We were lucky to catch up with Ryan Plaza recently and have shared our conversation below.
Ryan, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Alright, so you had your idea and then what happened? Can you walk us through the story of how you went from just an idea to executing on the idea
You can say it all started in 2020 with an idea of owning a coffee farm! This idea came from many long hours of conversation with my grandfather over cups of coffee. When he passed away a few years ago the idea came top of mind. Without tons of money to go out and buy a farm I had to think of where to start! Boom, lets start with bags of coffee. However it couldn’t be any coffee, my grandfather and I drank Puerto Rican coffee. So in august of 2024 when my fiancé and I went on vacation to Puerto Rico, I knew this was the time to go find the perfect bean. After making a list of ten farms in Puerto Rico we arrived at the perfect bean. We got back and from August to November 25th we were ready to launch! We had to pick our colors , design, build a website, pick the bag the coffee would be in, create the labels for the bags etc. This all happened from August to November.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I am currently the AVP of growth for a mortgage company by day and Coffee CEO by night. The best way to describe me is the word growth! I came from New York in the 1st grade with just a backpack of things, as my family started over. Starting this way always brought out my creative side. When you don’t have a lot of money you have to find creative solutions to your problems. This along with always looking to make an impact in my community brings us to the Ryan plaza we know now. I trademarked the word “NEWRICH” Riches start within… My concept of life is, if we are rich on the inside.(with love, motivation, friendships etc.) we will always be truly rich. My goal is to continue to create connections through impactful and meaningful conversations. Weather I am helping someone growth in the mortgage industry, buy a home or sell a bag of coffee there has to be an impact!
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
Definity, in November we got to the point we were ready to fly to Puerto Rico and package our first batch of coffee into our coffee bags. However the day before we landed to package the coffee and start creating marketing for the brand. Our farmer calls me and say we sent the wrong bags to be filled. We are selling half pound bags but sent full pound bags to our farm. The world felt like it was about to be over! I started making calls all over town seeing if any local coffee shops would lend us bags to our arrived and we could return them. No one said yes…. In the last minute, we decided to go through with the trip and just do the marketing with the pound bags. In the mean time we ordered the correct bags and started our marketing with what we had.
How’d you meet your business partner?
You can say I have two cofounders, but technically me and my fiancé are one! My cousin Jared Burgos and My fiancé Beverly are my cofounders in our coffee business. Me and My cousin created the NEWRICH brand that the coffee lives under while me and the fiancé went and had the first meeting at the coffee farm. I am the visionary and sales guy of the team, Beverly is our social media manager and Jared is everything creative from logos, to websites. I met my fiancé in real estate (my day job) and well my cousin Jared has been my little brother since I could remember.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://newrichcoffee.com
- Instagram: newrichcoffee
- Facebook: ryanpalza
- Linkedin: ryanplaza
- Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/thenewrichpodcast
Image Credits
Jared Burgos & Beverly Plaza