started, drinking lots of coffee. I'm feeling dialed. - I like that because Monday is also my favorite day of the week. I'm just checking on recording. - Yep. - I guess I'm anxious about that. Monday's my favorite day of the week because in Australia, that means that it's the US Sunday, which means I wake up at like 3.34 a.m. and I watch football, American football. I'm a Houston Texans guy. - You watch American football. - I do, I'm one of the few Australians that watches American football and I can't get enough of it. It's my favorite sport ever. - That's interesting. I don't think I've met anyone outside the US that actually watches American football. - No, I love it. Do you have a team? - I don't. My mom always watched the Super Bowl, but other than that, we never really watched football. I watched basketball when I was a kid, but I don't watch anything now. - You probably grew up in that era where I was like Chris Weber at Sacramento and like, Kobe, you know? - Even a little, even a little, I was blending those two era. So I'm even older than that. So like when I was younger, it was Michael Jordan, you know, like that. Chicago Bulls, 3P era, and then as I got out of high school and into college, then we were into that Chris Weber, like the Kobe era. - Yeah. - Couple of really awesome eras. - Anything after that in basketball, I have no clue what's going on. Jared watches a lot and Charles watches a lot too, but I'm just clueless. - Yeah, well, you're also a Skater guy, and we'll touch on the coffee stuff real quick, but like I also love that 2000's era of skaters. - 100%. - My brother used to, my brother was such a good Skater when he was younger, and we used to always watch like 411 Video Magazine. - Oh yeah. - You know, all of the X games and stuff like that, and you know, and just skating used to, I feel like that was the golden era, 'cause he had like, you know, in your vert ramps, like Bucky Lassick, Tony Hawk, Bob Burnquest, like all these amazing skaters, and then on the streets, like Rodney Mullin, Bam Majira, when he was a Skater, and you know, so many others. - I remember seeing Bam's 411 Rookie section, where they dumped him out of a box of product into a bathtub or something. He was so tiny, it was weird, but yeah, yeah, four, I was raised by 411 for sure. The first skate video I ever saw was 411 number three, and that was like early 90s. - What was your favorite Tony Hawk's game? - I mean, I played the first one, I never played video games a lot. I played the first one when I had a really bad injury, so I couldn't do anything, but other than that, I never really played attention. I was like a ratty, ratty skate rat, so I would just out in the streets skating all day. Video games weren't even a thing for me. - Nice, I love it. So where did coffee kind of start for you? If you, as a youngster, you got so into skating and other things. Where did coffee kind of come into the mix? - Always drank coffee. My mom was a big coffee fan. We didn't know anything about coffee other than we liked it, and then once a week she would take me to this fancy coffee shop down the street from our house, which was like we'd get something that wasn't big box falters kind of stuff. And never thought about working in coffee, and then when I like early 2000s, 2001, 2003, somewhere in there, I'd been working at a skate shop, and I got that big injury that I was talking about. So I was basically shelved for a year, couldn't do anything, didn't go to work, was just kind of nursing this, I had back surgery, nursing this back surgery, and then when I needed a return to the workforce, 'cause I needed a job, I didn't really wanna go back to the skate shop, and that coffee shop that was down the street from our house, one of my friends was managing it at the time. And he's like, dude, you come in here all the time, you're drinking coffee, you're hanging out, just come work at the coffee shop. Like I'll give you a job, no problem. And I was like, for real? And he's like, yeah, dude, come through. And I was like, all right, so started working at this little coffee shop in my hometown, I'm from the Central Valley, California. It's mostly farmland, like farming community. And just from the first day I was in there, 'cause I'd always drink brewed coffee, I was like a brewed coffee guy. And the first time I saw espresso pulling, there was something very enchanting about it. I was like, there's something here. This doesn't necessarily taste good, but for some reason, my heart believes that it can taste good, and it's just something mesmerizing about it. I don't know, you see it extracting, it's beautiful and mysterious, and that was the beginning of coffee, and the beginning of the wormhole for me. - It's so interesting hearing people's beginning, 'cause you've obviously had quite a, like, honestly, one of the most well-documented coffee careers that I know of, because you put the effort into make content starting about 10 years ago, which I think is where like, there wasn't much coffee content at the time, like there wasn't really a need to be, and obviously it's everything's changed right now, in almost every industry, everyone's doing content and stuff like that. I've been watching you since you started, really. And I think I recall watching one of, I was thinking about this morning, watching one of your vlogs where, before you opened up Cat and Cloud, you're at like a bakery or some sort of another cafe in Santa Cruz? - I was working at a bake shop that's down the street from our cafe, actually. So that was a part-time job that I got while we were building out. So that was, we had started building out Cat and Cloud, I needed money to live, got a job with a bake shop 'cause I known the owner for years, and she paid me more than she should have, and was very kind to me. And it's like, oh, you can help train some of our baristas, and I'm like, sure. And she ultimately let us use the bake shop on Monday mornings, 'cause they were closed every Monday. So the first Cat and Cloud services we've ever had were in this bake shop called Companion, where we brought in our coffee, set everything up and rocked the bake shop. But yeah, worked at the bake shop. - So when you, before you started Cat and Cloud, you effectively had these weekly pop ups at someone else's shop, which kind of helped you get the funding to open Cat and Cloud? - No, the money that we were making at the bake shop was just, for me, working at the bake shop was just money in my pocket. And when we did the pop ups, we didn't really make any money, so to speak of. Our initial build out at our first store, which is 36 in Portola, it's like this beach community in Santa Cruz, right next to some surf spots, really close to the ocean. That was funded via mostly SBA loans. All of our cafes have been majority funded by small business association loans, like government back loans here in the US. So yeah, the money we were making, 'cause we gone through a bunch of iterations. We were actually just talking about this today, because I don't know when this will go out, but as it sits, it's, I won't say the date, but tomorrow is our nine year anniversary of being in business. So the first things we ever did weren't even in person. We had started roasting on our friends' roaster, the people at Doon Coffee in Santa Barbara, they let us use their roaster. We brought all our stuff in. We were roasting coffee, packing, shipping, everything. So we had a web store and started our podcast, like