COFFEE COFFEE COFFEE

COFFEE COFFEE COFFEE COFFEE

WHEN YOUR ROASTER BREAKS DOWN. . .

When your primary focus as a company is roasting coffee and your roaster breaks down, it’s

no bueno! In between all the motorcycle riding, events, and coffee deliveries, we roast coffee. This past month, our worst nightmare manifested itself when I accidently made a mistake during some routine maintenance on our R1 Bullet.

I (Sam) was cleaning the roaster by myself one day and accidently scrubbed an IR germanium glass sensor with a little too much elbow grease. Sadly, I ruined it and this completely diasbled our roaster for about three weeks.

We could not get a good reading on bean temp or enviromental temp which made it really hard to know what was going on inside “The Pig” - that’s what we call our roaster. (See picture to the right!) - - - >

After whispering a few choice words to myself, I sat down and began to process the damage and how much it was going to set us back. Note to self, read your manuals and don’t scrub germanium glass. It does not go well.

With May coffee club subscription orders only a few days away, we began to troubleshoot in a hurry. I am always fascinated how hardships and adversity are the best conductors for helping you expand, grow and get better.

When you are between a rock and a hard spot it can be quite humbling. It’s a good reminder that we need each other to make the world go round!

So with our backs against the wall, we started working our network. I started texting and calling everyone I knew who might be able to help us out. I called our friends at Proud Mary, Sean Benesh (my coffee sesnei), and people I didn’t even really know.

To my surprise, I got a phone call back from a fella named Westie who owns MallGrab Coffee. Westie happens to roast on the same roaster we use and he went above and beyond to help us out. He brought his roaster down to our garage and let us use it for a couple days so that we didn’t fall behind on orders!

Then a day later, my friends over at Proud Mary helped us get connected to an available Probatone 12 to roast on.

In the course of a few hours, we went from being up the creek without a paddle, to having everything we needed.

We started this company from the ground up. We have built it slowly piece by piece over the course of the last 12 months and we are learning so much every step of the way. Running a small buisness is no small undertaking. There are so many things to think through and process you would never expect from managing inventory, designing products, learning how to build a website, to roasting coffee. Every step has been challenging and so much fun!

Thank you for being a part of the K&C family. We don’t take your kindness lightly. It means the world to us that you would invest your hard earned dollar in our comapny. -Sam Wake

New sensor glass

Old Westie from Mall Grab Coffee

ISSUE 03

SLOW MAG

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