Episode #9 - Communication, Changes, and Customers with Brot Coffee
Episode Transcript
Meredith Matics: Welcome to Business Reflections with your host Meredith Matics, and we are here to reflect on the business topics that are affecting you today and how you can better run your business.
Today's guest host is Adrian from Brot Coffee.
Adrian Contreras: Well, I first got into coffee about 22 years ago, 23 years ago. I was 15. I was in the middle of trying to figure out what my next steps were in life. And I fell into a coffee job and fell in love with it. And then was sort of excited about. The fact that it was more than just coffee, but it was about people and there was a purpose behind why people were coming to your shop and that it was you, you as a person had a different sort of influence or at least the ability to have influence on these people's lives more than just through a cup of coffee, but through interaction and conversation and connection. And, and it was something that I, I got sucked into. So that's, that's how I started.
Meredith Matics: Well, that's, that's a great way to get started. I mean, personally, I think anybody that starts. In business with a passion for what they do for making it a deeper meaning than just like, I, I drink a lot of coffee and want to not have to pay for my own coffee or something.
Adrian Contreras: Well, you know, and, and I've, I've talked to people about this before that it's as enchanting as coffee can be, I mean, at the end of the day, when it comes to business, I mean, you can, you can create that in almost any industry that you're in if you allow yourself to be available to that. And I, and I think whether you're, you know, working at Chick-fil-A or McDonald's or Otta or whatever, like you, you have the ability to, you know, make impressions on people's lives and find, you know, a quality of life in that more than it just being a job.
And, and I think that's where people sort of get lost in what they're doing. Um, in not necessarily the positive way in that they just sort of find themselves in the rut of it, rather than enjoying the influence that they have on, because this is life. We, we all, we all, you know, get up and go to work and we do what we have to, why not make the best of it? So.
Meredith Matics: Exactly. It's really nice when you can enjoy your job and see the deeper meaning behind it and have a deeper purpose. And I think that creates a lot of drive for business owners. If it's, yeah. I try to talk about different examples of, you know, whether you're like a yoga instructor or you're a teacher, whatever business is business, and we can bring so much of our lives into it.
And, bond with others and, you know, build good relationships with other businesses. So Brot is really unique in the sense of your food choices. Could you tell us a little bit about how that all came to be?
Adrian Contreras: Um, yeah. Well, I'll, I'm going to give you a little bit of a hard time, because the, and you're one of, so many people that have asked us questions as to how do we pronounce the name of our, our business.
Meredith Matics: I've been saying it wrong this whole time.
Adrian Contreras: No, and you're fine. You're fine. Because this is, this is sort of what we, we knew we would find ourselves. You know, dealing with when we, you know, decided on the name and because it is a German background name, so it's sort of, it's not immediately understood how to approach it with the O um, but it's pronounced, uh, brr-wrote.
Meredith Matics: Brr-wrote
Adrian Contreras: Yeah, Brot and it's because it's the, it is the German word for bread. And so it's this, it's this idea of, of, you know, Uh, what's the word, um, like subsistence and sustenance and the, the things that we need to, you know, fill our bodies and fill our souls or whatever, whatever it is that we need to nourish ourselves.
So and some of us get that through the beverage component. Some people get it through the food component, some people get it through the conversational piece of it. And we just thought, you know, how do we embody that in the business to where it sort of resonates in this idea of, you know, sharing it at a, at a table and breaking bread and sharing and conversation and making this sort of a community space.
And at the end of the day, you know, coffee and toast is sort of like a they're so in your morning routine, at least that for most, for a lot of us, it's very, it's all very relatable. So we knew we wanted to sort of create an environment that we paired those two pieces together. It just was a bit of a struggle in the beginning trying to figure out a partner business that we can work with.
And we found a great one in Bread Artisan who, who supplies our, our bread, but that's sort of the. Where that all started was is how do we create this environment to where it's simple. It's not, it's not your average run of the mill, you know, muffin or scone or pastry, which are all great. And I love it when, you know, I love going to other shops and getting those, but we wanted to have our own sort of identity and offering and, and it's really, you know, taken off and, and expanded through the, you know, the three and a half years that we've been open. So.
Meredith Matics: Wow. You can't see my face cause this is podcast, but like it's both embarrassed for saying Brr-ought instead of Brot, but also like a little dumbfounded at how deep and how like much thought went into that.
I mean, everybody puts that in their name, but like that's a really deep meaning to really bring for your like company culture and to bring into, you know, why you do what you do and then to express thought through the name of your company, which is huge. Because honestly, quite frankly, I was not very creative when I named my company.