well before we were anywhere in a physical space. That was like the first cat and cloud iteration. And then that went into the pop up, and then that morphed into the actual physical locations. Hearing you say that, I checked your story on Instagram, and I did see you say that about your nine year anniversary. How does it feel to reflect back on nine years when you're kind of really hustled to get things open? And it's not like it's easy, you get the funding and you open the store the next day, like you're working this other job while building your cafe and doing other things. When you reflect back on nine years now, when you've got multiple stores, your roaster is doing great and you've got, I don't know how many employees, how do you feel? - It's a mix of emotions. It's a lot of different things. We have just over 100 employees, I think is the number that we're out right now. 100 team members, it feels so many different ways. I remember when we opened our first store, and we were working on doing that build out the whole year to get that open. And that seemed like such a huge hurdle, because prior to that, my self and Jared and Charles are three of us. We'd all been working in the coffee industry for a really long time, and it always talked about doing something that was ours. And once we decided to take that leap, you don't know what you don't know, and you're kind of trudging through this. And I remember opening day, I kind of expected something to switch in my head towards, like, yes, we're open now. Life goals unlocked, all promises fulfilled, and I remember going home after the first shift, and I was like, wow, that was really awesome. A lot of people came out to support us. I feel very fortunate, but in so many ways, I also feel exactly the same. And the older I get, and the more things we do, the more I'm on one end, I'm like, really grateful with anybody who participates with what we do, whether that's buying coffee. on the web store or coming into our cafes because people do have lots of choices for delicious coffee. And at the same time, I'm more aware of this perpetual journey that we're on where there aren't any really starting or ending points. It's just like, cool, you're creating this story and the story is your career. And there's just like, there's a lot of different emotions that go with it. And no time, you know, seven years is a lot different than nine. Five years is different than two. And it just changes all the time. Yeah, it's, it's, I gotta say, congratulations as someone that's watched you from, from back then, like it's pretty awesome to say, like I literally, when I, this, so this is when I first got into coffee and I was looking for content to watch. And I would have YouTube videos of you up on my TV and my house made to like, what the hell is this? I'm like, man, this is Chris Barker. And it's wrong with you, dude. It's, it's, it's truly awesome to see. But like, I mean, the fight, like, for example, like financial gains, not, not that it's like not that coffee's a big windfall industry. But like, I feel like where you have kind of excelled you and Jared and your other business partner, Charles, is it? Charles, yeah, Charles. Yeah. So where you, Jared, Charles have really succeeded is building this like culture of, you know, in your, in your business. And it seems like from afar, all the employees really enjoy the job and you invest a lot in, in trying to create that. And if I recall correctly, you guys are big on sending some of your staff to origin from time to time and, um, and all those sorts of things. So I'll start, we'll go there next. So what is that like a big focus for you and why? 100%. Um, it's a, it's a huge focus for us. And it was something that is kind of central to cat and clouds existence. I've been super fortunate. I've had, uh, some really awesome, awesome bosses in my life. And I've had some really awesome workplace experiences. And there's been some that aren't as awesome. And if you've had really amazing or really terrible workplace experiences, you know how powerful those can be to have someone who believes in you, encourages you, challenges you and pushes you is a huge thing in a lot of people's lives. And likewise, if you have someone who's just berating you, doesn't, uh, is not thankful for the work you're doing or creating a culture where it feels like what you do has any meeting, you can know how, how it's a bummer, right? It's such a bummer. So one of the things that we wanted to do was create that for other people and be a place where people could come contribute to something that's bigger than themselves. You know, we've, we've always had a, a mission that lies above making coffee for people. We've always had a set of values that guides our light along the way. And we've always done the best that we can do, which we're not always perfect to live by that mission and live by those values and help people. And hopefully like what I would love to see, like what makes me happy is when people come in to cat and cloud. And they're at one point in, you know, it doesn't even have to be their coffee career. It's usually not coffee related. But they're at one point in their life journey. And when they leave, they've grown leaps and bounds, not just like cool, anybody can teach you to make a cappuccino. But it's like, man, I'm really good at having challenging conversations. I'm good at team building. I'm good giving and receiving feedback. I'm good at doing all the things that are going to serve me for decades to come. And it's so rad when people leave and they get a job, it's like, I just got my dream job. And a lot of it has to do with the skills that I gained here. And to hear those things just, I don't know, it just, it just fills my heart because you spend so much time at work, it really shouldn't suck. Well, it's an interesting point because I think I, I personally have this mindset of when it comes to stuff, no matter how long they work for you, you want, you want to leave them better than you found them. Like you want to, you want to kind of yeah, like it's not a transaction like you're even if they quit after a month, it's like, yeah, that's that's like inconvenient, but you know, it doesn't really need to change the way you go about a situation. And I think that reflects a lot in what you do because and it fills us down into the customer experience as well. Like no matter what, if you're part of the team, you're part of the team. So is that is that kind of how you go about it? Oh, I mean, there's, you, there are a few things that have like an outsized impact at every level, but not one of the no singular level is the reason that we do it. So yes, what you just described is true. If you take care of your team and invest in your team, your guests benefit for sure, but also your team benefits, but it's not it's, it's not thinking about it in a transactional way because like, and saying like, oh, we want good guest interactions. Therefore, we have to take care of our team. It's more about we are not too far removed from what it feels like to be a barista and what it feels like to have those jobs. So it's like, I, you know, I got that first coffee job and then my first big coffee job I got was in 2005. I moved to San Francisco, started working for ritual coffee rosters. That was in their heyday, like the kind of beginnings of the third wave on the west coast and, you know, was a barista or a barista trainer in some regard for, you know, well over a