Let me introduce our guests for today. Two people, Mark Bell, who is the founder, one of the founders and owners of Sir Coffee, which is a small chain in Orange County, and O.B. Beans, right, which is in Ocean Beach in San Diego, and Dr. Ryan Dellamater, who is the founder of Ocean Water. That's a nonprofit that provides clean drinking water to small disadvantaged poor communities in the third world. He's got one in, the one I know is Palmercito, El Salvador.
So, they're gonna talk about the combination of nonprofit and profit businesses working together to provide benefit to both. I'm gonna turn it over to you guys. Hey, come on up here. Nice to meet you today, my friend Mark. We have been friends for 20 years, and so that's a little bit of our relationship. I'll let Mark start. He's gonna, you want me to start? You start. No problem. Yeah, so, so Mark's in coffee.
Mark, in, I think, 2015, wanted to do something different with his life, so he decided to sell his house in San Diego and start roasting. So, for those of you who are interested in business, there's always risk involved when you start a business. A lot of people want the results of the business, but they don't want the risk involved. There's always risk.
And so, the good news about starting businesses, the studies show that actually, and this, I was shocked to find this out, but this will be encouraging you, that actually the majority of people that do well in business, they do better as they start than as they get older. And why would that be? It's because you learn from your mistakes. So, when you're an entrepreneur and you start in your 20s, there's like a certain success ratio. You start in your 30s, it goes up. So, just be encouraged.
You're gonna start some stuff, and it may or may not work out. But Mark has been doing that for seven years now. Yeah. You wanna talk a little bit about what it's like to sell your house? Well, I guess, like, our suit, yeah, my story is we, I was kinda playing around with roasting. I was working with nonprofits before this. And the reason why we did that is we went on a trip down in Mazatlan, Mexico.
There's this shop down there called Moomin Coffee, and we went down there and a buddy of mine, Tom, ran it. And when we showed up, we went down there just to be on the serve, like, good waves. And it was interesting to watch because he was creating so much good around something so simple. Because everybody drinks coffee, just don't think about it. It's like, okay, whatever, it's just like a daily drink you do, you drink.
And so he was utilizing it to work with a nonprofit that he had started there, and they were helping a lot of the families that lived in the dumps, and they recycle a lot of the stuff that came into the dumps. And so he went out and really helped a lot of these families. So he was going back and forth for a long time, and he lived in Namath, and he was doing these, he was a stone mason. He would do the big, huge fireplaces with all the river rock, those cool, you'd see in Namath or whatever.
And he would go back and work, and then go back and help people, this nonprofit, back, forth, back, forth. And eventually he's just like, this is exhausting, I gotta start something that's gonna sustain what I'm trying to do here. So that's when he started the coffee shop, he started the grocery, and then he used that as kind of his home base to support the nonprofits that he worked with.
But he also was able to hire a bunch of the local young people there, got them jobs, and then also provided this really rad environment because there's a lot of snowbirds that would live in Canada and then come down there during the winter. But a lot of them were just kind of disconnected and he created this space for them to come and hang, and there was a lot of community happening. And I just remember watching Tom, and he's like this old, he had long hair, this hippie surfer guy, really cool.
And I was so blown away by how much good was coming from something so simple. I'm like, man, what if we could take this idea of doing coffee and leveraging it for good, and do that where we were from, which is in Ocean Beach, that's where I was living. Anybody ever been to Ocean Beach? Probably not, I guess everyone would know. Yeah, well I'm from Puerto Rico. Yeah, so you know, cool, the pier, all that good stuff.
So we were like, there's no roasters in Ocean Beach, so we decided, hey, let's go start roasting coffee, figure it out, and whatever business, you just have to figure it out when you go. You just don't, it's not like you just know, you're like, okay, this is something that we're gonna do. So we found a couple mentors who roasted coffee and showed us how to do that. And we started roasting in my garage. And so people would walk by and like, what are you doing?
And they're like, roasted coffee, and it smells, it's interesting when you roast coffee, if you smell that, a lot of times you think it smells like when you grind coffee, like that espresso smell, but it actually smells more like burnt toast, or like popcorn, it's a very interesting smell, there's like phases to it that you can like, you know, it's a unique smell. So people come by and like, what are you doing? What's that smell?
So we learned how to roast, we were selling at farmer's markets, and our passion was to use this to do good, like that's our mission statement on the wall, everywhere that we start a shop that says, doing good, farm to cut, it was always our passion, like obsession to do that, like how do we leverage something simple to do a lot of good?
And so I remember the first, I still have this photo, but I remember we weren't making any money when we started, we were like, selling at farmer's markets and we were trying to sell like, enough little bags of coffee at the farmer's market to like, pay the $50 fee at the farmer's market, and then have a little extra so we could go to pizza pork and drink beers afterwards, like that was like our mission, right?
But I remember when we made just enough money, you know, just a little bit, I remember writing our first checks, and we wrote them to you and three other nonprofits that we were like, really passionate about, and we gave them, it was like all the money we had, but it was like, our passion, like that's why we started it.
And we got to a point where we had to decide if this was like a side hobby, we were all working other jobs, and we were doing this on the side, like we would do farmer's markets at night, we would just kind of roast when we had time. And so, we all had to make a decision if we were all in, and I tried to go and raise capital for it, and I couldn't raise anything, not, I just couldn't get anybody to like, buy, like, they were like, yeah, cool, coffee shop, good luck, you know?
I'm like, no, it's gonna be hot, you cut in with a lot of passion, right? And this is one thing, like in business, like if you have a passion for something, you're gonna have a lot of people that are like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, right, okay, good luck with that, right?
