The Meatstack » business

Crimson Cup – Coffee + Community

Craig — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 02:39:35 +0000

For Greg Ubert, great coffee is only half the equation.

“It’s my passion, and one of my questions was ‘where do I want to be? Where do I want to live?’ said Greg Ubert, during an interview for the Columbus Tastecasting event held at their corporate headquarters in Columbus Ohio this past Saturday, “I love Boston, I love Chicago. For me, I love Columbus more.”

A great espresso is a signature characteristic of Armando's Blend, from Crimson Cup

Greg founded Crimson Cup in 1991, after a brief stint in the computer software industry. “For me, it was kind of like, at this age, I don’t have much to lose. Here’s what I do know: I know I wanted to do something that I was passionate about, really that’s what I wanted to do. And so I think the passion might have overcome a lot of fears.” Greg said “In 91 coffee was a commodity, but I think people will always find quality, and of course the experience that goes along with that. That’s what we believe here.”

Greg’s roots are strong in the Columbus area. His parents lived here, who gave him a step up during his start-up, and one of his first employees was a barista on the campus of Ohio State University.

Armando Escobar is Crimson Cup’s CEO – Chief Espresso Officer – and is responsible now for training and assisting coffee houses to getting the most out of their equipment and premium coffees, but in the day, he and Greg worked together to create what is the Crimson Cup’s signature blend.

“Greg came in and we put the blend together.” Armando said. “We worked on it. Espresso counts for just one percent of your coffee sales in the US. Americans don’t know what Espresso is. They don’t know how its supposed to be consumed, but at the student union, it accounted for 12 percent of our sales. It was really important that the espresso be really good. The roast level was very good, light enough to make a great tasting espresso, but dark enough for the flavor to come through for the lattes and Mocha and cappucinos. The third criteria we set was to have it be our drip coffee.”

Greg and Armando worked on it, and once it was approved, Armando received quite the surprise. “When I got it approved from our headquarters on the West Coast, I told Greg ‘Hey, we can switch.’ and, the first invoice he called it Armando’s Blend. I thought that was really cool. We had it for two or three years before I came to work for Greg.”

It’s this level of attention to the individual coffee house managers that makes community so important.

Steam comes off fresh-roasted coffee at Crimson Cup

They believe that the small business owner who’s spending 80 to 90 hours a week in the coffee house should get to keep it how they want. “We are sort of the Intel inside for coffee.” Said Greg. “What we care about are entrepreneurs who are working in their place. They are working a lot of hours, and we want that place to be theirs. So it’s very important to us to have their expression in the coffee bar. Not necessarily our expression.”

This community focus can be seen in their partners, a full list can be found here.

Another way that Crimson Cup is looking to increase community involvement is through a “Cupping club”

Dave Eldridge, one of the Roastmasters at CC, brought up the idea during the coffee cupping (tasting) of the tastecaster’s tour. Interested participants should contact Anna at Crimson Cup. or drop a tweet to @crimsoncup.

Suisse Shop – More Than Just Flower and Sugar

Craig — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 04:29:07 +0000

There's a lot of passion in this little box

For Darlene Jones, baking isn’t just a business, it’s a family passion.

“When I grew up, my mom made all cakes from scratch, breads, everything. I grew up knowing how things should taste. She put love in her baking,and I got that from her.” Said Darlene in an interview for the tastecasting event held March 18th, at the Suisse Shop located at 2119 Polaris Parkway in Columbus, Ohio.

But that passion was not recognized at first. Darlene spent 17 years as a registered nurse, then attended Design school. Something in told her, however, this was the way she wanted to go.

“The shop went up for sale, and at the time it was in the Busch center, which as you know is an industrial park now.” Darlene said. “It was a tiny little place, kind of dark. But they had the recipes, so when I walked out, I said to my husband I WANT It. ‘What?’ my husband (Herb Jones) said to me? I said ‘I WANT it.’ So we went into proceedings to buy the company, and then I came right up here and started designing the store.”

Designer cupcakes are one of the stores specialties

Darlene attributes her success to two factors. The first being location, and second being a perfectionist. “Use the best ingredients, and you have a much better product.”

The Suisse shop stands behind this statement of quality. If you are looking for a special occasion cake, the way this bakery does tastings really showcases that quality. Each component of the cake is tasted separately. First the cake, followed by the icing, and lastly the filling. Therefore each cake is custom built to your exact taste and desire.