decade, you know, and ultimately stops. Did a few other things, but stopped working for other people in 2014. So there's kind of this big 20-year chunk of where it's like, and same thing for Jared and same thing for Charles slightly different paths. It's like, we were employees. What kind of place would you have liked to work at? And that's probably going to give you the best initial direction in what kind of place you would like to create. And yeah, I mean, there's so many benefits, you know, you get a lower turnover when there is so, and we still have turnover. There are those people that you describe that come in younger workforce. They're going to school. They have their own dreams and aspirations. They're ultimately going to leave. That's great. And the way you framed it is amazing. Like leave them feeling, leave them better than you found them. That's awesome. So it's like, yeah, of like team, guest, culture, A to Z. And it makes, you know, it makes our life better too. It's your life. This is one thing that owners, sometimes I have conversations with business owners and they get this one backwards a lot. They see taking care of the team as a chore because it requires extra work from them. And that's how they see it. But in reality, it's you're doing work either way. And if you choose to work on those things, you as an owner get outsized benefit of, man, my team's incredibly capable, which gives me the freedom to work on what I need to work on to actually build the business and not be buried in the business. And it can be a little bit short-sighted thinking for some people. And there's a bunch of different reasons why I think people think that too. It's interesting to note as well. I did this hospitality, leadership, and management course five or six years ago. And one of the key sort of takeaways that I think I remember forever is they actually numerically broke down the cost of staff leaving. And so to add a point on to this is you save money. So I mean, we're talking culture and that's really the priority. But like as a side benefit, it's financially better for your business to have staff happy and retain them because the cost of actually retraining someone is quantifiably a lot higher than you really think. It's not something that you can really, it's not something that easily just pops up. But like, you know, for example, you have someone leave, then you've got to have an extra trainer come work at one store to train someone else up. And you know, that factors as a cost as well. And then you think if you're not getting full productivity relative off from a new person relative to an existing staff member like, you know, it's not like there aren't costs. So it makes, you know, obviously positive energies are a lot better than negative energy goes without saying. And you know, it's better for your business as well. 100% and I think one of the reasons that people don't engage with it, the business owners don't engage with it fully is there are some instances where these things that we're talking about, you know, let's take this cultural bubble and say, cool, you know, you've got this stack of mission vision values, which are your guiding lights and principles. And then you've got this other thing that's attached to it, which is, okay, within that, want to create a workspace that you would like to work on and defining what that would be. I think people can get really sucked into certain buzzwords or trends or whatever. And I think the best thing to do is to let some of that go and figure out like, like what? What are your actual values? Not just ones that sound good and are flowery, because those values will guide you in a certain direction, and they don't have to all be fluffy and cuddly. And the other thing about creating an environment where people can thrive and people feel like they're contributing, that also doesn't have to feel necessarily fluffy and cuddly. Like, I think some business owners hear that, and they think it's like, "Man, this is work. I don't want people coming in thinking they can kind of choose their own adventure, and we're all here to be happy together." And it's just, we're singing and dancing, and it's not like that. Like, our team works hard, super hard. We have a really high standard that we're trying to achieve, and the best buy-in comes from being very explicit about that standard, explicit about our values, and then by doing that, you attract people who want to go on that journey with you. Because, yeah, I mean, I think working for us is rewarding for a lot of people. I think you learn a lot. It is not the easiest job you could have. For sure. If you want an easy job, this is definitely not it. You could probably make the same amount of money in the same industry, working for someone else, doing less work. And I think that's just, I think that's a reality. And so, you have to be clear about what you want to cultivate, the culture that you want. How do you, I kind of feel like the perceived social and financial value of a barista going forward is really only getting higher. And this is where I contrast like, we live in such a technology-driven world where AI and stuff are becoming more of a thing and could replace jobs in a lot of ways. But in that same light, I kind of, and I've spoken to a few people on this on the previous podcast about this before. I don't really think the value of a barista has ever been higher than it is right now to customers. And I think it will only become more valuable. Do you agree or disagree? I think people really, I think guests really value the people behind the counter when they make an impact on their life. But I also think we're operating in a market and in so many ways. There's a lot of factors that are contributing to, you know, depending on what you call value. If you're talking value and you have, and it's, let's say it's a personal value or a feeling, it's like, "Dude, I absolutely love Kirk behind bar. When I go in and I see Kirk, dude, my day gets better. I'm stoked. If Kirk leaves, I'm going to cry." Then there's monetary value. Like, what is it worth to be a barista? What do you pay a barista? How much can you command as that job? And that's largely based on what the market's doing. I mean, you've got a combination of things that are happening. And we've all experienced a lot of that last year. We've got record high-see market coffee prices, which is going to drive up prices. For us, you know, our Swift Street Cafe has food. And I know a lot of the, it's really common in Australia for you guys at food in your cafe is too. You know, eggs were super expensive. The cost of almost all of our produce is up. Like, everything costs more money. Tariffs are another big thing. And so a lot of people are making price adjustments. And the guests will ultimately vote with their dollars to how much is this experience worth. And my gut feeling is we have a lot of room to go up in price. And it's not that we want to. It's like, I don't enjoy raising prices. It's not something we as business owners enjoy. Because usually, especially in the last few years, it's when we raise prices, it's not a selfish act. We're not seeing any more money come into our accounts. The price increases are just simply keeping up with market. And it's not, it's also not like we're able to pay a ton more because of these price increases. We're just like going in lockstep. So it's like, I think we do have a lot more room to go up. And there could be a high value barista, but I