And only you can like, fan your flame, like to keep it alive, like you just, and there's gonna be times when like, you just have to pull yourself up by your bootstraps, and no one else is gonna believe it, you just have to like, believe in it more than anybody else. And so, we got to a point where I was like, well, if we're gonna be all in, we need to fund it, and that's when he pulled the, you know, that part of the story, is I decided I would sell my house and invest in it.
And it's interesting, because once you do something like that, like that was super extreme, I wouldn't recommend that. That's super smart, you know? But, I, at that point, I was all in, all in. And it's funny, because then I did have to go raise some more capital, I thought, ah, this will be all the money that I need. And everybody tells you this, and you won't believe them, but it always takes twice as much money as you think it's gonna take, and it's gonna take twice as long, every time.
But you're not gonna believe it, because if you're an entrepreneur, you're like, I can do this, I got this piece, we're gonna, you see the strategic advantage, and that's what fuels you to keep going, right?
But once you get into it, you realize that, so we ran out of money, and I had to go raise some more cash, but because I had a lot of skin in the game at that point, some people stepped up, and they knew that my back was against the wall, I wasn't just gonna take their money, and like, oops, it didn't work out, like, I was gonna lose everything. And so they invested into us, and then we started our first shop, which was Only Beans, and we just thought we would just do one shop.
And we started that, we went on our first sourcing trip, we went down to Mexico, and saw like, how coffee, I don't know if you guys know about coffee, coffee's cherries on trees, and it's hand-picked by people. And one tree produces enough coffee for like one pound of roasted coffee.
So if you get your head around how much coffee we drink here in the United States, it's an incredible amount of work to hand-pick all that stuff, put it in, put it in these bags, and carry it down the mountains, and then they process it, get it prepared, they ship it, then it gets roasted and served. So we were blown away by how much work went into that, and then that solidified our passion to help farmers as well, and we started doing direct trade.
So we would travel to origins, we'd travel all over the world, we'd met with farmers, we'd see the working conditions, we'd see if they're using organic practices, even if they can't pay for the organic seal on it, because that's a lot of money to do. And we get to see what kind of practices they're doing, we get to try their coffees first, as they're coming off of harvest, and pick some of the best coffees that we can find, and then we pay them directly.
So instead of paying like a broker, and then they cut it in half, because it would be like wholesale, right? You know, wholesale always gets cut in half. They get the full amount of money. So these farmers are working really hard to create incredible quality coffee for us, and make sure that they harvest it correctly, process it correctly, because anything along that process is gonna mess up the coffee in your cup. Mark, so they have collectives. They do, yeah.
So some of them do, so some of them we actually have co-ops that work all together, and they'll pool all their coffee together. So in Africa, they do a lot of that there, because it's small lot farms on mountains, and they'll pool them together. And so that's why you'll get, and they a lot of times will process those naturally, so they let the cherries dry on the outside, and then take the cherry out. So it's like a little bit more muddy to taste, but juicier.
When I say muddy, like it's not as clear and crisp, but you'll get incredible coffees from these regions as they pool all of their coffees together. In Central America, a lot of times it'll be a little bit bigger farms, and they'll focus on certain varietals, so you get a real clear crisp coffee that you have. Yeah, so it goes both ways. On the co-ops, a lot of times we'll work with a producer who will buy it from the co-ops, and then process the coffee. And so that's kind of the process.
We need transport it from South America or Africa. Are there any special logistics or transportation requirements? Yeah, there's a lot of them, but we usually will work with people who are already importing coffee from these regions. We're almost big enough to where we're about ready to start buying our own shipping containers full of coffee, which is great, we're hitting that volume.
But up till now, we've worked with other people who are like exporting from those areas, and then we'll put that on their container. So they'll deal with a lot of the issues. They're not temperature controlled or anything like that? No, they're not, yeah. And they probably should be, because some of them, they sit for a long time. But typically, a green coffee, green is fairly hardy. So it's not as volatile as maybe a grape or something for wine or something like that.
So that's kind of where we got it. And then we started Sir in Saint-Claude-en-Ain when he partnered with a friend of ours. He wanted to start, we were able to create something really special in OB, if you've ever been to OB, if you ever go there, try it out. But there's such a cool community. The same thing that we saw was happening in Mazelon with my wife, Tom, started happening there. It was the place where people went and connected.
We had a lot of students from Portland, Manass and from San Diego State. A lot of them come and study there. We have a lot of the community that comes there every day. And we were able to create such a cool vibe in the space. And then we were able to partner with Ride for Water and take some of our barista team and people who were like our customers down to El Salvador. We had another project in Mexico that we were working on.
So we go down there and it's fun to actually leverage that platform to do a ton of good. And it's fun to see how it's kind of, we're starting to see that same vision we saw down in Mazelon happen there. And so we started in San Clemente, the short version of that, we started in San Clemente. We were like, we want to actually scale this. What are we gonna call it? We call it a SIRT, South, Spanish for South, Southern California.
And now we have one in, by USD, in Linda Vista, in San Diego, we have the one in San Clemente. And then we just opened up one in Huntington. So. By the pier. By the pier. Yeah, two weeks ago. So we're figuring it out. You know, we're at that place now where you're trying to figure out how to scale systems and train people and what we're trying to do. But the cool part is when we started this, it was, you know, how can we help our friends who are doing a lot of good.
So we partnered with Ryan and Ocean Water and I've gone down to El Salvador, like 10 or 15 times and built a lot of great relationships. And the cool thing is, is we actually get coffee from El Salvador, it's a place that we get some, like a lot of our coffee from. So not only are we like bringing coffee in, but we're also working with a lot of locals to help them get clean drinking water. It's kind of part of that connection and collaboration.