The formula is working. When The Jones’ bought the store they had done 25 cakes in a year, now their output is 145, and have increased the product line three-fold. Included in the line-up is delicious Boston Cream cupcake, and a Waldorf Red cake with a recipe dating back to the 1930’s, topped with a icing that is only used on that one cake. Then there’s the central Ohio favorite, the Buckeye. But unlike so many others, this cake does not beat you over the head with peanut butter, but balances against the rich chocolate like a ballroom dancing couple. A Tawney port comes to mind as the perfect complement to this.

It isn’t all pomp though. Unlike the famous bakers currently on hit shows like the food network, Darlene does not let unique get in the way of quality.

“With Ace of Cakes, a lot of that is Styrofoam and fondant, to the point that they really are not editable.” Darlene said. “We’ll make cakes for a child with a fire-breathing dragon. We’ll put fondant on the top, but the cake is french butter cream, and truffle, and really good stuff. So the top is decoration, but everything else is really good cake.”

It’s a mission that is demonstrated in everything this family does. “I wish my mom was around to see this.” Darlene lamented. “Because she said ‘I never thought you would be a cook or baker,’ and I said ‘don’t you remember me with my little hands on your pastry table watching you?’ She said ‘I thought you were bored.’

Attention to detail can be found in all the sweet treats

Now my kids are all interested. My boys are baking for their families, and my daughter is now my general manager of the bakery, and she’s in charge of all the design. It would not nearly be as much fun without her. All my employees, all the girls up here, all the girls in the back, they have passion. Everything they make is wonderful. They really have that same drive that I do.”

The Suisse Shop is located at 2119 Polaris Parkway, Columbus Ohio. Their phone number is (614) 846-5102.

Recovering from Failure

Craig — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 21:31:18 +0000

I really don’t want to rely on other people’s content too much on this blog, but this video really stuck a chord inside of me.

There really is two types of failure. One is eluded to in this video by Honda Performance Engineer John Kessler:

“Failure is a byproduct of pushing the envelope….When you fail, it’s not nessarilly looked at as a bad thing as long as you learn from it, and make something positive out of it.”

It’s such an important point, but buried deep in the video (check around 2:56) Push the envelope, never make the same mistake twice.

The other is when you don’t do what Mr. Kessler suggests, and make the same mistakes over and over. You can see this at all levels of business. That’s a bad failure.

It’s the company that only wants to protect market share. It’s the Vice president only looking towards the next quarterly report. It’s the department just trying to get through the year. It’s the individual rushing to clear the assignments.

If the proper time is not given to any of these, you have failure.

Business Karma

Craig — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 01:04:30 +0000

Even in the soulless world of business, there are cosmic forces at play

Let’s be honest from the start. Business is about making money, and the more money you make, and the quicker you make it, the better you are doing. Sometimes, however, in that rush to the bottom line, the people you end up trampling is yourself. Funny little story…

A couple years ago, we did some cost analysis, and determined that a function of our business we were outsourcing could be done cheaper inside. We drew up the business case, crunched the numbers, and generated a plan. One little thing – we didn’t bother to tell our vendor until we executed the cancellation.

This left them in a bit of a lurch. They had a number of customized consumables on hand, and although the loss of business wasn’t enough to really hurt them, it was big enough to put a little pothole in their financial forecast.

Legally, we were well within our contractual rights, and the end-game transaction was done on the “up and up” and without problem. Everyone remained calm and professional, although one could tell on the phone calls that the friendship was strained.

Fast forward a couple years, to present time. Things have changed, and we find ourselves in a place where we have toonce again, go to this vendor to assist us. This time, however, the conversation has taken a different tone.

“Well, why are you not doing this work yourself?” asked the sales guy, “We know you can, you did it before.”

“We are out of capacity – this is new work, and we can’t take it on with the existing equipment.” state I.

“How do I know that a year or two down the line you won’t drop us again?”

Well, here’s where I switch the subject to the technical. Truth is, there’s no saying we WON’T dump them again. The conversation continued, and he is digging up the numbers for us (after all, even if short term, it IS new revenue)

Looking back, it would not have hurt us to give them a chance to come back with a better price. If they couldn’t, then they would have probably understood why we were departing, and likely let us go with their blessings. They might actually respond to future inquiries like a long lost friend, instead of a jaded lover.

We didn’t do that then, and I wish we did.

Lesson learned.