think it's got to be a really incredible experience. It can't be anywhere close to mediocre. And a lot of places are. And the good thing about that, it sounds like I'm slamming people. But it's like mediocre coffee right now, like quote unquote normal coffee is much better than it was 10 years ago. It's like, I can walk into multiple places in my area or the Bay area. Wherever I go, I can find some sort of reasonable cappuccino, good textured milk, shot pulled pretty well, latte art, the standard third wave starter pack. That's no longer rare. But what is rare is something that makes you feel something in your gut or feel something in your heart that makes you immediately want to be like, I need to go back there. I need to tell all my friends. I just had an emotional experience that I can barely describe. That's going to be the key to people wanting to be like, yeah, I'll pay 15 bucks for a cappuccino. No problem. If you can make me feel like that, sure. Where I lead to with this social value sort of thing is like again, going back to that technology driven world where I always experienced this the digital reality and the actual reality of life are so different. Like if I I use X or Twitter, formally Twitter to for the news a lot. And you know, that's check that platforms changed a lot over the years and you look at it now and you just see the most negative things all the time. And then you contrast that with going to local cafe and talking to your barista. And it's just it's just such there's just such a big difference there. And that's one of the biggest values that I think a coffee shop has these days. And just just being able to escape this digital reality that let's face it. Most of us are embedded in like we are like we're we're we're totally immersed in that a lot these days. And that's where I think the social value comes in. And with the financial value like I do take a point but I kind of being a barista at like a high level doesn't actually get you rewarded a whole lot more than operating at a low level. But you know, there's not a there's not a big bump in pay, which is a terrible which is a terrible shame. And I think that's something that we that hopefully we can change. I don't think it'll change on a macro scale ever. But like for example at like a high end shop where you know you do charge a lot more for a coffee and we're getting to that point in coffee now where you know we got $30,000 a kilo. Coffees now which is you know absurd and then. But you know there's a place one day in the future that'll serve coffees of that ilk that luxury coffee sort of offering and that that that you know probably lend itself to a barista that I would hope that you can. And then you can say charge a lot but be you can facilitate paying a professional professional wage hopefully but like as it stands right now. A plus barista effectively gets paid the same as a as a as an F you know right right and that's that's where I was talking about like you know the market it'll be on your. And then someone to create the experience a matches which is not too different than what you're talking about and for the you know the guest to be willing to pay that much and I think yeah but if you're talking pure social value. I mean off the charts like off the charts for sure and that's one of the reasons that I think a lot of people fall in love with coffee even before. And then I think it's like a type of digital age where we're just buried in our phones all the time the coffee shops always played a super special role for you know for people like me and other people who just want to be somewhere you know it's a place to see your friends is a place to be seen it's a place to have interesting conversations. And then the bar that's not a bar it's like it's like cheers and I think it's cool like and then like from the barista side like the other side of the counter. In my career like so many fringe benefits that come with being a barista and part participating in this service industry it's like you know when I was working in San Francisco it's you meet everybody right. You're meeting you're meeting the bartenders you're meeting the wait staff you're meeting people that work in the kitchen and you you go into places and they all see you as like we're in this service industry together and you kind of treat each other like royalty and it's really fun. And you know you also meet your future landlords you also meet you know at least in our case it's like we did meet our future landlords at the coffee shop we met the guy who does all of our buildouts like all of these big relationships that we didn't know we're going to be big relationships we're just interacting on a human level. It's the ultimate networking hack 100% yeah so it's like if you're behind the bar and you know you're not keyed into this opportunity that you have to just connect with everybody oh man don't take it for granted it can be so huge. It really is you're exactly right and some of the people you meet along the way like yeah I made coffee for the Australian prime minister one time you know that was that was I was like that was completely random I made coffee for the royal family member of a of a country in the middle east just randomly just completely having a random have you have you had like a have you had like a Jimmy Butler or someone come through. No we no no no we did go to the Jimmy Butler pop up in San Francisco he wasn't there talk to the. the people working the pop-up he'd been there a couple days before. We don't get a ton of big wig type famous people in Santa Cruz really. It's a lot of like really chill under the radar kind of stuff. It's like removed enough from the Bay Area. But I mean, and those are those those instances are fun and interesting, but they're they're really the least useful of the networking possibilities at the coffee shop. So it's like when when we were opening our first store in Portola, which is right around the corner from where Jared and I used to work, we're trying to figure out how to build this place. We don't have any money. You know, we're bootstrapping everything. We've got our we've got our loan, which is lucky to have it, but it's really challenging how you use SBA money. So we're shopping around for architects and contractors and nobody's in our budget. And then Jared's like, oh, there's this dude, you know, Nico and I'm like, oh yeah, Nico comes in and gets coffee every day and Nico's chill like Nico's a contractor. It's like, let's hit him up. And so we hit him up and he'd known us for years at this point. And his immediate response is like, I'm building your building. Let's do this thing. I'm like, we don't really have a lot of money. I'm building it. We're good. We'll figure it out. And he worked with us. Shout out to Nico. Shout out to Nico. I mean, Nico's awesome. And it's we had been, you know, building this relationship for years, not in the hopes that we ever get anything in return, but he knew who we were. He knew our motivations. He trusted us enough to be like, you guys are going to make it right. Let's get you through this really hard time. Let's build this building out and get it open. And then we'll figure it all out. And we did. And like, that's a use. That's a really incredible connection. It's just based on like, man, I'm going to take care of this guy. I'm going to, I'm going to serve him to the best of my ability. And then these magical things happen. It's interesting to say that because I interviewed someone