Yeah, so it's always fun when people are, this is a marketing class for non-marketing majors, correct? Cool, we're in the right room. Yeah, so it's always fun to hear a little bit of the founder story and then how people use their platform. So a lot of the best marketing is what Dave, I know, has tried to model for you guys, even in the way that he teaches, you'll notice, do I call you Dave or is it Mr. Harrison? I ride bikes with Dave on Saturdays, so that's like our friendship for four years.
So that's, Dave's a brilliant cyclist, very nice guy. And we live by each other in San Clemente. So, but a lot of, but when you're talking about marketing, I know he's brought in other people that have had one person, his son is into just a lot of record stuff, they've had some other people. So when you're talking about marketing, a lot of it does have to do with collaboration and partnerships.
So you can use, so like our relationship, been friends for 20 years, but also you can use your coffee place to also fund water projects. So we've been doing work in El Salvador in 2010 I rode my bicycle across Canada, who's been to Canada? Anybody? I rode my bike all the way across from the West Coast to the East Coast, and then I rode from there to California, and then I rode from California to Columbia.
I did not ride the Darien Gap, I get that question, that's like the most narcotic place on the planet.
I took a plane flight from Panama City to Medellin, but I rode for a year and I wanted to do something kind of different with my life, and I went on this bicycle ride and I learned all about water, and Mark and I were living in San Diego at the time, and Ash, he was kind of starting this new phase of his life, had to do with coffee, and I got very interested in it, that's actually when I went back to grad school and I did a doctorate in public health where I studied water policy.
And so we started to go on trips together to El Salvador, we were asked by a teacher from like the most prestigious preparatory academy in El Salvador, and to come and help them with some bucket systems by a little village at the beach, her name is Doreen, so we went down, and on that trip, 34 of us went, the whole thing was a party, it was like a 10 day, it was like a 10 day beach party, and we surfed, and at that time we were using these bucket systems, there's different clean water platforms
I wanna explain a few of them to you, so you can understand, the simplest ones are these little buckets that you use, and they basically do like, if you have blood problems, you go to the hospital, they give you the dialysis machine, the dialysis machine is a machine that will clean your blood.
So the same company that is the largest dialysis making machine in America developed this little filter that does the same thing for water, it works on gravity, so you're able to get these filters and you're able to attach them to this $5 paint buckets like at Lowe's or Home Depot or some hardware store, and they work really well for somebody who already has like an existing water infrastructure, like someone's house, a lot of times you do projects in Central America, they have access to water,
but the water's dirty, and what I mean is people will get like typhoid and diphtheria and diarrhea and dysentery, those are what we call waterborne illnesses, so waterborne illnesses can be easily solved by just doing these little bucket systems, and we did that, I think for two years, we did like five, I don't know, we did a lot of homes, we were doing these buckets, and then we were like, I was really getting into water policy, and I thought, I've surfed since I was 12,
and I still surf, I caught 230 waves last month in October according to my surf watch, I'm really proud of that, you probably don't care, but that's like right at the top of what I count. Yeah, he's a good surfer.
That's like, everyone has what they, everyone has what's important to them, and they count it, and that's me, so I just own it right away, and my wave count, that's my most important metric in my life, so I just wanna get that out of the way, and so we were just doing a lot, doing some surfing, and I thought, well, what if we could do some desalination, now desalination is another platform that people use, so one, you have bucket systems, the second thing,
you may, for those of you who are like somewhat stay in the news in this area, for a couple years, they've been trying to pass this desal system up between Huntington and Seal Beach, in the Bolsa Chica area, how many of you guys know what I'm talking about? Okay, so, all right, there's one guy, okay, you're my guy right now. So desalination is the process where you just take the salt out of the water from the ocean, makes sense?
Okay, it's a simple concept to explain, but it's really hard to execute, as we learned, because we did our own desal project in El Salvador, it was a very good idea, very good policy, very hard to execute, very hard to manage, and very expensive, so we sort of did that for a while, and we had some mixed results, I think we learned a lot from that, so that's another platform for cleaning water when you had these bucket systems, it's really fulfilling if you're Mark,
and you're a business owner, and you're waking up, and you're going to work every day, and you're putting your life on the line for your company, and it's not easy to have a successful business in California, my friends, like a humble guy, it's very hard to do, it's now at four locations, a multi-million dollar business, he wouldn't say that, I'm saying that for him, because I'm a good friend, but instead they're doing really, really well, it's very hard to do that, so it's really fulfilling
when you're grinding and working on a goal to actually see it work, not only to see it work, but then to have some joy that you're actually helping people with your company, not only are you helping people have jobs, you're helping people have healthcare, but you're actually helping people in El Salvador, wow, that's pretty cool, it's been a lot of fun, we've been down there 17 times since 2015, we've been down there quite a bit, we've been learning a lot, there's a system,
I don't know if this will turn on, but there's a system I wanna show you now, so the first one was buckets, the second one was desal, that's where you take the salt out of the water, and you put it down in the ocean.
Now I wanna show you something really cool, this is like a third platform now, and please check out Mark's site, when you get a chance, and then there's this, this is really interesting, this is a water system, they get this, it converts sunlight and air into drinking water, you ever heard of this before?
