Transcription of Bob Garver for the show Kids, Community & Coffee #280
Lisa Belisle: Today I have with me in the studio Bob Garver, who has been roasting coffee for 25 years. He and his wife and partner, Carmen, own both Bard Coffee, a roaster and retailer in Portland’s Old Port specializing in single origin micro-lot coffees and Wicked Joe Organic Coffees, a wholesale coffee roasting company in Topsham specializing in organic and fair-trade certified coffees. Thanks so much for coming in.
Bob Garver: Thank you.
Lisa Belisle: I must say that I am a regular enjoyer of Bard and the Bard experience, and I did not actually know that you were also Wicked Joe.
Bob Garver: Yes. Carmen and I own both companies.
Lisa Belisle: Tell me about that progression. Did that happen at the same time that you owned this coffee shop and also had this wholesale business, or did one happen first?
Bob Garver: We started roasting coffee in Brunswick wholesale as Wicked Joe first in 2004, and then in about 2009, along with a few others who are not involved anymore, we opened Bard Coffee in Portland in the Old Port.
Lisa Belisle: Why the interest in coffee?
Bob Garver: Well, I’d been in coffee for over a decade prior to that. I started roasting coffee in Santa Cruz, California in 1992 and had a similar experience there. I started roasting coffee in 1992, and in 1993 I opened a small coffee shop nearby so that I could have really direct contact with my customers. It’s difficult sometimes with wholesale, where you don’t always get to communicate directly to the people that are drinking and enjoying your coffee. We did the same thing there. We had a roastery and then a separate coffee shop and we did that for over a decade there from ’92 to 2003. We really decided, we had three young girls, we decided that we wanted to raise them in Maine, and my wife and I are both from the Northeast and we really were coming home, and so we sold our business there, came to Maine and opened Wicked Joe, an organic coffee roasting company in 2004, and then did what we had done previously. We kind of missed having a shop that was our own, so we decided to open Bard so that we could have that direct contact.
Lisa Belisle: What was it about coffee that got you interested in the first place?
Bob Garver: Prior to that, I lived in ’90, in ’91 into ’92 in Turkey, the country, and I just had some really remarkable experiences around coffee, both culturally, having my fortune read in my coffee grounds, but also probably more significantly in relationship building. I would meet with the people that I would work with, and that was how we got to know each other, over coffee. Initially, it was frustrating because I was eager to get to work, but culturally, it was an experience, where we were slowing down, and I really came to appreciate that and got to know, to really know, the people that I was working with much better, which also made doing business a lot better. I just came to appreciate what happens over coffee, probably more than anything, and also the rituals in a place like Turkey are so wonderful that it’s hard not to get sort of caught up in the magic. When I came back to the United States, that was really fresh in my mind, and I saw what coffee could be, I think, and what it could do for people. It’s the rituals and the sort of relationships, I think, that really drew me to coffee.
Lisa Belisle: What were you doing before?
Bob Garver: I was in the service, actually. I was a captain in the army.
Lisa Belisle: That’s kind of an interesting shift from being in the military to deciding that you wanted to work in coffee.
Bob Garver: It is, but it felt very natural for me. I was very proud of my service, but I knew that I wanted to do something different at that point, and I knew that I wanted to do something that was uniquely mine, and coffee really provided that opportunity for me, something that I could be passionate about and hopefully have some sort of an impact.
Lisa Belisle: How did that work with you and your wife and partner, Carmen?
Bob Garver: I started out in Santa Cruz by myself. Carmen and I had originally met when we were both in college in the Northeast. I was out there for about five years before I was able to convince her to come join me and to sort of leave her profession to move to Santa Cruz, live on a sailboat with me in the yacht harbor, which was probably a step down for her, but it was very magical for us and to sort of join me. She joined me as my partner, then, and we’ve been partners ever since. For her I think it was a lot of fun. In the early days, I’d be roasting the coffee, and she would be knocking on doors, usually with at least one baby on her hip, if not both hips, and we had very humble beginnings. We wouldn’t trade that time in our lives for anything. I think that she dove in and embraced it, but it was a big change for her, obviously.