a couple of weeks ago and the title of the episode was how to open a cafe on a shoe string budget. And one of the things, I asked him to think of like 10 key points on how to kind of succeed with that. And one of the things he said was, don't be afraid to ask people for help. And because and that's, that's a really incredible example. You've just started there with Nico. It's like, you never know who it might be. Like sometimes just airing your ideas. Can really open it up, self up and lend itself to, you know, you never know who might take you up on being able to support you in a, in a really solid kind of way. And you know, obviously what Nico has done is kind of, it was one of the steps to where you are now. Yeah. Same thing with our first landlord. He was a guest at a shop that we worked at. He's into residential real estate. We called him just on a, on a whim, like, hey, man, we know you deal with residential real estate. This is what we're doing. We got this planned. Do you know any of you, you know, you're probably in community with people who buy and sell buildings all the time? Do you know anybody that has a building like this? This is what we're looking for. This is the neighborhood. And he goes, I just bought this building. You guys should be in it. And he said, okay, cool. We'll come down, check it out next week. You have to come tomorrow because I'm talking to other people. So if you want it, it can be yours because I know who you guys are. I know how you rock, but you got to come right now. Like cool, be there tomorrow. It's, yeah, it's infinite. Isn't that an interesting point as well that you're saying? Sometimes landlords, they're not always after the person who or the tenant that pays the most. Sometimes they're after the best partner. So the best person to kind of, you know, it could be a landlord that's got multiple buildings in the one complex, for example. It's like that actually fits the mix of tenants that I want. I don't want my 10 shops to be filled with 10 coffee shops. Like sometimes the landlords actually see a higher value in working with a good partner that, you know, they're not just going to be in and out in a few years. Like, do you agree with that? And is that kind of the situation you're in? Yeah. We have great landlords overall. It is, I mean, there's a mix of landlords. We've talked to a lot of people. We've talked to some people who definitely don't share that sentiment for sure. But you want to be with people that do. And again, it's one of those things that goes both ways. It's like, I'm he genuinely liked us and we built a relationship. I also probably think that part of him's thinking, these guys have been doing this for 20 years already. And I know what it feels like to be in a store that they run. They are going to be successful. This is not going to go out of business and I'm not going to have to turn this business over in two years or turn this building over in two years. You know, if you're talking to 10 different people who want this space, one of them's doing whatever shop like, oh yeah, I got idea for a business. I've been kind of playing with it. It doesn't have a big professional resume. Resume, it's risky. You know, they're going to turn over the space, turn over the space. That's a pain in the butt. And then once you have some sort of proof of concept, then it becomes much easier to talk to other landlords who might not wanted to talk to you before. So it's like one of the first places that we were looking at in Santa Cruz. We'd send them our, we didn't have a contact, but we'd send them our pitch deck, call them, talk to them, had all these meetings. This is what we're doing and they just wouldn't even look at it at all. They're like, now we're good. I don't know who you guys are. We're cool. We didn't have any connection there. We opened Portola and a couple of years later, the same people are saying, hey, so we got some spaces in the complex. You guys won a party and you know, it's cool that they reached out. One part of you wants to be a little frustrated where you're just like, man, you wouldn't talk to me then. But I also, I also understand what they're doing. Like they, some people, if you don't know them, don't want to take a chance. And that's why I think it's really, you know, the relationships that you create, again, they're not transactional, but they just go such a long way. Like you are a business card. Like when you are behind the counter, no matter what level you're at, concierge, barista, dishwasher, whatever, if you're interacting with guests, you are your best business card. People are going to remember your energy, how you treat them, how you act. That stays with you forever. So do, like, do right by yourself and be awesome to people. It can only have upside. Yeah, it's an interesting point. Like, you know, it's kind of like buying a video, you know, 2015. You know, who would have known? It just pops off. And now everyone's like, hey, I want to buy a new video. Yeah, I mean, it's just, it's like, it's people, people will underestimate the impact or power that they can have right now, you know? Like, I'll turn it on when I get the job that I want. It's like, I'll turn it on once I get this level of pay. It's like that attitude is not going to get you where you want to go because people aren't ever going to want to work with you and you're not going to have an emotional impact on these people. And it's going to be a bummer. How about do it right now because you enjoy it and you love it and you have the power to really impact someone's day with the way you treat them. And that's why coffee shops are so special. It's like you, you go to coffee shops every day. You interact with these people every day. Your morning can either be, you know, one of the things we say when we do orientation is you might be the first human touchpoint with someone outside of their direct family. Like they get up, they shower, they get the kids ready for school or do whatever they got to do. They go out and go to get coffee. You're the first non-family human that they've talked to. You have the opportunity to make their day incredible. If you give them good energy or you can set it up to be really shitty. If you don't and that energy stays with you throughout the day, like someone stoked to you, like you want to be stoked to someone else. It's just this cycle that keeps perpetuating itself and that's one that I'm feeling. I'll tell you something. Like you're kind of what we do is, yeah, we sell great coffee but it's like we're helping people get the most out of their day. Whether it's like, you know, go crush it at work with a caffeine fix. Like setting them up with that like mental sort of wind of like coming to your coffee shop. Like a coffee shop's not just selling a good quality cup of coffee. Yes, it's a transaction but a good experience overall is setting someone up the success in their day no matter what it is. 100%. It's and it starts with painting the picture that people can have that impact. So another another exercise that we do in orientation is we have people share a story. Like okay, share a story. It doesn't have to be from work. He can be from anywhere. Share a story about a time where someone went above and beyond for you and it made you feel some kind of way and you get a whole range of stories. Some of them are just like we had one team member who is really into cars. Like I'm really into cars and I emailed the CEO is like Pagani or Konex egg