Archive for Coffee

Bringing the World Together with Coffee

Posted by creelyle22 
· Monday, September 30th, 2024 
· 2 Comments

The Climb

Francois Reihani is someone I think needs more light shead on his amazing companies. Francois is a child of imigrant parents from France and they moved around many times from, Mexico, to LA, to finally Dallas. Francois has been working for most of his life, his dad had a heart attack which meant he and his sister had to step up to help with providing for the home. He started as a car salesman and become the highest seller on the west coast that year at just eighteen years old. Francois went to college and had many dreams about becoming an entrepreneur. This turned into opening a restaurant, which was named Pok, a poke bowl restaurant, with the help of partners. He sold his shares and set his mind on opening The Brightside Project which is apart of the La La Land Kind café.

What it is

The café is designed to help teens that have aged out of the foster system learn valuable life skills and internship opportunities. It may look like a simple coffee barista job from the outside but they are actually learning the in’s and out’s of customer service training, mentorship opportunities and much more. The internship lasts 8 weeks and at the end of it, the participants are helped with job placement, housing, schooling, and therapy.

 

Name Origin

La La Land Kind Café instantly caught my attention due to its name. Francois mentioned he was looking at his life in his young twenties and he said he hated the person he has become. This is when he decided to change his life completely and start the La La Land Kind Café. Although it sounds like it is associated with the musical romantic comedy La La Land, it technically has nothing to do with it. The meaning behind the name is that it is a place where you can go and feel a true sense of joy for life. I think he took inspiration from the plot of La La Land as that movie is very whimsical and shows real dreams in action. I think this calls back to Francois’ life very well as he was so sucessful almost as if he was dreaming up how his career would go but in reality he made it come true. He continues to make dreams come true every single day.

 

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Strongest Coffee in the World

Posted by hagandw17 
· Tuesday, November 13th, 2018 
· 7 Comments

In America today, at least 50% of the population drinks some form of coffee. That’s somewhere in the neighborhood of 150 million Americans. Coffee is enjoying a lofty position in the hierarchy of mainstream trends. But coffee, having been consumed in the United States since its conception, is no trend. Coffee popularity is booming and so are the number of people supplying it. However, in a world dominated by Starbucks’ pricey lattes and Dunkin Donuts’ mediocre attempts to follow suit, as well as many others, how could a new coffee company ever stand out? By having the “strongest coffee in the world.” That is the motto of Death Wish Coffee Company. Death Wish coffee started as a small coffee shop in Saratoga Springs, NY, founded by Mike Brown. Mike created his own blend of beans and combined it with his own roasting technique to create his differentiated product. Progress was steady until Mike and his team won Intuit’s “Small Business Big Game” competition, landing them a 30-second commercial spot during Super Bowl 50. Since then their sales and business have grown exponentially. Death Wish Coffee were sponsors of the New York Comic Con, NASCAR, and the special Olympics, they event sent their coffee into orbit with the International Space Station. From their humble beginnings, Mike and his team have adapted and grown their product to disrupt their market through differentiation and will reap the benefits of their hard work, well into the future.

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Categories : Food, Millennial Enrepreneuers, Strong
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Fire Department Coffee Burns the Competition!

Posted by hagandw17 
· Monday, September 17th, 2018 
· 2 Comments

For those who are not yet fortunate enough to know the rush of being a first responder, let me give you a short glimpse of it.

It’s two in the morning, tones* drop. The piercing scream of high pitched wails rip through your sleepy paradise and alert you that someone needs your help. While still half asleep you dress yourself and gear up as you hear the call come through on the radio, “Station 53, EMS 17, Station 50 for a working dwelling fire*…” Those last three words seal the deal. It’s go time. You and your crew jump into the fire engine and pull out into the night. Lights flash in the darkness and the howling sirens shatter the stillness that once was all around. After a long nights work the fire is finally out and you and your crew are back home at the station, exhausted. Good thing your shift only has another eight more hours left to go! Now if only you had some better coffee to drink than stale “donut shop” k-cups.

With stakes as high as life and death and work hours up to and exceeding 24 hour shifts firefighters, police officers, and EMT/Paramedics all need a coffee that works as hard as they do. That’s where Luke Schneider comes in with Fire Department Coffee.