Lisa Belisle: What did she do before?”
Bob Garver: She has a master’s in psychology, and she worked with different populations. I think she was the project manager for the first mobile AIDS van in Westchester County, New York, just north of the city, and then she worked with other populations, such as, she was the director of clinical counseling for a major regional in-patient rehab center working with counseling people that were struggling with these kinds of issues. She was, I think, very good at that, but I think that she was eager for a new challenge, too, and we’ve really built a life together that we’re grateful for and find joy in.
Lisa Belisle: You moved back to the Northeast and at that time, you had three daughters or did….
Bob Garver: We had three daughters. It was the birth of our youngest, Frankie, that really made us feel like we wanted to be closer. We were the only ones in California, on the West Coast, and we really wanted to be closer to our extended family.
Lisa Belisle: You were trying to grow your family and your business and then businesses simultaneously.
Bob Garver: Yeah.
Lisa Belisle: And continue your good relationship with your wife. It must have been an interesting time for you.
Bob Garver: It was. You go through a lot of struggles when you’re trying to build a business. Many of the challenges that people face…. When we came to Maine, it’s a challenging place to do business in many ways. We came here, really, because this is where we wanted to raise our daughters and our family. We believed that this would also be a challenging place to start a business, but that it would be a great place to be in business in terms of where we were. We were very early with organic and fair-trade coffees, but we had a…. We believed that folks shared our value set here and that we have a chance if we worked hard, which we did, worked very hard, that this would be a place that we would have an opportunity, a shot, at creating a new life in a different environment. We faced many of the challenges that, I think, small business owners face. Had to start from scratch, and you may be getting at that it’s challenging to work together with the person that you spend your life with maybe in other aspects, I don’t….
Lisa Belisle: I just meant sort of the whole kitten caboodle that you’re raising your daughters and you’re….
Bob Garver: Our youngest had just been born. Our middle daughter, Lizzie, was not yet two, and our eldest Maggie was not yet three. They were babies. It was probably a risky proposition, but we knew that we wanted to be close to our family, and we also thought Maine would be really an ideal place to raise our daughters. We wanted them to have some magic in their life every day, and this is a place where we felt like, just the beauty here and the culture in Maine, was a place that they could have that. The business was really… I don’t want to say secondary, we just wanted a fair shot, kind of. We faced a lot of challenges there as well. We wouldn’t change anything, I don’t think, though.
During that period of time, I fought cancer. We’re trying to raise our daughters. We’re trying to start a business, and the economy wasn’t always supportive of that, and the community here in Maine supported us, and we’re grateful for that, and we were able to really do what we dreamt of, in part because like all small business owners we worked hard and in large part we’re just grateful to the community. Maine has challenges, but the people here really I think embrace the things that are important to us, quality, a commitment to sustainability, and best practices that we kind of embrace, and I don’t know that we could’ve really built our business in the manner that we are proud of doing anywhere else.
Lisa Belisle: Why was it important for you to be an early adopter of organic and fair-trade coffee?
Bob Garver: We had been doing organic coffee since the early 90’s really, selling organic coffees in Santa Cruz, California. It’s just part of our DNA. Fair-trade started to come about a bit later, and it was very natural for us to adopt that, initially because we really understood what was happening to small farms in the United States and what that does to the fabric of communities. This was a way to really connect with small farmers. It was very difficult as a small coffee roaster to be able to purchase from very small farmers, and the only way that they can do that and to sustain that way of life is through these cooperatives, and so we were drawn to fair trade. It was a natural evolution. When we were able to start doing that, it was natural for us to do that. That was just our lane, it just flowed naturally.
As we’re able, for the last ten years or so, we’ve been making a lot of our own trips and visiting not only individual farms and farmers but cooperatives and mills and things so that we, on top of the certification that we have, we’re also building very direct relationships. The two are not mutually exclusive. That’s just been a natural evolution. I don’t know that we ever made a conscious decision around that. I think it was just kind of our makeup and who we were, the kind of business that we wanted to operate.