or something like that and the dude actually wrote me back and he's just like I couldn't even believe it. I was just like so tripped out. I printed out the email like this is so it was so special to me to stories were. One girl told a story about how she was going to a coffee shop day in and day out. She knew the people but not super well and something happened and she got hurt and the people hadn't seen her for a couple days. They're like oh what happened to so and so. Oh she's actually in the hospital. She had a really bad injury and they're like okay. So they sent a barista over like multiple days in a row to bring her her drink order. take care of her. They weren't friends. They were just coffee shop acquaintances, but they totally took care of her. People tell these stories and the stories are important because the thing about them is like, "Okay, think about that story you just told and think about the way it makes you feel. How did that make you feel?" That's the power that you have. You can make someone else feel that way by going above and beyond in your day-to-day work too. It doesn't have to be all, it's not all crazy wild fanfare. There's so much magic stuff that happens day in and day out if we can treat each other well. How do you take it a change direction here, Chris? How do you keep yourself sharp with all this stuff? Nine years being in the business, you work hard a lot of the time. I've recently experienced a big, big burnout because I've got my own coffee shop. We've got a second one on the way. I've been traveling with the podcast. I do this a lot. There's some mornings where I interview an international guest and I get up at the Ask Cracker Don't to be able to do it. I had someone actually reach out to me recently and say, "Hey, man, I want your podcast. You look like shit." I was like, "Damn, I feel like a tour. I'm surprised you noticed." He's like, "No, man, the color's going on your face. You look what? You're as healthy. You gotta look after yourself, man." It was something that really took in. For example, I interviewed Lance Hadrick a few months ago. He's been on this really incredible transformation with his health, he's lost a ton of weight. He's looking jacked. He started playing golf. He's getting sound. Doing amazing. That inspired me to actually get in the gym and start working out and stuff. As someone that owns a business and you have to work incredibly hard and a business depends on you functioning well, how do you keep yourself sharp? Well, that's a complicated question. How do I keep myself sharp? Dang. Let me sit here for a second. I mean, there's all the answers that are tropes that aren't incredibly interesting. What do I actually do? I go to the gym three days a week. Monday, Wednesday, Friday, I'm at the gym for an hour or two. I skateboard on the weekends. I have a good group of friends that I've cultivated that we can talk about awesome, awesome stuff with. But in the context of the business and setting up the systems, I think one of the things that people who are starting businesses need to ask themselves and wrestle with is, what do I want out of this business and how do I want to participate with this business? I can sit here and say we have over a hundred team members who've got four stores, a roastery and we've had a lot of success. But you won't find me behind the counter. I'm not in there at 5.30 in the morning opening shop and I can't pretend like I am. One of the things that I think we've done really well is set up systems and we've gotten better over time at putting the right people into the right leadership positions so that they can own things that give us the bandwidth to be able to say cool, Swift Street. It's our biggest cafe. I don't have to think about it on the day to day. We'll think about it when we do a walkthrough and say, okay, cool, here's the state of Swift. What could we do a quarter over quarter year over year to level up the experience to make it better for our guests, but not being buried in the weeds of doing scheduling, calling in shifts, doing on the floor training. None of those things have we done in recent years at all. And the same thing in the roastery and that's been many iterations of trying to figure out it's getting the right person and also being able to communicate what you need from that position. So that's, I think that has been one of our strengths that allows us to do what we do and not feel like, oh my god, I haven't slept for five days. Which it did feel like at that in the beginning. I think whenever you're building something, you should expect to expend a disproportionate amount of energy in the beginning. There's no way you're not going to. And if you're not willing to do that, you're probably not very serious about it. So, so I don't think it's a surprise, you know, when you're trying to get, you know, like you said, you want this podcast to grow, you want it to be something special that you're going to expend a ton of energy on it. And it's going to kick your ass a little bit. I think that's totally normal, you know, like when we opened, I was in the shop every day. I'd work open bar in the morning, serve guests all day, we'd close, I'd go home, I lived right around the corner, eat dinner, I come back, do most of the roasting at night because I live super close and I was the one who's roasting most of the coffee at time. And then, you know, shut that down, go to bed late, do it all over again. And that's just, that's just part of the game of building something. And then thinking, cool, like where do I want to take this? Do I want to be doing this in 10 years? No, I don't. Do I want to be doing this in five years? Probably not at the same intensity that I'm doing it right now. So how do I figure that one out? And the answers for everybody are going to be, you know, a little bit different, but it has a lot to do with how you set up your team and your, you know, the finances are a part of it too. You know, if you want to have a bigger team, you need to physically make more money, right? It's like, and that's another problem that you have to solve for too. And for us, we're always thinking about culture first and then money is something that fuels the culture and allows us to make the impact that we want to do and live the life that we want to leave and not just chasing money, but, you know, money is a real part of it as well. I 100% agree. I like that. That's a really incredible answer. And I think one thing that I really want to impart in people on this episode is like, I don't think as an industry, we encourage maintaining your health well enough. Like there's other industries that like, you know, I use this example a few weeks ago, it's like the bartending industry association, like a global bartending association, like they actually have some kind of suggestions and guidelines for performing at your best at work. And it's like, well, don't drink too much. Make sure you get an adequate amount of sleep. Work out a little. Get some sunlight, because this can be a job that if you fall too deep into it, like you'll turn into a bit of a vampire. And I think coffee can be a bit like that too. And I don't think we encourage people maintaining their health enough. And like this isn't me saying, like, go start the carnival diet or something like that. But like, you know, like getting that little bit of sunlight in the morning, you know, really valuable. You know, for me, I started, I've got this like little group where