Adrian Contreras: Well, you know, but I think at the day, depending on what you're, your what industry you're in yours, yours works because, you know, it's, it's relevant to who you are as a person and the product you provided for us. It, we knew it was going to be a little bit of a, uh, how do we convey this, you know, out of the gate or do we even worry about it and force it, or we just sort of allow it to sort of happen, organically. And it's in the process of us getting to know our customers because it is sort of an obscure name. And when people first see it, unless you're of the origin, most people, when they see the name, they, they do, they go right to the word Broughton and, and that's fine. We, we, we always sort of took it upon ourselves to be like, let's catch it when we hear it and use it as a talking piece to sort of, you know, use that as the moment to explain.
You know, explain our, our philosophy, our, our vision and our mission of what we want to accomplish. And so we don't, we, we have gotten so used to it, so it doesn't bother us. I wouldn't be embarrassed at all.
Meredith Matics: So well, considering I'm there like three times a week. It's how have I not said it wrong in front of you guys before?
Adrian Contreras: Well, you know, and we've, but we've gotten so, so accustomed to each other that, you know, We're usually now when you come in it's it's like, Hey, Meredith, it's not so much, you know, Hey, welcome to Brot. You know, we've sort of sidestep that because of getting to know you so quickly. So it's sort of easy to sort of get lost in the mix.
Whereas if you were a brand new customer, we've tried to get really good about, you know, shouting the name out. So people begin to hear it as a, as a normal, so.
Meredith Matics: Well, that's, that's really cool. And I like, I like that story and I like that deepness to it. I really appreciate when other businesses have a really deeper meaning and, you know, purpose in it.
And, but let's dive in a little bit into kind of why I thought you'd be good to have on here, especially because so many businesses right now are being affected by changing regulations. And I know the food industry has been really affected. So tell me a little bit about, you know, how has your company been affected by the changing regulations and how has that affected you as a business owner?
Adrian Contreras: Well, you know, as, as a business owner, it. It's it's difficult because you eat, there are your responsibilities as somebody that's working directly with, with the community to make the right choices based on your customer's needs. And that, that always takes precedence over anything that you do. And right now, because we're dealing with such a strained environment, whether it's, you know, dealing with, you know, the COVID itself or the political involvement of.
Of COVID, it gets really tricky, but at the end of the day, you, you just have to be responsible with what you're doing and say, regardless of where I stand or my employee stand, or, you know, or when my manager stand or whatever, you know, we have to take care of each other. And so that's, that's sort of been our approach from the beginning is that, you know, let's just listen to what our customers need, listen to what our employees need, because that was that for us was a big, yeah, I wouldn't call it a hurdle, but it was something that we had to hit head on to make sure that everybody was comfortable.
And admittedly, there was some straining moments of trying to figure out exactly who is comfortable, who's not comfortable. How do we make this right for everybody, eventually everybody gets on the same page, but we, since day one, even before COVID, we've always, we've always operated with this idea of, you know, we want to know where you. Well, how you guys were feeling so never feel afraid to come to us and, you know, open the conversation to say, this is what I need right now. This is what, how I feel comfortable right now.
This is, you know, so it's been interesting trying to navigate through this because we, as we mentioned, as I mentioned earlier in, in taking care of the community, that's always sort of been, are the precedents there? Is that, how do we make sure everybody. Is taking care of in a way that's right during this time with COVID and right during the time on the other side of COVID is that we still need connection and we still need, you know, some way to feel like as though we're still a part of something and, and that's sort of been the biggest hurdle right there.
Meredith Matics: So. How have you taken to communicating with the community and then communicating with your customers? So it's kind of a two-part question. I mean, start with the community, I guess, is what's the best way that you've found to communicate what the community's needs are besides the obvious human need of connection? How do you know what, like basically, how are you taking the temperature of the, of your community?
Adrian Contreras: Well, you know, and for us, we have a unique situation here because we have, I was having this conversation with somebody recently, uh, another coffee shop owner, and they were asking us how we're dealing with how we've been sort of interacting with the nurses and doctors since we're right next door to, to two hospitals and a major medical center next to us.
Yeah. Yeah. Sort of assume you're going to get a. A good, you know, temperature read as to what's going on. But even with having direct one-on-ones, it's split down the middle. I mean, some, some are concerned and some couldn't care less. Some say it's a bigger deal. Some say it's not. So, so at the end of the day, we're kind of like, well, we can't really rely on that piece of it.