Lisa Belisle: Where does your coffee come from?
Bob Garver: We purchase green coffee from really all over the world. All coffee is grown in the tropics, and so there is basically a band around the equator so to speak where coffee grows. We purchase from all coffee growing regions, from Central America and South America, from Africa, and then from Southeast Asia, which would be Sumatra and Java and places like that.
Lisa Belisle: You’ve described having very direct relationships with individuals who are growing the coffee. How does that benefit them?
Bob Garver: It can benefit producers in a number of different ways. Some of the ways that I think are unexpected is that by visiting with them and building these relationships, it gives them confidence. They know that we’re committed to that relationship. We’re demonstrating commitment by going, which initially I thought that because we gained so much from doing that, we’re more involved and collaborative with them as our relationships grow, and that has a very profound impact on quality and consistency and we know, so we’re benefiting, hopefully as much, it’s beneficial to both parties. We’re getting quality and consistency and they’re getting commitment from us. It’s very challenging for growers. They face a lot of challenges most people couldn’t really grasp. It’s a very difficult life sometimes in these places. Not only by establishing these long-term relationships are we able to help support that way of life, which in turn benefits us because we’re getting these great coffees, we can count on getting those coffees, but for them, I found that there’s such a tremendous amount of impact for them because as quality increases, we get to pay them more for their coffee, which we don’t object to because we want the highest quality coffee.
Probably more, like I started to say before, I think one of the most profound ways is just the sense of confidence, I think, that is engendered in them in terms of their relationship with us. They know that if they do their part, which is to work hard like we do and to create really great coffees, use best practices is very important to us and that’s part of what we’re visiting for, to see what’s going on there and to make sure that they’re sort of representing themselves properly, to make sure that the impact that we think we’re having is actually happening. They come to it with a level of confidence that, assuming that they do those things that we’ve agreed to, that we’re going be there next year for them.
That is huge because there is so much uncertainty in the supply chain in terms of what’s going to happen next year. They know that because they have a partnership with us, that they can count on us through thick and thin, and we know that we can count on them through thick and thin as well. It really is very symbiotic and mutually beneficial, the investment that we’re able to make. We’ve also had producers come visit us here in Maine. It’s not just one way, although we do the lion’s share of that travel, but we’ve had some of our producers come visit us here. That’s really exciting, obviously, for our staff and people, and we can share that with them directly.
Lisa Belisle: You’ve also described a situation whereby money that is put into the fair trade system ends up being distributed for good purposes, for building of infrastructure and schools, and basically, in bettering the communities that are supporting the growers.
Bob Garver: Yes.
Lisa Belisle: What types of things have you actually been able to see when you’ve gone to visit?
Bob Garver: Oh boy. We’ve seen roads that service communities that didn’t exist before, because some of these farms are very remote, so now they have access to the communities. We’ve seen roads that were in very poor shape one year and much better shape the next year. I’ve got pictures of one year visiting a farm, where there are no electrical lines or poles in that community, and the next year, when I take a picture of the same thing, I see electric lines. That’s huge. I’ve seen schools that were built and in the process of being built with those community premiums.
I’ve seen waste management systems set up which is really powerful, improved water systems for the community. Microloans that go to support the families frankly not being so dependent on the coffee income that they have, but that they can start either small businesses within the family that support that or they can plant other crops on the farm, which adds more biodiversity and makes a better farm and a better environment for their families and their children to grow up in. I’ve seen so much impact, and I think what’s most powerful about that model, now we make direct contributions, by the way, to farmers and things that are above that. It’s personal. We’ll go and talk to a farmer or a partner and say, “What can we do to support you? By the way, because it benefits us. If we can improve quality….” They might say, “I could use another solar dryer,” and we’ll say, “Well, how much is that going to cost?” This benefits us, right, but also it will benefit them.