Yeah, so these panels that I'm gonna show you, they just, these are great because there's no environmental regulations that are against it, because no one owns the air, and no one owns the sunshine, not yet, maybe it's coming, so this is the next, so we did buckets, we did this desal system, now we're gonna, this is kinda like water 3.0, for us in El Salvador, partner of this company, pretty cool, this system here was built by a materials scientist at MIT, very, very smart guy,
and essentially it captures the sun's rays, and utilizes that heat inside of the system to produce drinking water, we have a few of these panels that are installed at our friend Adam, Adam is the color owner of Sir Coffee with Mark, which is pretty cool, because we put the panels at Adam's house in San Clemente, so if you're ever in San Clemente, you can message us, you're smart, you know how to get ahold of us, we'll give you some water from, we'll try to get you
some water from Adam's roof, these things work amazing, what is really neat about these, so this system, you know, Salvador, it's gonna make 1,500 liters of water a month, they have an engineering team, and they research barometric pressure, amount of daily sunlight, the humidity in the air, and they come up with these really advanced forecasting methods for how these systems are gonna work, really, really cool, and these systems come with a little thing, like you ever go to the airport,
who goes to the airport with an empty water bottle, you get the security, you know what I'm talking about, we got like a little dispenser, so that's gonna be really fun, and these systems are really quite cost effective.
So, we've kinda talked a little bit for a while so far, but now I just wanna open up for some questions, we've spoken for, I think about 25 minutes now, about sort of the relationship between like a for-profit business, and then a non-profit, and kinda how those work together, and just to be clear, so you know, Mark and Adam, they use like some of the profits of their company, they don't just promote ocean water, that's the name of the non-profit, even though we're converting sunlight there,
they don't just, but they actually use the profits of their company to help fund some of these projects, so. Let's open up for some questions. Anybody? Yeah. When it comes to work at the coffee shop, how do you communicate to the customer the good that you're doing in the limited interaction you have with them? Yeah, that's great.
Well, one of the things is right off the bat, in all of our shops, we like try to tell the story through like photos on the walls, obviously our website, through Instagram, we're constantly trying to like help people to engage in that part of our life story, and so, I know that's a little bit of a challenge, but we're trying to tell the story, and so, another piece too is like trying to help, you know, when someone's been around for a while, one of our team members, like we can like really
download them on like what we do, but what's really cool is when I can bring one of our team like to one of these places, so we actually have a handful of our team at all the shops who've actually been on trips with us, or actually come down and help us, you know, build something in Mexico, or come on one of these trips to El Salvador, and it's, or come on a coffee farm, and see the coffee like growing on the trees, you know, and to speak to it with more passion with it like that,
so that's kind of primarily how we do that, kind of share, obviously all the bags have a story in the back, let people know, but we're constantly trying to figure that out, like how do we keep telling the story in compelling ways? Well, one way is just, you know, informing people, you know, so for example, like in El Salvador, where we do work, the reason why we're so motivated by water, average person in the place where we've been going spends about 20% of their income on drinking water.
Can you imagine in California, if you spend 20% of their income on drinking water? I wouldn't go over it too well. There, it's normal, normal.
So it's a lot, some of it's just education, you know, when you walk into OV Beans, when you walk into Sir Coffee in San Clemente, there's like actually on the walls, like photos of the projects that we've done with the website for Ocean Water, and I told him a story today as a driver, he was like, gee, somebody from Hawaii, Scott was 23, she's in grad school, visiting from Hawaii, winning his coffee shot, you know, typed in our website.
On our website is my cell phone number, and it says, text me, I'll try to help you, and I'm saying that to you today. You know, if you text me, I'll try to help. I don't know what I can do, but I'll try, and she texted me, and that was just another person, so they answered the question, and so it was just good marketing, right? Like you put stuff in your business for people to walk in.
Again, from a marketing standpoint, how are you expanding your audience, because it sounds like pretty storefront based, but also you're doing it really, do you have like an online shop where you're selling these bags of beans?
Yeah, if you go to sircoffee.com, and we have a lot of our story on there too, so like we have videos and spots where it talks about how we're doing good, and some of the stuff that we're working on, some of our non-profit links, stuff like that, so we do have that online. We try to do that through our Instagram a lot too, just kind of telling those stories. We just actually got back from a team.
We were down in Mexico working on a community center we've been working on down there for a while, and we made like a cool little recap video of like why we took our baristas down, and just try to inspire people with that too. Pretty cool. Does your, I love your mission statement, because it's so simple and it's so direct, but does that, do people come to you and want to work for you because of that?
Yeah, we have a lot of people that are drawn to our business just specifically because of like, yeah, our passion that you get, and so it's funny because like a lot of times, yeah, we'll get really rad employees that really care about the world and make an impact because they were drawn to us from that, that ethos that we're in. And then do you, I might know the answer, but maybe I don't, do you pay them more? Do you do healthcare for them?
You're doing good from farm to car, you're doing good for them too, compared to other coffee places. Yeah, I mean, our teams all make really well, make really good money, and we have healthcare for them and all that, yeah. So we do our best as a small business to like, we're not like some massive corporate business that has like a ton of systems that are set up, like we just recently set up like our whole HR system, like so we're like, as a small business, you figure that out as you go.
But we really care about taking care of our employees and across the board, making sure they take care of us. Yeah. And do you do any other local marketing stuff besides what you're doing with Ryan and some of the other, you know, things you're doing, some of the other good things you're doing? A lot of times, we just partner with stuff in the community a lot, you know?
Like I have a lot of schools who come in and be like, hey, can you donate to this event that we're doing, or can you come be a part of this thing? You know, in Ocean Beach, we've always donated for all of the teachers when they come back, so we donate for all the teachers in Omi Elementary. And then they do a massive bake sale. We have a huge parade that happens first week, weekend of December for like this Christmas parade. And they do like massive fundraiser.