Let's just see how our customers feel. And it's just mostly been, you know, one-on-one not one-on-one, but, but direct video. Uh, messaging for me, just letting my customers know this is where we're at. This is where we stand, you know, let us know how you feel. And then it's, you know, sort of getting, getting the gauge on the one-on-ones when people come in the store and because, well, I mean, if we go back to when there was, you know, mask or no mask, Um, and it was so conflicting and I think that's where it got really difficult for businesses is that, you know, where do you go for accurate information as it's changing so rapidly? And, um,
Meredith Matics: yeah
Adrian Contreras: And sometimes we, you know, sometimes I found myself relying on my employees. I'd be like, no, this just changed recently to say, okay, well, if that's. If that's the new thing, then let's, let's figure out a way to adapt it into it. And, and well, and again, that was sort of the, the early read is some people were comfortable with it.
Some people weren't comfortable with it. And again, early on. Uh, you know, I, I got a little bit of pushback because I was trying to follow Orange County's guidelines and Orange County wasn't mandating it, but we started to get some feedback from customers that they felt uncomfortable, that you know, that employees weren't wearing masks yet.
And what are the, when are we going to sort of get on board? And, and it's just, again, it's one of the things where it's, it doesn't make that significant of, of an effect on our lives behind the counter to accommodate people with that. So we, you know, it was sort of one of those things where it's like, Hey, at the end of the day, If this is going to make people feel comfortable, we're obviously happy to do that, but it was, again, one of those adjustments to say, when you guys are ready, let me know how you'd like to do this.
And the employees were very happy to sort of take direction as it came in. And we were lucky. We were lucky to have, you know, a bunch of, you know, a group of people that just absolutely genuinely care about. Taking care of people and taking care of each other at the end of the day, they were, you know, obviously worried about each other and, but it's, it's been, it's been very unique for sure, sure.
Meredith Matics: Yeah. Let me go back to something you said that you and I remember seeing these two on, um, Instagram, you said you were doing video of you kind of talking about where Brot is at. You know, their overall feeling, what was going on. And even when you've had some more challenging times with maybe like having to close early and stuff, you've, I've been really good at communicating that.
So did you feel that you had a good response? Not necessarily negative or positive, but an ample response from your customers through social media.
Adrian Contreras: It's not, and it's not just me that runs the social media account. It's me and my wife, my wife does it too. And she's really good about if it's something that she can handle directly.
Um, especially if it's like a, a general business question. She's, she's really quick to sort of, to answer those sorts of things, but when it comes to the personal. Like, this is obviously somebody that Adrian knows. Um, she's really good about notifying me and saying, Hey, I don't want to answer that because it sounds like they, they know you specifically.
So I always try to stay one-on-one connected with people when they message me. Like when they, when they direct message me on Instagram, you know, it's one of those things where at the end of the day, there's so many avenues to communicate with people now. Whether that be any of the business accounts, like, you know, Google business or a Yelp or Facebook business or whatever.
I try to keep everything streamlined into one space. So I do all my business communications through Instagram and mostly because that's the easiest way for me to give a one-on-one you can see my face as I'm explaining what's happening rather than. Relying on, you know, messaging through Yelp or matching through Google or even square because square gives you that option.
And it's, it's been, it's been good because it's people have been able to sort of direct message me after the fact, or just leave comments on my videos or, or like you're saying, when they come into the store, just give me some, you know, just sort of general feedback as to how they felt about it. And, and it's always been positive.
We, we've been very fortunate that. People have in this time they get it. Everybody gets that we're all going through changes. And we're all trying to, to sort of navigate our way through this. And I've been lucky. I've been lucky that the space here in the store has allowed for us to, you know, maintain well sustain, uh, a level of interaction with direct, you know, interaction with our customers. Whereas I think some businesses have not been as lucky.
And when you lose that component of one-on-one interaction with people, it is a lot harder to stay connected to the product that is your business. That is not just the food or beverage that you sell, but the, the person that you are, people love the product of who you are. And, when you lose that ability to see people one-on-one and at the end of it, even beyond me, I think you would agree to this, my employees, I mean, at the end of the day, my customers see my employees all the time and it's, you really get to know these people and their stories and. You know what the things that they're going through and when you lose that, you lose something.
Meredith Matics: So in any business, if you have that connection with the other party, if somebody likes you or feels connected to you, they're definitely going to return to you or pursue for their business relations with you, or, you know, whatever that relationship looks like, but they're more likely to put effort into it if they like you.