We’re having a conversation, collaborating to the point where now we’re participating in decisions around what varieties to grow, based on what the market here demands as opposed to what they’ve necessarily traditionally grown, and what kind of quality we’re looking for that’s going to enable as time goes on for them to demand even more for their coffee, which benefits them because quality improves, and if something was to happen to us, they’re much better for the relationship they have with us. I think what’s most powerful, though, about all of that is that we’re listening to them, not telling them what we want to do for them, but asking them what they need, and either we can partner in that with them in very personal projects or through the fair-trade premium system. Through the fair trade premium due to our purchases, over $500,000, a half a million dollars, have gone into the communities we work with. Last year alone, over $100,000 went to our partners, and even more will go this year.
They get to decide what they want to do with that money, and I’ve spoken directly with so many of our partners, and I’ll say, “What is this doing for you? Is this benefiting you, this relationship, right?” We want to make sure that we’re not kidding ourselves and “What do you love about this and that?” Almost universally, many of them will say, “I love when we get together as a community and we vote on what we’re going to do with our premiums.” They’re providing great coffee to us and part of the benefit to that is not only to each individual farmer who’s guaranteed a living wage through the purchases, but on top of that the communities benefit. That’s where the communities also come together through these organizations, and they make a decision on what they want, not what, like I said, what we want to do for them. That I think is most gratifying and it’s really fun for me now to go and see what’s happened when I visit next year, and I’ll see the changes and that, I think, is really exciting and gratifying because our business is changing, too, and we want to share that with them because we’re better, and I think all of our staff, which we care about most, are hopefully benefiting from the relationships we have with these farmers and cooperatives and mills. We want them to know that as well.
Lisa Belisle: It seems as though it is now possible to have a career in coffee. I know that you have many long-term employees and I think we had one of them, Brittany, on the show a few years ago. It’s been actually very important to provide these long-term opportunities to people in our community because I think sometimes, initially it was possible to just say, “Oh, well somebody so and so is a barista and that’s just a part-time thing,” but you’re actually, these are careers that you have been able to make possible for people. It’s an important thing that you’re doing.
Bob Garver: Yeah. Yes. That’s one big change in coffee and the way people view coffee, just like people view…. The coffee community and opportunities in coffee have changed in similar ways to craft beer and artisan food, and the whole scene in Maine is really vibrant and quality focused. In coffee, it’s been really wonderful to see the opportunities. Coffee is a big industry. I think a lot of people do come in as baristas, and some really fall in love with it. Some of it, some people are, obviously it’s a transitional type job. There are many that really, really fall in love with it because it is, it’s amazing. We love coffee. We love doing what we do. We love roasting coffee. We love brewing and preparing coffee for people and the hospitality aspect of that. We love interacting with farmers at origin. It’s a very big and complex kind of industry, and there’s a lot of room for people to grow frankly.
Yeah, we’re trying very hard to get people out to participate in industry events, which is professional development, and actually getting people trained and investing in training ourselves so that people that are interested in making a career out of it have an opportunity, whether it’s moving into the roasting side of the house, there are people that have been in roasting that are now moving into the travel and green coffee purchasing part of the house and taking some of the load off of me in that regard. Often, the place where that starts is at the barista level, where our baristas are very highly trained. We’re incredibly proud of our staff. We’ve got people that are extremely talented, and that applies to both at Bard, the staff there, and also at our roasting business. We don’t exist without them, and we’re not great without them. We’re trying to be great. Not big, but just great. Our employees make that happen, and that’s facilitated by the industry. The industry is just a great place to learn and grow, and it often starts at the barista level.
Lisa Belisle: I’ve been speaking with Bob Garver, who has been roasting coffee for 25 years and who along with his wife and partner, Carme,n runs both Bard Coffee and Wicked Joe Organic Coffees. It’s really been great to have this conversation with you. I appreciate the time you’ve taken to come in. Thank you for the great coffee.
Bob Garver: Thank you.