I started playing Pokemon with my friends like on an Nintendo Switch. And I'm like, I'm 31 years old Chris, but like, you know, like me and a couple of other guys, my age, we catch up at the cafe sometimes and we play Pokemon together. And it's like those, it's so easy these days to just fall into like a digital trap. And, you know, you might not, and it's kind of harder these days as well, because people don't have the income to go and do the things that they used to. I think like inflation around the world's like really hampered some people's ability to probably do the same activity, but to that end, it also doesn't bar you from being social. So yeah, I don't buy that. I don't just, I don't even buy the inflation keeping people from doing things. Like it's like, you might have a lower lifestyle when it comes to buying fancy things, but it's like everybody can go outside. Everybody can go for a walk. Everybody can, everybody can go play basketball. Everybody can go like you can get a skate session and you can go like, I don't know if it's, you know, like you might not be going out to fancy dinners as much. You might not be able to like blow the bag on cocktails, you know, like $50 worth of cocktails after every shift, but there's definitely something you can do. And you know, when you're saying it, I wonder how much of it is a coffee thing versus a, like a the era that we're in right now. Because like, I never had any problem taking care of myself. Well, I have a quirky relationship with things. So I'm really, I'm really bad at dabbling in things. So I will go all in on whatever I'm doing and I will just kind of let it destroy me. And I don't know if that's the right thing to, thing to do, but I'm pretty bad with that. So like, breeze to competition, for example, when I decided to compete in breeze competitions, I was just like, this is all I do. I do it every day after work. And I, I think about it is like these little, these little EQ sliders, if you got like EQ sliders, it's like, they can't all be up at the same time. You just got to make sure like, well, when summer going up, summer coming down. So it's like, what's important to me right now? Okay, I want to do well in the breeze competitions. So I'm going to be like skating a little bit less. I'm going to be just chilling a little bit less. And I'm cool with that. And then I have to figure out how to take care of myself in that. But like for me, it was I really had to be intentional about taking care of myself once I became a business owner. Because aside from those times where you're ramping up and doing something really intensely, I don't know, like something about owning the business and having it all be on you to where it's like, cool. I know what it feels like to work and work hard and then have someone give me a paycheck. I don't really know what it feels like to make sure that this works so that I can get my own paycheck. And that that can creep into your brain a lot. And you can be like, I always have to make sure I do the next thing because if I don't like maybe we go out of business, maybe, maybe we don't eat, maybe I don't pay rent and there's no one else to blame it on. There's no one else to take responsibility. It's just me. So I can see how a lot of other business owners are like, I got to keep cranking. I got to keep cranking. And I don't know if there's any, you know, amazing advice that I'll that'll save anybody because everybody knows like, oh, yeah, take some time out. You'll be more productive if you're well rested. Like these things are known. It's just it feels a certain way to be ultimately responsible. And that's a it's a tricky way to feel. Yeah, it's just I'm interested in it right now because it's something I'm very much going through. It's like I need to I need to make some changes to be able to keep going because I just can't do the I can't do the 60 hours a week on the bar anymore plus the podcast. Like I just I just can't like it. My butt like my body's broke was like I felt like a month ago my body's just breaking down and you know, I'm just just just I've reached the point where it's like all right, you know, that we're probably hitting some milestones now where I don't need to work on the bar as much and I don't as of like the last month hides in great new people really locked out with all my stuff. But you know, I just uh how okay, doing it like that Chris how long's your shot been open? A year and a half a year and a half oh so you're still pretty you're still on the on the front end of it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, no that's a lot of it's you're in a hard time because you're essentially starting you got two new businesses you know the way you're treating this podcast and then the shop which is its own B so you're doing a lot of work. Yeah, but we've got another one on the way um and it's been delayed so many times it's been really frustrating and uh and I'm actually going to I'm going on a trip to I'm starting in Berlin going to Copenhagen then London then Milan Rome then back home on a little podcast to us soon. Oh man, that's gonna be fun. You know what I I have to make a correction. I left out the most important thing that helps me not lose my mind and it's the ultimate Chaton Cloud cheat code and it's there's three of us. I have two business partners and they're all really good they're each really good at different things and I don't think it just doesn't work with the the quality of life that I have been able to live is in large part due to sharing the journey with people because I talk to people who are single you know solo pernure type people as to so much work for one person. You know it's like so take Charles for an example a lot of people don't know much about Charles you know Jared's Jared's pretty public. Charles is a former Wall Street investment analyst portfolio manager big financial background left it all to go work in Ethiopia in South Sudan for Technosurf setting up coffee washing stations um and that's how he got into coffee from the green side of things but he's crunching numbers from them so he's a he's a wizard so he's managing all our books and has done since day one and it's like if I had to do that I can't even imagine how many brain cycles I would have to expend and how much of a train wreck it would be. You know um when I the path that I took to level up in coffee was from barista going to education so I spent a lot of time as an educator both like for the companies that I worked at internally and wholesale education little bit of work in like did a few years in marketing and then the last job I had was head of business development which was essentially managing a wholesale program and I'd never managed a cafe even though I'd worked in them so I was really heavy on like marketing sales all of those things but me running a cafe is not my sweet spot but Jared is great at it and that was what he did when he leveled up through coffee so he was very connected to cafe service guest service he was leading retail like he was running cafes so we all have this very complimentary skill set that allows us to cook where we want to cook and not have to stress where we don't want to stress and that that's just a huge part of it man I gotta I gotta give a little love to my man Jared Cheoby right now because I met him when he came to Australia I kind of remember having a years ago but he's a legend and I'm going to interview him as well so that's happening shout it to you Jared