I occasionally find myself pacing around the office or my living room asking, “What am I doing? Why am I doing this?” These are important questions, and not ones I ask myself trivially. This reflection is usually inspired by some combination of occurrences that remind me I’m trying to sell something that very few people are actually interested in, all-the-while being ridiculed as some sort of malevolent monster. I don’t have to do this. I could quit and shut everything down and disappear into the wilderness or the netherworld, never to trouble anyone again. It crosses my mind.

But we have a mission. I am on a mission. Whether you realize it or not, the DoubleShot has always had a mission, and I’ve long stated it at the end of each episode of our AA Cafe podcast. The mission is what we are about, and the reason we have for continuing to strive when we’d rather hang. It has expanded throughout the years of our existence, growing to include things that have become important along the way. We’re not yet finished and the mission statement is currently incomplete, but I think it’s all worth sharing.

The mission statement:

To provide excellent coffee experiences for as many people as we can and to be a portal for our customers to the origin of our products.

What does it mean? Let’s break it down because, again, this isn’t trivial. It’s core to who we are and what we do, and why. If you’re a customer, it’s important for you to understand this because you are a central part of our purpose, and if you don’t come along on the journey, none of the rest of this matters.

Excellent coffee. This is where it all started. I sat at home, drinking coffee I bought from a home roasting supplier and then roasted myself in the kitchen of my apartment, thinking about the fact that I was drinking better coffee than anyone I knew. Thinking that I’d unlocked some secret hidden in those little porous cells of coffee beans that would change everyone’s perception of what coffee can be. Sitting with the knowledge that freshness is important (paramount in many ways), and coffee can actually taste good all by itself. My whole purpose for starting DoubleShot was to share this revelation with as many people as I could. Then I quickly realized that coffee is so complicated that scaling it is difficult, so the more people we serve, the harder it is to maintain the strict quality standards I’ve set. A mission fraught with diametrical opposition to begin with.

Serving excellent coffee is no joke. I’m sure you’ve had a good cup of coffee at DoubleShot, then bought the same beans to take home, and were not able to coax an equivalent cup out of the coffee as we did in the shop. Coffee is a hands-on craft at every step along the way, and it’s tricky. I’ve had to develop my skill as a cupper in order to discern which coffees are best and will fit into the lineup of offerings, knowing that I can roast a particular lot properly and unlock the potential that often hides within those curious seeds. The baristas need to constantly learn and improve their crafts so that they can brew delicious cups and pull shots with various origins, dialing in and innovating with each new batch. It’s a moving target, and if the coffee isn’t good, we’ve no place to go. It’s our baseline, the foundation, and our proof that everything else matters.

I’ve spent time in some beautiful places, and occasionally I sit at a cafe looking out onto the vast expanse of some wilderness of mountains beyond mountains, listening to the call of birds not my own, feeling the sun and breeze warming and cooling my skin, sipping coffee that creates a stark contrast within my remaining two senses. I look around to see if anyone else notices how bad the coffee is, but everyone seems happy and oblivious. I’ve heard the accolades about coffee in exotic locales: Vail Coffee Roasters (Colorado), Cafe Brit (Costa Rica), even the wretched coffee being boiled and served in Ethiopian coffee ceremonies. And this is why we incorporated EXPERIENCES into our mission. Because bad coffee in beautiful places tastes good (to most people).

As you might expect, we did research and made modifications, conducted some experiments of our own, and continue to strive to do this better every day. Andrew and I once collaborated on an experiment to test the hypothesis that certain sounds and shapes enhance specific flavor attributes (Particularly bitter and sweet). Part of the reason we built The Rookery was to enhance the experience of drinking coffee by providing a unique, rustic, authentically historic place that functions as a sort of sanctuary. It’s the reason I wrote The Coffee Purist. Stories are important to the experience. A good backstory elevates a cup on that vertical axis toward the heavens. We hire and train friendly, attentive staff that are helpful and efficient. We strive for cleanliness, and to promote community and conversation. Obviously there’s a never-ending list of improvements one can make when it comes to creating a better experience. Even the best coffee served poorly sometimes can’t overcome its circumstances.

We strive to provide excellent coffee experiences for as many people as we can…

Customers. You. Not just those coming into The Rookery that sit and drink coffee, but those who come and go, purchase our coffee beans to use at home, or even those who’ve never set foot in this place and order online. Those coffee experiences need to extend outside of this place. One thing we’ve always done for our internet customers is hand write notes to each person, and Amanda has come in and taken that to the next level. I don’t even know what she’s writing to each person, but I know it’s meaningful and important.

