Arabica Coffee House Partners with Mission Matters

Hey, I'd like to welcome you to another episode of mission matters. My name is Adam Torres. And if you'd like to apply to be a guest, just head on over to mission matters. com and click on, be our guest to apply. All right. So today is a very special episode. This episode, I don't know. It's probably going on two years in the making. So I have. Scott Hague on the line. He is president over at Arabica coffee house. First off Scott back from travels. I know you're heading back out. I just want to say welcome to the show. Finally, I got John. Thank you. I pleasure to be here. I'm very happy and thank you. So Scott, we got a whole lot to cover today. So we're going to talk about, of course, Arabica coffee house. We're going to talk about the new, the new branding, the new, the new product. We're going to talk about expansion of Arabica. I mean, it's going crazy and I'm so excited to be a part of your journey and to work on this with you. So we're gonna, we got a lot to cover, but we'll get this episode started the way that we start them all with what we like to call our mission matters minute. So Scott at Mission Matters, our goal and our aim is to amplify stories for entrepreneurs, executives, and experts. That's what we do. Scott, what mission matters to you? Well, at Arabica Coffeehouse, our mission is, is really to, to try to make everybody feel at home and comfortable in our settings. We feel that our coffee is up and above, I would say, 95%. Of our competitors in the country and around the world. We roast each bean separately. And then if it's a blend, we combine them after. So, so all the properties are correct and all, all of our products and our beans. We really do cater to our customers. We have a basic Menu, but we do allow every area is a little bit different. So we do allow the local culture or the local people to dictate 15 to 20 percent of what we do. So we listen, we're there for our people and we try to, to get our franchisees, the biggest bang for their buck. Yeah. And so just a big shout out to Dave Andrus. I know he'll, he'll be watching this. And so that's who originally introduced him. Us together and started talking about it. And I believe he was correct me if I'm wrong. I believe he was a franchisee or is a franchisee, excuse me. And he still does work very closely with the company. He was one of our authors, of course in our mission matters series. He also is a host on the, on the podcast network. So and Dave still works with him as a franchisee and everything else, right? Like he's a partner. Yeah. Correct. Yes, he's a franchisee and he's a partner. We actually, I developed a an easy concept called Arabica Express. And what this is, is it's a simple way to put a mini Arabica or a type of kiosk into another existing business. And this, the goal was to really create extra revenue at a really low cost to our franchisees. Like he put one Arabic express into one of his gyms, his clubs, Ohio gym. And he also has Northern Ohio business center. And he put one in an Arabic express in one of those. So it's just To help really our franchisees or even people who have an existing business. It could be a second concept. It could be a ghost kitchen type of thing. So it's working out well. And Dave's a great guy. Yeah. So I want to take a step back in, in your career and get into what you've done. Even prior to coffee, cause you, you've been a restaurant guy for a long time. Am I off of that hospital? I started when I was 11 years old in 1981, I guess that tells how old I am. My father and my mom, we actually moved from Detroit to Cleveland to open a pizza restaurant and they worked so hard. They put all of their time, their money into this, and in 18 months we had three locations. Wow. Wow. Whoa. You know, Detroit was already pretty pretty well established. Cleveland is, I like to say 10 years behind Detroit. So we came here with the aim of growing and that kind of. I love the pizza business, but it also let me know that I wanted to do more. And that's when I really decided I wanted to explore other avenues. Yeah. And so just fast forwarding a bit, how'd you discover coffee? Like, was that always a fascination or like, like how'd you get to Arabica? Well, being of the middle Eastern descent, we're very much coffee drinkers. I had developed a brand called wraps international, and we had eight locations in just under two years. And the people from Arabica loved what I was doing and they contacted me and they said, Hey, we want you to incorporate what you're doing with our coffee. So I started working with them for maybe a year or so. And things just were. We're not, well, it was just not organized. And I told them, I said, look, I'll do the work. I'm willing to do it, but I would like to take the company. I'll buy it. And we finally came to a deal because our, our views just weren't the same. I wanted to expand. They wanted to stay in Cleveland. And so I won, the company came with me and the rest is hi

Mission Matters Business Podcast with Adam Torres