love you but yeah look I mean we've been going for nearly an hour now Chris so like I won't keep you for too much longer but I do want to ask and this is something I ask pretty much everyone like what's one thing that we haven't spoken about that you would like to say to people out there that's a really good question I think there is you know you were you were talking about the almost digital chokehold or the disconnect between the digital reality and the real reality and we all spend probably too much time on our phones too much time engaging in the digital world and I agree with you that it's really easy to get a story of this is bad this is terrible there's no opportunity this isn't what it is and I just don't think that's true I think obviously yeah there bad things that happen in the world for sure but I there is when I was starting my career in coffee there was no social media YouTube wasn't a thing there were all of these avenues of communication and connection that we did not have and now we have these tools and we can use them for whatever we want and I think everybody out there has a huge opportunity I'm not saying like goby and influence or I'm saying that you can communicate the things that you believe and if you have an idea you can create that idea and use the tools that are around it to be to make it awesome so it's like if you have I want to I want to live in a world where people take action on the things that are important to them I want to go to those businesses I want to participate with those people so I just want to say if you are sitting on something that you haven't acted on yet let's fucking go do it like go do that thing get out of the negative headspace of like it's not the right that it is like that's as bad it's like let's go like the world needs you I want to see it let's do it like that's how these these like the things that we think are special are all just created by a person a person who believed in them enough to do the work to bring it into existence and I think everybody has something special a certain gift that they could contribute and I would encourage everybody to pursue those and bring them to life that's how that's what I got to say now you are on one right there because I think again referring to that podcast I did last week where it's like one of the 10 things that guys said was like it's not always going to be perfect just do it and I was actually just watching when it do a vlog before we clocked on of when you first open your first cat and cloud store and you were saying like this you know not everything's perfect but we've got this cool stuff they're working really hard we're just going to go for it we're just going to start and I think that's like if you if you've got a project out there like it's never really been easier to start a business like you can just you can have a business registration done in an afternoon set up a bank account the next day and be trading within like three or four days like there's but you know not even talking about business here like whether you're starting a podcast or whatever like you can do it and like they're just I think don't be deterred by your own self-doubt like it's just so much more of a brave thing if you just step out there and do it and don't be like don't be so timid by benchmarking your success again someone else was like if you're thinking of something don't don't bundle it up let it out Chris yeah let it out let it roll it's like we we need that it's all it's all in here and it's all in here it's so easy to get in your own your own way you know I did it for years like one of the things I say all the time it's like saying everything I done I should have done it three years ago I just didn't have the courage to do it I wasn't brave enough and I wish I would have been so maybe I can help someone else be brave because it's gonna be scary it's gonna be hard it you're gonna be a little self-conscious of it and that's fine as long as you do it and and don't be afraid of getting your ass kicked sometimes as well I mean it's never I mean it's not you're gonna get your ass kicked like that's the thing you're like we don't need to pretend that these things are easy they're not and if they were they wouldn't be a sweet when they go well it's like this is the hard work you're already doing the easy thing which is cool I'm here I'm doing what I'm doing it's like if you if there's something that's eating at your soul like dude it is gonna kick your ass. It's like and he and I totally reject that quote that's like oh do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life. It's like no if you do what you love you'll work harder than you've ever worked in your entire life because it means that much to you and you will also enjoy it. No I 100% agree and like you know with like where I'm going with this getting your ass cake thing is like sometimes do experience failure and you know if to anyone who's listened to this podcast you know since the beginning you would know that like I experienced near financial ruin during the pandemic because I had another business called sub zero coffee and it was kind of over before it began because of you know the pandemic and then lockdowns and all that sort of stuff it was just it was horrible but like you know I think I like I kind of looking back on it now like as inconvenient as it was the lessons that it's taught me I just you can't buy you just can't buy and you know the the I think the biggest one is like not really financial or businesses this more life is like you never know what's around the corner but I could get diagnosed with brain cancer tomorrow and like you know but like you know if I if I do like am I content with what I've done in these 31 years and the cool thing about what you did and what you're doing now is that despite that failure if you want to call it a failure or journey you're doing it again you know you made the decision to okay cool this didn't work out that doesn't need to define me I still have something to share with the people I have something to bring into creation and I'm gonna do it and it's like yeah that one didn't work out but that doesn't mean the next one doesn't work out and maybe you have two or three misses in a row it's not uncommon you know the amount of people I talk to who have like oh this is my third try at this or this is you know that's normal it doesn't mean you suck it just means you're a regular human being yeah and I love that saying like you're not like if you have to start again sometimes you're not really starting from scratch you starting from experience like you know if you're doing it a second time you've got a bit more in your toolkit and you know what to do and what not to do a bit better so 100% it ain't over till it's over baby it ain't over till it's over oh shit I love it Chris thanks so much for being generous to the time this has been an awesome podcast I think a lot of people will really resonate with this if you want to if you want to go see cat and cloud ever in America Santa Cruz California and the boardwalk song you've heard the boardwalk song and share I've heard the boardwalk song but Chris Barker on social media I'm sure you five more of you would know him and you do me but yeah thanks again so much for coming on the coffee show and I'll see you in America probably next year come through here appreciate you man done all right thanks so much everyone for listening I'm gonna end the recording right now hooroo (upbeat music)