We always just give them tons of coffee to sell as part of their day. So we just, when you actually care about your community and you're like partnering with them, and we like donate and we're involved and we're supporting constantly. We have like the Main Street Association, we did this huge pancake breakfast and they do that for like toys, like toys for, like they raise money for toys, you know, for kids in that area. And we just, you know, are able to donate, partner with that huge thing.
We get all the coffee for that. And I think the more you can find ways to partner with things that are happening in the community, it puts you in front of people, you know, and they see that you're not, yes, we do that because it gets our name in front of people, but we also do that because like we care about our community. Like we wanna see these things do well. We care about our students at Omi Elementary and all that. So that's been like a big thing.
It was really helpful when we first started to be in that farmer's market because every week we were like front center for all the people that came in. So if you ever start like a business and you have a product that you're trying to sell, man, having it in a farmer's market gives you like immediate like feedback from people. And sometimes it's gnarly, dude. They're like, I remember some lady drank our coffee, she's like, that's terrible.
You know, and then you're like, feel like, man dude, like we're trying so hard, we're so good. You know, but like, it's just like certain beer, you know. Some people like certain beers, certain coffees, certain things for different things, you know. Most everybody loved it. They're like over the moon. But that was really good.
It's just getting in front of people, talking to a lot of people and you know, not just hiding out in our shop, but that's what we started like right out of the mix, you know, so that was good too. Yeah. So I noticed from my opinion in CER, there's like a community of, you know, people from all over the world, quite honestly, I don't know what we're supposed to do in CER at 10 o'clock in the morning. Have you ever considered taking them on some of your trips?
Just kind of expanding your community? Yeah. It's funny because Ryan actually, so he'll like hang in the shop, and he'll hang in the shop, and he gets to know a lot of people. He uses the shop too once a week for like a weekly gathering, which is pretty cool. But it's fun to be partnered up like this, because he'll like meet a ton of people, and before you know it, they're like, I'm going to work trips. He met him at, you know, during happy hour at the coffee shop, you know, or whatever.
It's like kind of a cool like organic thing, you know? I mean, coffee shops are those places that like, are such a cool place to meet people, connect with people, connect with like, you know, community stuff. It's like a community, it really has become like community centers, which is very interesting. Yes, I can ask, this is from Matt.
What's been like the main demographic group that you've been able to attract regarding age group or whatnot, so more in the young crowd or more in the middle-aged crowd? What's been, from what you've observed in the past seven years? Yeah, I wish I could like say it was exactly like this, you know, because we do have, we have done like market research, we've worked with people, we've like broken down what our customers are. Primarily, it's a lot of younger people, you know?
I think like in San Diego, there's a lot of students. But I do see there's a lot of like older crowd that comes in too and really enjoys like being in that space and being around that energy, and they like that kind of, that vibe too. But if I was to say, it's like probably, you know, kind of young people, coastal young people that live and play and work on the coast and are, you know, that kind of person. It's usually our demographic. I've seen that. Yeah, that's it.
If I can ask one more question. A lot of road service. Yeah. For Ryan. Yeah. What's like the main drawback of like a source because it seems like it's like a story come true, right? No regulations, right? Cost effective, especially for these regions, they have a lot of sun, so like in some tropical areas. So what do you think are some of the drawbacks with using? Well, they're young, you know, so I think they're on the, they're not even really to early adapter.
Like when you say like belters, and they're just getting started. I mean, most people don't even know what we're talking about. So I think, you know, for things to really be utilized, they have to become adapted more. They have to be used more. But I've been spending water policy and platforms for 10 years, and this is the best, most cost effective, scalable. They have the right team too. They have a few hundred people. They got a lot of money behind them.
It takes a lot of capital to do engineering and research and logistics. So I would just say probably the length of time they've been doing it, I would say. They're young, so there's something to be said, like when a company matures and they have more of a track record, you know, I think they've been doing it for seven years. But they've already done projects in 40 countries. So we're not like, like the first one.
Like when we were doing our desal project, me and this guy couldn't find anyone in the world that had tried to build what we were building. And I learned a lot from it. It was like a school of learning. Now I was like, well, I don't want to do that again. So we found a company that's done 40, done projects in 40 countries. So to answer your question, I think probably just awareness, like longevity, you know what I'm saying? Is that helpful? Lack of recognition of some sort. Yeah, yeah.
Great question. I think when things start, like, Prius is a good example. Prius started, everybody said this is a great idea, but how long will they last? And nobody knew, right? Because they were never. And I think that's the same thing with the source. It's a great idea. It makes a lot of sense. It's low cost. You don't need operators. But how long will it last? You just don't know. They don't know. Gotcha.
So what you guys do kind of behind the scenes, you're like the purpose of this, is moderately complicated. So how do you communicate that to your customers in a way that you know they'll understand and you know will really resonate with them? Like the more complicated topics and like behind the scenes stuff. That makes sense. That's a great question. Yeah, typically, most people just want their coffee. Just give me my coffee. Good to see you.
And so obviously we put big letters on the wall, doing good, farming a cup. Most people look at that like, oh, that's kind of cool. So you're doing some good right. Cool. Awesome. But then when people actually get curious, they'll start to ask questions. Like, hey, I saw this photo on the wall of you guys down in El Salvador digging this thing. What is that about? And then they start asking those questions. And then we usually will funnel them to websites.
Well, go to Oceanwater.com and check out what we've done there so they can do some research. That's typically how people kind of like get into that funnel of being interested and then learning. If they're really excited about it, they can go online. We have all the links on our website too. They can click on the links and check out the stuff that we're doing. So yeah, that's it.
