We can get involved with a lot of different people if we wanted to. On the Michigan Sports Network, Bill Simon's and a friend of ours in the afternoon feels the exact same way. We like relationships with good people who are michiganers, Michigan based companies, but people that you're friends with, I mean they're partners. These people are exactly it.
When you go out and you meet Mark and you meet Sam and you meet the people that are associated with Ferris Coffee, they're just good people and it's a great product.
It really is.
Rubes has gone through how many three cups? Three cups of coffee. Sam has been brewing like nobody's business, and he is the master brewer.
Can I call you the master brewer?
Yeah?
Yeah, okay, yeah, I appreciate it. Are you Here's what I want to know.
Yeah, Because you take great pride in making and having your craft and making your coffee. You go all over the world to make sure you get the right beams. This is not hey, we're just throwing anything in the pot and we're stirring it up. You're making sure it's the best of the best. When people say I just want a cup of coffee. Are you a coffee snob or do you try to change people's minds much like people who have wineries.
Right, that's a great question.
So coffee is very personal and everybody has their own ritual in the morning. Right, And so we say that we're coffee geeks, not snobs.
But there is.
Objectively better coffee than other coffees out there, and that's what we try to focus on. So at Ferris we source objectively some of the best coffee in the world. Coffee is scored on one hundred point scale. We only source coffee that scores eighty and up on that scale, which represents about the top ten percent of coffee in the world. So it's objectively a better product. And it's and coffee's of some of all its parts too. So it has to be grown well, it has to be
roasted well, it has to be brewed well. And if any one of those parts goes wrong, you're not going to have a great experience. That being said, we never judge anybody's personal preferences, and we say drink whatever you want, drink what you like.
But I think that you know, if we lined up.
Our coffee versus other other coffees out there or you're whatever you typically drink in the morning.
I think we could improve the experience.
Yeah, so your taste, budgs can be different, right, Well, everybody's a different product. When when you'll see talk to people about, for example, wine and I don't drink wine, but my wife does, and they'll sip it real quick.
And then they'll say, oh, that's good.
Yeah, coffee, is there a certain way to drink it? And is there a certain type of aroma and the whole experience that you think people need to experience.
It's a great questions. It's very akin to wine. So it's a good analogy. And I say, we always say drink whatever you like, but we always like prefer to try coffee black first, okay, And we go through a certain evaluation process every time we evaluate coffee, similar to wine. We evaluate the aroma, the aftertaste, and the acidity of the body of the coffee, and you hit the nail
on the head. Everybody tastes differently, and so we say, you know, it's not necessarily about you don't have to be a great easter in general to.
Pick up these notes in coffee.
You just have to have sensory experiences, like if you've never tasted a Kiwi four for instance before, for instance, and you have that essence in coffee or wine, you can't drop on that sensory memory and say, oh, that tastes like Kiwi.
So it's really just.
About associating those kind of taste sensations to memory.
How do you know which beans are good enough and which aren't for you?
It's a multifaceted process.
So it starts with evaluating literally the farm itself where the coffee's grown, and typically higher grown coffee is better.
The cherries are. A coffee is the seat of a cherry, So the coffee and all that. Yeah, yeah, so the cherries are on.
The coffee bean is the seed of a cherry.
Yeah, and it looks very much like cherries that we grow right here in Michigan.
Really.
Yeah, never knew that. That snows the met too, that's crazy, that's mine. Yeah, yeah, I forgot. Never never knew that. Yeah, you went to Hold College. Yeah, did you ever.
Think this is what you'd be doing in your career while you were in Holland?
No?
No, And I my blessings, I worked for a coffee shop all through high school and all through college when I went to Hope, and I was a coffee enthusiast after that, you know, I saw that the like a human and social side of coffee. Yeah, it was a great coffee shop in a small town. But then I got interested in the product itself and went down the rabbit hole. And my mind is very just center brained, and so I kind of geeked out on it. But never in a million years did I think that I'd make the career.
So we are our Michigan based company, Michigan Sports Network is owned by a family.
I mean, Marty's the guy in charge, but it's a family atmosphere. This is a family atmosphere.