We want to provide our customers with education. We don’t do a very good job of that, and it’s my fault. I get so mired in the day-to-day that I don’t make time to do this very important thing. We want to provide meaning and depth when you drink our coffee. If it’s just coffee, we’re no different from any other place that doesn’t care. As I mentioned, the coffees have to be great. That’s a baseline. And everything we do to reach beyond great coffee is what our mission is all about. It’s what my purpose is all about. We all gather together as a tribe, whether we’re aware of it or not, because there’s a sense of something different here. We want to encourage that belonging, because yes, we are weird. Most of society doesn’t slow down enough to even read a blog this long, so face it: you care, and that makes you an anomaly. Safety, reliability, consistency, connection. We have a responsibility to you, and this is our pledge.

A portal to the origins of our products. I think you understand this. We put the names of the coffee producers on the labels and descriptions. But it’s not just coffee. We know the people we buy milk from (Patricia and Steven Koehn of Red Ridge Creamery). We know the guy who makes our ceramics (Doug Casebeer). We know the guy who produces our eggs (Mark Fisher of Fisher Farms). Heck, my second cousin Cameron has built several of the chairs and fixtures you see at DoubleShot. And of course, the coffee farmers. Again, we don’t do a good enough job of putting these people front-and-center. And that’s my fault. It’s important, and I’ll tell you why.

I started traveling to coffee farms in 2005, less than a year after I opened DoubleShot. It took me no more than a couple hours to recognize that all those people living in the tropics, working very hard and treating me with such kindness, were a part of this whole equation that I didn’t understand before I opened DoubleShot. People. The producers are implied in our mission statement, but they aren’t outright mentioned. So there are things missing.

Producers of our products deserve to be honored. They deserve visibility in our retail location and on our website. I need to do a better job of communicating with each one, not just for coffee, but to maintain relationships because without them, the depth of what we can accomplish is diminished. I always strive to work with people I trust, and I hope they feel like they can trust me. I want to be an advocate for their work through what we do. And every so often, I meet a producer who needs encouragement and help stepping up his game. That’s my responsibility, and I need to do better.

What else is missing from our mission statement? Staff. I told you this is all about people. The people dancing around our precious coffee like so many of Kaldi’s goats. For me, it’s boiled down to this: customers, producers, and staff. I have a responsibility to my employees. For a long time, I would go out in the wilderness without any means for getting myself out of trouble should something very bad happen. Because I don’t have any kids or a spouse (or health insurance), so if I died so be it. If I am catastrophically injured, leave me to die (the health insurance thing). But one day I realized that I have a responsibility to the people who work at DoubleShot (and the customers and producers) to come back alive. So I got an emergency SOS thingy. I hope I never need to push that button.

It has long been my intention to foster a staff of individuals who I can help grow and improve. I’ve had employees that everyone wanted me to fire, and I refused (can you believe it?). Because I didn’t want that person to go to the next job and get fired again and again and again. I wanted them to get better. I want my people to learn skills, not just with coffee but also good customer service skills, and life skills. I want them to feel like they have job security and that they can earn a decent living. It’s hard in such a small company to continually offer growth opportunities, but we need to do that. We do what we can with an IRA and vision and dental insurance, and I wish we could do more. We need to do more training and communicating and meeting, and I should spend more time getting to know each staff member and their needs outside of work. I want them to have fulfilling lives. I’m sure you want that for them too.

A few days ago I was roasting coffee and it suddenly occurred to me that people will retire from DoubleShot Coffee Company.

I have to let that sink in. This isn’t a coffee shop where we hire part-time college students to run the bar. All our staff are full time, and we’re all growing together toward a ripe old age. We’re professional coffee people. It’s weird to think that I started a company that can attract people who will work here for the entire length of a career. I guess I’m proud of that. And I hope I can do better. I hope I can sustain this thing to the very end.

So how about this:

DoubleShot Coffee Company exists to provide an excellent coffee experience to as many people as we can and to be a portal for our customers to the origins and the producers of our products, while fostering growth and stability for an extraordinary staff.

Maybe something like that.

Who is with me?

(Note: if you’re not with me and disrespect the coffee or the people mentioned above, you’ll find I’m a savage defender of my values and our dignity.)