And we're trying to get better at continuing to tell that story in new and fresh and compelling ways so people like engage with our brand around that concept. Because we have like the best coffee in Southern California. Truly. And I source a lot of it from the farmers. I personally travel around the world. And we're selecting these coffees. But the thing that we're really passionate about is doing a lot of good and how that coffee can generate. We're so generative to do good.
And so that's what we're trying to tell that story about. Great question. What is the communication and work environment like with a small business and a nonprofit? How do you balance your each individual needs? And what is your partnership like on that level, I guess? Well, we've been friends for a long time. So it's pretty easy. I think when things go back to relationships in some levels. So he's like, oh, you need keys to the places here. Here's the key. So I have keys.
And I can use the shops for whatever events. And I could probably do more. But I really have been focusing a lot on some of the water stuff. He's just generally like, hey, tell me what you need. And I'll help you. I'll make it happen, basically. Which is very, very nice. It's interesting, too, because for us, we're a private company, we have owners. And because I'm the majority owner, I'm able to make a lot of big calls on things that we care about.
And I'm able to align our finances, our influence, all that stuff around things that I'm passionate about, like my friends who are doing. And it's interesting, because all the nonprofits we work with, we have personal connections with people who are involved in them. So we're not just picking some random, like, oh, this sounds cool. We're actually like, I'm good friends with all these people who are doing things.
There's a lot of companies out there that are like, oh, yeah, we're doing like, we partner with some big thing, and that's cool. But for us, it's way more relational and integrated. And that probably brings a lot more passion around that. That's great. Question? Mark, did you do any kind of digital marketing, or direct mail? Did you do any other marketing? Yeah. Yeah, so primarily, we use a lot of social media, Instagram, Facebook.
We have used the traditional, like, we have used a little bit of Yelp when we come into a new area, Google, those are things. And you can leverage some of those even for free. You don't need to just pay the huge fees for all that stuff. Even if you're updating photos regularly and doing headlines, that kind of stuff's free, and it pops you up into people's radar. And then we're really trying to lean into our email marketing and do a better job there, too.
Our POS system, like the point of sale is Square. And all the POS systems do this, but they just suck in everybody's information or whatever. And so we'll have a huge list of people to be able to boop into our shops, and who have bought from us, and we'll be able to send an email. You get no ideas from that? They'll usually sign up for our rewards. Or sometimes, if you've already signed up under Square, it'll recognize it on your credit card. So it's very interesting. You do not know that?
But we can. And we do have people that opt out of those things. Honestly, email is kind of touching. We tried to work with a company that was like, that's what they did, email marketing. We didn't get a lot of traction out of it. Those little boutique marketing firms typically don't work out super well. But we wanted to test it a little bit, so we worked with the company a little bit to see how it would work. But yeah, email is another thing that we're trying to lean into.
We have some funny things. We've got really creative people that are doing it. They're doing a couple of things. You guys will actually love this one. Ben just told me about this one. They're putting this one, I think, around USD a lot, too. But it's like a little sticker that says, having trouble pooping. And then it has a QR code. You scan it, and it takes it to our website. And I get to put it on my coffee. You're going to want to have that. It's so just fun.
That's just one awful little gorilla thing. They do a lot of fun things with QR codes, especially now. But that was one that they just launched last week or two weeks. Because coffee is like, of course. Anyways, people are like, man, what's that? You wonder. You're like, whoop. Then it takes you. You're like, OK, it's coffee. OK, fine. How do you measure person's by impressions? Yeah, we can follow some of those things. A lot of times, we try to attach actual, legit email or code.
Because I use codes. And those people would use the codes for discounts or whatever. And then you can track them that way, which is a good way. You want to be able to measure those. Things like the QR codes, you're going to see how many people have scanned and gone to those places. So there are a lot of metrics. I'm always hitting our marketing team about what are our metrics. Is this successful? Did we just throw a bunch of money out there and hope that it's successful?
Or are we actually meeting the needs of the work? We just had the director of social media from Topic India. And she was sharing her weekly presentation to the CEO, who asked the exact same questions. Right? What do we get out of this? Who is looking at it? How many? What does that mean? Is it working? Is it working? That's what I was asking. There really is no answer to that. And you have to have ways of measuring things.
And it may be really tactile, where you can actually look at how many people visit a website or how many people use the code. But you've got to have a way of seeing if this was successful or not. Because otherwise, you could waste tens of thousands or more than that. Hundreds of thousands of dollars on stuff that's not effective.
And the best way, and I know this is like, roll your eyes over, but the best way of marketing is to have someone come and have such an incredible experience with you, inspired by the stuff that you're doing, loved coffee, the service, the entire thing. They have such an incredible experience that they go and tell everybody else and become what Chick-fil-A says, raving fans. You want raving fans. You can get a raving fan. It's better than a million cool Instagram posts.
That's our goal, is to create that lasting experience where people come in and have an interaction with a product. This group's been quiet. I have three daughters, and I know that's where all the brains are. This group's been pretty quiet. You guys have any questions? I have a question. It might be kind of personal. But how did you go from selling your house and investing that to then now, when did you make that back, open different locations? Was it immediately successful? That's my question.
We're still on the road to success. We haven't arrived at some place or whatever. So when it comes to growing something, you have to be willing to just keep pushing. And I've doubled down on what we're doing. So we have a target in mind of where we want to be at as far as the number of stores and some pieces that are involved in how we get there. But we're on that path right now. So yeah, it doesn't happen overnight. But our first store finally became profitable after about a year.