This has been This has been a family owned business for one hundred years.
You know, nineteen twenty four, even before nineteen twenty four. This stuff happens.
Mark and his family bought it in nineteen eighty six, but it's been Michigan based, family owned. How important was that to you and really your staff as you guys, you know progress you.
Yeah, it's it's incredibly important to me and the entire staff.
And I would say that in a business this size, a family owned business where eighty eight employees right now, every decision that you make, everything is tangible, and everything is for each other.
And you see the results of the decisions that you make.
And so when we have when we have wins, one of our core values is we win or learn. When we have wins, we win together and when we make mistakes, we learn together. So in a company of the size and a family owned business, I think that's more more real and hits home to find a win A win and coffee is you know, we launch a product that is well received, or we we form a partnership with another Michigan company and have synergy, or you know, our product has a further reach than it had before.
So a lot, a lot of wins and uh.
You know, the the learning experiences are you know, we uh, we screw up in order for a customer or something like that, we aren't able to deliver on a promise that we make.
We're we're a.
Very product driven company, but customer focused as well, and so serving our customer is incredibly important to us. And if we're not able to do that to the extent that we think we should be able to, then that hurts and.
We got to learn.
You guys, are in fifty states.
Yeah, and you're in Meyer, you're at Costco, You're at a lot of specialty shops. And people can also order it online, right, so how do they do that?
Go to our website Firstcoffee dot com.
We got a great deal this week and I think we have free shipping.
Okay, sweet, yeah, free shipping, so hop on our website we have all of our coffee products are available there. But we're also a nut roaster as well a lot of great nuts mixes, and so we say we do plant grown food and so coffee nuts are very different, but we do both of them right here in the house in ground rapids.
So you'll learn something every day, folks. And here not just that, but you guys are also the official coffee.
Maker of the Detroit Lions. Yes, how has that taken off for you?
It's been amazing.
I don't think we would have expected how successful it would have been. But you know, Lions fans are really passionate about Lions products, and this coffee represents I think you know Lions fans across the country. It's it's it's two really great coffees. It's a coffee from Brazil, coffee from Guatemala. It's it's a darker roast and holds up well. If you do enjoy coffee with cream or sugar, that's
totally fine. The coffee works for that. But this this program, it's it's in Costco It's in the Myers so go go check it out. You'll see it all throughout Michigan. It's on the east side of the state in Detroit as well, so not just in the Grand Rapids area.
Yeah, that's fantastic. How do you drink your coffee?
By the way, I drink my coffee black?
Ok.
Yeah, and I'll drink espress once in a while, just a shot of Espress one sip on that. But I'm I'm a black coffee drinker. I like it brewed a specific way. I brew it by hand, just like I brewed for Rob a little bit ago.
So when you go into a restaurant, yeah, and.
You order coffee, how judgy are you when that arrives?
It's really it's really funny that you asked. I tried to say that I'm not judge you, but there is bad cobo there.
So the other day I don't think you can help it. No, I'm serious, you.
Can't I still order coffee.
And if I go to somebody's house and they offered to brewy coffee, I'm gonna drink it.
I'm not gonna, you know.
So you're you're not gonna say, come on.
You get in the car and you and your wife are driving home and you say that was one bad, terrible couple.
I have said that.
Yeah of course, yeah, of course, because you know the difference the other day.
Yeah, yeah, I know that.
Once you know the difference, Yeah, of course, you have your preferences, and it's hard to get away from that.
But you know, I still drink bad coffee. We'll say that.
Okay, Look, I think it's normal.
I mean, when Rubs and I watch football together, he'll complain about a certain player. I'll complain about certain broadcasts. I just got done ripping on Colin Coward because of that take. He makes a hell of a lot more money than I do. But I can't help. But Judge, I don't blame you for judging coffee, especially when you're the master crafter and you make the type.
Of joe that you do.
So congratulations, man, it's great to be here, it's great to have you. We really enjoyed last night too. It's great that Marty pays for the dinner, but it really was enjoyable to sit down and watch and was busy with you guys.
Yeah yeah, thanks