Luke is a firefighter and paramedic for the city of Rockford and also a former Navy serviceman. He and his fellow firefighters set out less than two years ago to make a coffee suitable for the early mornings and late nights of a first responder. Luke and his team are, no doubt, very familiar with the anecdote I began this post with and they did something about it. Their coffee is roasted to order and shipped all over the country from fire houses to people’s houses. However, Fire Department Coffee doesn’t just make great coffee, they give back in a big way.

Fire Department Coffee has this to say on their website about their charitable efforts toward first responders and vets alike, “A portion of every order goes towards supporting firefighter and military charities.” As well as Schneider saying that Fire Department Coffee was, “built around the concept of giving back.”

Fire Department Coffee’s unique position of being a “works as hard as you work” coffee that tastes great and gives back has blown away the competition. Even in the short amount of time that they have been roasting and distributing coffee, they have seen success across the nation. Schneider and his team have truly set a fire that no one can put out!

http://youtu.be/FIHWzU17Gas

By Daniel Hagan, 2018

Links:

  • https://www.firedeptcoffee.com/

Terms:

  • *tones are the unique set of rings that alert a specific station or agency that their services are needed
  • *a working dwelling fire is a house or other structure that is on fire.
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Categories : Food, Military
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One Man’s Trash is Another Man’s Livelihood

Posted by Levi Roberts 
· Thursday, December 3rd, 2015 
· 1 Comment

Good morning ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to another exciting episode of  “Young Entrepreneurs who know what’s up.”

Today’s episode will be featuring Arthur Kay, the innovative noggin that founded Bio-Bean. You see, young Kay was developing a coffee bean roasting plant at his college that was powered by the school’s waste disposal system, when all of the sudden, a (metaphorical) light bulb shattered agains his cranium. Kay realized that coffee shops produce an exorbitant amount of wasted grounds (especially when you’re in the UK, mate), so he devised a system where he would cycle around the shops, collect their grounds, and convert them into biodiesel and biomass pellets which would then be sold to transport and heating industries. It’s all in his daily grind. That’s the sort of idea that causes young entrepreneurs to beat their heads against a wall in envy and frustration.

Kay gained a large amount of funded euros (I don’t know how they convert and you probably don’t either, so we’ll just leave it at “a large amount”) by snagging first place in a 2013 British pitch competition. One could say that he is good at…espressing himself (that wasn’t funny). And he beans business. Since its birth, Bio-Bean has gained a latte of outside funding and support from various large British business. Kay’s natural energy company is on a roll and will surely remain above grounds in the projected future.

This just goes to show that eco-friendly business ideas in this day in age make the general public (as well as investors) go nuts. They won’t be able to stop themselves from throwing fistfuls of money at you. As we continue to convert our planet into an industrial garbage dump year by year, anything eco-friendly seems like a glass of water in the desert. It would seem that we as a society have figured out how to operate efficiently with technology, but not yet in a way that’s mindful of the world inhabit.

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Coffee Joulies

Posted by Hannah Vaccaro 
· Saturday, November 29th, 2014 
· 9 Comments

Ever burned your tongue on a fresh cup of hot coffee?  How about refilling your coffee cup after it gets too lukewarm and cold to enjoy? In March of 2009, two Dave’s who grew up as neighbors and classmates in New Jersey came up with a solution to the hot drink problem.

Coffee Joulies are metal coffee bean-shaped beans that contain the thermodynamic ability to create the optimal temperature for hot drinks. Inside the beans are a special phase-change material which melts at 140 degrees Fahrenheit. Once put in your coffee cup, the material starts to melt, which in turn absorbs an incredible amount of heat and cools your coffee down extremely fast. The heat is stored in the Joulie beans and then when the coffee reaches 140 degrees Fahrenheit (the perfect temperature), the heat is released back into the coffee to keep it at the optimal temperature for drinking.

This keeps your coffee hot 3 times as long, and cools it down very fast. The beans are made in the US from 85% of recycled stainless steel using hydro power from Niagara Falls.

The business began on Kickstarter, earned 3rd place in the Kickstarter hall of fame for raising enough funds to make Joulies in the US. In 2013, Joulies profits and publicity skyrocketed when their product aired on the show Shark Tank.

My family owns multiple Joulies, and I can personally attest that this product works and is a viable solution to an ongoing inconvenience. For more information, you can check out http://www.joulies.com/

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