And then once we turned that profit, we were able to start maximizing. And so right now, we've actually been doing a lot of work getting real specific about knowing our business. In fact, we got a business mentor who used to be the old CFO of Wendy's. And so we met him through one of our other investors who golfed with him. They were like an executive golf thing or whatever. So we met with this guy. And he got right into the nitty gritty about our business, asking all these questions.
They're like, oh, we're not sure. We need to find that out. Because a lot of people don't know all about their business. Or you can go ask somebody, hey, are you making money? They're like, we don't know. We don't even know if we make money. Going through all the menu, all of our products, and getting real specific on every margin, making sure everything's set, and then maximizing. So that's the process we're in right now, maximizing our profits and running our business real efficient.
And the reason why that's so important is because then it gives us more ability to do partnerships and make a difference. It's connected to our mission. So we're on the path there. We're getting there. But we're definitely still investing in our growth right now. So it's not like all the owners are just taking baths and cash. And it's not about that anyway. Listen, you can use the word success, though. And the reality is that it's totally arbitrary.
And it's 100% what you decide it's going to be. So one of the things you should do in your time here, Chapman, I think, is you should get your arms around that. You should write your own definition so that you don't let somebody else give you theirs. Very, very important. And we don't teach this enough. You really need to get clear about what success is so that you're not chasing somebody else's version and somebody else's definition. I have mine, and I stick to it. I'm happy.
And anytime I'm very respectful of other people's, I'm not like, hey, that's not me. But I stay to mine, and I'm clear about it. And that's very important. And I know what Marx is, because we're very good friends. And he's very serious about it, very focused. And I've yet to see him not get there. But it's personal, and he is a sheriff. He's got some goals. And that's just a very important part of your development.
So I'm glad you brought that word up, because it's kind of one of those things that floats around a little bit. We don't always like, Davey knew it enough. So I said, thanks for bringing that up. Yeah. Yeah. Have you had any confronting situations, either internally amongst yourselves or with other business partners that maybe they didn't have the same direction as you guys? How would you handle that? Yeah, it's a good question.
When you get into business with somebody, it's really important that you're both on the same page. And the guys I started OVDines with, we started all with that same passion to do good. We all went on that first trip to El Salvador. We all have been inspired by the farmers and all that. When we started Sainte-Claumene, we actually brought my business partner out, who's an awesome guy. He's got it with us. And we had some other people involved as well.
And we got to a point where we realized that our visions weren't the same. And so we promptly bought them out. And it wasn't convenient when we did that. I didn't really have the resources necessarily to do that. But it was so important to make sure everybody was aligned. And we did it quickly. And so as soon as you start to see that you're not aligned in that, it's really important that you figure out an exit plan for them or for you or whatever. Because it turned into a total mess.
So typically, the way we all work is, if people have different opinions, we'll wrestle through some of that together. But we always will end with, OK, we're going to stay connected to our mission. That was always our mission and why we started. And I'm able to lead the team through that as well. Does that answer it? Yeah. Thank you. It's a tough question, though, because you don't know when you go into it, right? You don't. Just do not know. I had an investment in this little software company.
And I realized that the guy who's the majority owner wanted it to be his personal piggy bank. And that didn't sit well with me because I didn't want to be his source of funds. And so the opposite happened. He's like, you know what? Maybe I should just buy you out. And I was like, yeah. I just want my money back. That's all. I don't care if I make anything. I just don't want to help you buy another house. That's all. But it doesn't have to be money. It could be other things, right?
Yeah. Yeah. And in the process of that, this is a whole other topic. But in the process of that, trying to make it a win-win for everybody, I didn't have to demonize these guys or make them the bad guys. It just comes to a point when you're like, hey, it's OK. They disagree on the direction we're going. And we're just going to wrap this up and wish you well and move on quickly. Yeah, not that many people have that mentality. Maybe it's because you spend a lot of time in salt water. I'm not sure.
Don't drag it out. That's a very generous approach where it's win-win. Yeah. If you can, you can't always do that the best way. Yeah. Who do you think your biggest competitor is? You or me? Coffee or water? I don't feel like I have any, but that's just me. I just do my little thing. I just don't know. You clearly have some. Yeah, I don't know. We were actually just talking about this.
I've tried to recently, like, actually, since we started, tried to open up in places that did not have specialty roasters. When we opened in Ocean Beach, in fact, even to this day, there's no other roaster in Ocean Beach. So we opened up there. When we opened up in San Clemente, I think only one other place was doing some small roasting, but there wasn't a roaster. And then Huntington is the same way. It's crazy as it is. I mean, Huntington is 210,000 people.
And Portola was there for a while, and then they left out of the mall. But there's been nobody that's been doing specialty coffee that roasts there. So much the little ones in the surf shops, and then the little 602 went over there. And they're all cool. And we try to have great relationships with people. In fact, we try to be like, hey, where do you get your coffee? Can we roast your coffee for you? And we can slap your name on there, or whatever. We'll white label it for you.
So we try to do like, we always used to joke like circles around circle. We just want to come in and be like, hey, well, let's not be competitors. We'll roast for you. Like, we'll see if we can beat the prices that you're using, and the quality, and all that. So that's been something that we've up till now done. But it will be interesting as we grow, we're going to have to go more head to head. We'll have to go to certain places that may have roasters and other specialty coffee.
So it will be a little bit more direct competition exposed. But yeah. I mean, and I don't see something like Starbucks isn't my competitor, honestly. I appreciate what Schultz has done. Like, he created the platform for specialty coffee. If you've never read his book, pour your heart into it. It's a great story about how he started the whole thing. He's a very inspiring person. But they do a completely different thing than I feel like we do. You don't see yourself selling grocery stores?