And it doesn't mean you have to be everybody's best friend, but like trying to be personable or make a connection with your customer base is huge. And it really guarantees return return customers.
Adrian Contreras: Yeah.
Meredith Matics: Or longevity of customer relations. So that kind of brings me what I was going to talk about next was going to be, um, what do you think has like, that has made your business so resilient in the time of change?
Adrian Contreras: Well, I mean, we, early on, we had to make a quick decision as to how do we use a lot of the shops that we're, that we work side by side with made little adjustments and they made changes to their business operations. And some of the shops were calling we're sort of adapting this idea of like a pantry and environment of, you know, selling off the milk and selling off eggs and selling off, you know, whatever they could really to sort of maintain some level of cashflow.
But it's, it's difficult because you, you have to decide from the get-go, if this is what we're going to do, then we're going to go all in. And I, and when I say this and, and I mentioned this, um, I had a conversation with somebody about this a while ago, about early on when COVID first started is that if you're going to do this, you have to say, If I'm going to sell gallons of milk to my customers, because your customer base, your loyal customers are going to want to do everything they can to help you.
And if you start saying, you know, I'm going to start selling, uh, cartons of eggs and whatever it is, then you have to make sure that you have it available as a, as a regularity. Otherwise the one-offs become, Hey, I really had a good time. I really appreciated, you know, helping you guys out by buying milk from you guys.
I'm going to make you guys make my go to, give me a gallon of milk. And if you then say, Oh, you know, I'm sorry, I'm actually sold out of milk. Cause I, I was just trying to unload my inventory. You lose that it's like a trust factor of like, they know that they can yes.
Meredith Matics: The consistency.
Adrian Contreras: Exactly. And it's so, so for us when we made the adjustment, we said, we're going to go all in on, on beans, like trying to sell whole beans and really promoting that. And we're going to go all in, on selling loaves of bread. And that for us was something that we had not ever really pushed like we, we sell, obviously we sell the toast and whenever somebody was curious about buying a loaf of bread, we always were happy to accommodate and we would sell, you know, our supply that we had on hand when we were regularly opened for COVID. So after the fact, you know, we committed to the idea of like, we want to make this available for customers because it's something that they're going to be needing, especially in the early days of the, the, the lockdowns stay-at-home orders. It was, going to the grocery stores and seeing the empty bread shelves was, you know, a blaring opportunity for us to say, well, here we are.
We get fresh, fresh break, baked bread delivered every day. Why would we not try to promote this, uh, during a time of need? And again, I mean, you've, you can attest this. The bread is delicious. So, so it wasn't...
Meredith Matics: It's great.
Adrian Contreras: Wasn't a hard sell for us. So, and...
Meredith Matics: I was one of those people coming in because there wasn't bread anywhere else.
And I buy bread for my parents who are high risk to go out, especially at the beginning when we didn't really know anything about like, are people wearing masks or not, or what, and they're caretaker for my elderly grandmother. So we really were trying to isolate and protect them. And there was no breadth store. So I don't know if you remember, but I was coming in and Brian like three or four loaves.
Adrian Contreras: Yeah
Meredith Matics: just to like, get everybody situated. And I mean, my parents are not coffee drinkers and you know, they have, they'll probably never ever come into your place. I think I got my dad coffee for his birthday or something for you guys, but, um, they do ask when I see them, how are the bread people?
Adrian Contreras: Oh, that's nice. That's great.
Meredith Matics: Yeah. There'll be like, how are the bread people? And I took it to one of my friends who has kids and she's high risk and I was getting her some bread and every now and then she'll be like, I'm dreaming of that bread and coffee.
Adrian Contreras: We, I think we, we were fortunate early on. That, that was, that, that was more than just about us sustaining ourselves with, you know, incoming sales, but it was an opportunity for us to sort of, uh, flip the, the initial mission, which was, you know, how do we bring home to the story here, where your morning routine, you get up, you throw, you know, you get a slice of bread, you put in the toaster and you enjoy your coffee with, with toast. It was the flip side where how do we, you know, transplant Brot to people's homes and it was sort of this fun, you know, three 60 opportunity to say we've, we have been fortunate to create something in the store.
Let's recreate that in the home. And it gave customers a chance to say, you guys have been so great to us, you know, for the last two and a half years, how do we help you? Get through this, you know, speak in candidly. Like we, we needed every bit of that. I mean, it was, it was...