You know, the grocery that we've had conversations. So that's a great question, too. So we went up last year and met a friend of mine who runs Cutter's Point Coffee in Seattle. They've got like 10, 15 stores, huge roaster. And they sell like Kroger and all these other. So we went up there to just see, like, show us what you're doing. They gave us the tour. They showed us the whole thing. But we realized that we're not trying to compete with the cheapest coffee out there. That's not what we do.
Our farmers are really proud of all the hard work and how meticulous they are in creating really high quality coffees that we're buying from them. So the quality level's through the roof, right? And that's the type of premium coffee we're wanting to sell. And so the talks that we've had isn't like with the Kroger's and the places like that. It's been with like a Gelsen's or like a higher. Like, you know, we sell the Jensen's too.
Some places that like elevate those kind of craft, local, you know, types of products that will elevate. You sell like a pound in your store, as I recall. You sell coffee. Yeah, yeah, we sell coffee. How do you price that? Yeah. Is it based on your cost to produce it? Yeah. We have margin sheets that we go through. So like a pound of coffee. It's interesting. You buy a pound of coffee green. You roast it.
So you lose 20% of that weight just in the roasting because all of that water comes off of it, right? So there's all sorts of variables. So we have a whole spreadsheet that shows like the cost of the coffee green, the cost of it roasted, the cost of the packaging, the cost of all this, like the whole thing. And it'll spit out what our margin is. And then you want to make some margin on top of it. Exactly. And is it very by source, the cost?
Yeah. Yeah, so some areas are like typically when you're buying out of Africa, like African coffees are pretty expensive. Mexican coffee is a little cheaper than maybe you would get. Like an Ethiopia would probably be one of the more expensive ones that we buy. And then Central America is like kind of in the middle. I remember buying coffee at Cerf. I mean, you have coffee. I don't remember it being super expensive. You'd spend $15, $16 for a pound of Stumptown. Yeah. Yeah. And it's fine.
It's good. Yeah, we try to be competitive in that pricing. We do look at what other people are charging to. And then we look at our margins. And we try to be fair. And we're not trying to gouge anybody. But unfortunately, right now, there's inflation across the board. And that even affects on pricing for shipping, pricing for all the bags, all the supplies. Everything's up. So we're constantly having to look at those margins and make sure that we're fitting in those.
Yeah. Yeah. I don't know if you've covered this already. But do you employ the people that farm and harvest the coffee? Or do you buy it from the farmers and stocks? Does that make sense? Yeah, we buy it from them. Yeah, we don't employ them. One of the things that we've actually started to do, too, so in El Salvador, we actually have been pre-buying, giving them money ahead of time before the harvest even comes.
Because a lot of times, they have a hard time being able to get all of their workers paid, get them on the farm. Because you get paid at the end, right? You sell your coffee, you get paid then. So we've been trying to find ways to help those farmers with their communities, with their staff, with the people that are picking the coffee for them. But yeah, we don't personally, we're not employing them. But we're giving them top-down those coffees.
In fact, we try to do it in Bitcoin, because that's the national currency of El Salvador. They made that the national currency. That was crazy. And so we're like, oh, that would be such a cool thing to enact currency, buy it. So we try to get that to where we can do it. And we had it kind of set up. And we couldn't get it to work right for him to get it. And I'm glad that it didn't, because just shortly after, it's age, the moment. And I was like, that would have been a good store.
Because then you would have got a gyp down the whole thing. But we're just trying to look for ways that we can be innovative and helpful for these farmers as well. That's a risk for you guys, though, right? It is, yeah. I mean, when you write a $10,000 check to your farmer, they'll eat coffee. They'll crop that. And we've worked with him for seven years. So his coffee is some of the best that we get. So we know he does a really good job. But yeah, there's some risk involved.
And there's trust with these farmers. I've gone and spent time. And it's crazy, because these farmers invite you into their house. You breakfast with their family. I mean, it means a lot to them. This is their livelihood. This is their families. This is their communities. And so it's pretty cool to build those longer term relationships with those farmers and see the impact over time that you have. So it's cool. Any other questions?
So I know you mentioned how your product line is very much equitably sourced. And I know you also mentioned that you want to expand with partnerships and all that stuff. So I guess my question for you is, how do you see yourself growing beyond, and it's getting into the important product sense. Do you see yourself going beyond the lines of coffee? Or do you just see yourself staying on the ground right now? Sure. Great question. Yeah, so ranging outside the coffee.
Yeah, but like, keeping to what your mission statement is. Because I assume that's obviously a good focal point. Yeah, sure. Well, ultimately, coffee is our platform. That's our main product and source. I do think that we do other things. I mean, we do work with tea. And some of the tea that we do is also has the same mission statement. The guy that we work with works specifically with farmers. We don't go into the tea ourselves, but we partner with them. So there are different products.
We've been making all of our own pastries. Those are insane. Yeah. So that's been really fun to learn that side to, and have the team really crush it. But coffee is kind of the foundation. And coffee is such an interesting product, because it takes a global community to produce. Not a whole lot of things are like that, right? If you want to brew beer, you can get hops here in the United States.
But coffee, because of scales of economy and climate, where it can be grown the best and all that, it takes a global community. And it's also a product that people consume every single day. There's not a whole lot of other products out there that every single day you would go and buy a cup of coffee for a leader. That's something that is unique. So it's such a unique product that we get to be in, unlike anything else. And it really connects people, because it's a daily thing.
But it connects us globally, because it's a global community. So we'll always keep that close. OK. Great question. Anybody else? Mark and Ryan, awesome. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Test on Thursday. OK. Oh. Oh. Oh. Yeah. Yeah.