Meredith Matics: yeah. I mean, especially it, yeah, small businesses in general, but then especially, I would say the food industry with people not going out and not having excess income to spend on those, the businesses that usually begin to struggle, but I feel like you guys have been really resilient through it.
Adrian Contreras: And we, you know, it was one of those things where. And everybody, you know, anybody that says they didn't go through this, as you know, it's probably runs a particular type of industry, but most of us in the food industry definitely found ourselves in a predicament where we had zero understanding of what was coming next. Like we, we knew, no one, at least in modern, modern times at least had experienced this level of a shutdown and like business. Basic, basically business kill. Um, you know, how do we know what's coming around the corner? There was no way to really prepare or our approach. It, it was a lot of use your best understanding of, you know, the, the farthest, you know, similar circumstance, um, to make some good choices. And at the end of the day, relying on.
At the end of the day, our customers are the ones that carried us through all this. I mean, that's, that's the reality of it.
Meredith Matics: How did you find out? I mean, I know you said, like you had. You know, your staff and maybe a customer, somebody saying these are the changing things, but what did you find like most helpful in finding out what the regulations were as they were changing?
Because my thought is most of us that go into business, you know, we kind of have a general idea of how we're supposed to operate and what the. Parameters are and where the boundaries are of like our industry and then to just have the rug pulled out and be like, okay, well now you can't do this or you can, or, you know, how did you keep up with all of that?
Adrian Contreras: Well, you know, it was, it was tough because you, again, you had stuff that was sort of being communicated federally, stuff that was being communicated state, and then stuff that was being communicated county. And some cities were sort of taking their own initiatives. And for us, we were lucky the City of Orange and Orange County for that matter as well was pretty good about staying on top of generating new information as it came in. So I was, I was receiving emails pretty rapidly. Um, after something was released to say, Hey, this is the new changes. So Orange County health was, was really good about that. So I, I didn't usually have to go out and seek. Too much. There was only the occasional time where it just got lost in the mix.
And then one of my employees had, had mentioned a couple of times where, Hey, this just changed or Riverside County is implementing this. And usually when LA County and Riverside County implemented something, you sort of knew it was coming around the bend. So, um, so that was pretty easy to sort of navigate that.
It just was sort of saying, all right, you, if we're going to commit to one. Uh, one information stream. Let's just do that. Let's not go drive ourselves mad, trying to figure out which is the actual one.
Meredith Matics: Right. Um, I think that.
Adrian Contreras: Especially cause we're so close to some of the neighboring counties, we would get lots of visitors from the different counties and they'd say, well, no, you should be doing this right now, and this is a new regulation and, and we have to explain to them that like, Absolutely. Like we know that that's sort of becoming a norm in the neighboring counties, but because we're part of Orange County, it's not, we're not quite there yet when it is where we are more than happy to accommodate that.
We're just sort of trying to play it by ear as it's happening, you know? And, and for us, even some of it was just, we decided ahead of the game, like when, uh, I think they, somebody did the shutdown and I remember who might've been LA County or somebody had shut down. Uh, or the 16th and we decided that we were going to keep the store open Monday, let our customers know that this is the plan moving forward. We're going, we know that it's coming, we're going, we're going to implement a shutdown and we're going to close our lobby and no more, no more in store stuff. And right. And that was ahead of Orange County saying, this is what we're going to do.
Meredith Matics: I don't want to take up any more of your time already, but tell me where can people find you on social media? And learn more about you?
Adrian Contreras: Well, they can visit our website. So Brotcoffee.com. Uh, spelled B-R-O-T coffee.com. Um, or you can go to the same name, Brot Coffee. So @brotcoffee at Facebook or at Instagram, but Instagram, um, @brotcoffee. Uh, that's the best place that you're going to find any information about the business. Cause there's, again, my, whether it's myself or my wife, we're very good at doing whatever we can to respond to as many direct messages as we can as rapidly as we can. Um, sometimes it's a little difficult and I get behind a couple of days, but, um, but for the most part, if you're, you want to know what's going on, what's happening with Brot. Go to Brot Coffee at Instagram.
Meredith Matics: Well, this has been really great. Thank you so much for coming on the show. I hope we can have you again sometimes. It sounds like we've got lots of other things we can talk about. Oh, you've got plenty to share with small business owners.
Adrian Contreras: Yeah. And I. I am always available to, you know, the up-and-comers that want to get involved, so happy to have any sort of conversations with you, so.
Meredith Matics: Wow. Well, thank you so much.
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