Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Chris O’Brien. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Hi Chris, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.
I’ve been a bicycle commuter since I started riding bikes in my early 20s. I love getting to work by bike- even when it gets cold or rainy. I worked at a local cafe and roastery for almost 7 years, and I commuted by bike every day. I have a few bikes, each for different purposes. I have a mountain bike for trails, a fancy carbon road bike for going on long endurance rides, and a few others. I had been working at the cafe for maybe 5 years when I started working on the concept for Coffee Cycle. I had a roommate at the time who was also an avid cyclist, and he also had different bikes for different purposes. Living in a major city, being cautious about the risks of theft, we stored all our bicycles in the living room. Most days there were 8-10 bikes in the house at any given moment. So one day I went to work at my local coffee roaster, and it turned out that my 2 coworkers that evening had also ridden bikes to work that day. We were all having a good time at work closing up the shop, so I invited them to come back to my apartment to share in some beers in the fridge. As we sat around the coffee table sipping beer, surrounded by now 12 bicycles, we did what many coworkers do over an afterwork drink- we talked about work. Fortunately for us, we all really enjoyed our work, and so the conversation really involved talking about how much we loved our shop’s community, and how happy we were. I think many baristas dream of opening their own shop one day, and we were no exception. So we talked about what we loved about our current shop, and what we were passionate about doing with our own potential ‘dream’ shops. Looking around the room in a pause in the conversation, one of my coworkers made a joke about the number of bikes in the room. He told me that if I really wanted to open a shop, I should just build one on the back of one of the many bikes in the house! The conversation moved on, but I guess the idea really stuck with me. The next morning when I woke up, I started sketching what a mobile bicycle cafe might look like. I started looking up equipment that might work, like a propane conversion on a lever pull espresso machine. And the idea slowly started to become reality.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers
My name is Chris O’Brien and I’ve been in the coffee business for over 20 years. I now own my own small cafe and roastery called Coffee Cycle Roasting. My cafe started with the simple idea of putting a mobile cafe on the back of a bicycle, uniting my two great passions, cycling and coffee. After custom building my own mobile cafe with the help of some great friends, we eventually converted the mobile cafe into a brick and mortar full retail location, and then eventually started roasting our own coffee. My goal in starting my own shop and growing my business has always been about people more than coffee. To some that know me and my perfectionist efforts with coffee that might be a bit of a surprise, but the people that matter are all the people along the entirety of the supply chain: from the growers and producers of great coffee beans, to the final customer drinking our product. At my shop we focus on extensive barista training, focusing on true hospitality as a contrast to simple customer service, and a dedication to presenting and appreciating truly high quality coffees as a way to give tribute to the hard work put in to provide us with that product. This combination of hospitality to the customer coming in to our shop and respect to the product we are serving allows all of us at the cafe to help educate a broader audience to the importance of an ethical and transparent supply chain. Meanwhile we get to provide the incredible service done by so many cafes around the world- we provide a haven of space for our customers to enjoy the simple pleasure of great coffee and interact with a community they can be confident will support them.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
When people say they built something with blood, sweat, and tears; they are usually speaking metaphorically. I can honestly think of multiple times I have had to deal with all three of those things literally, but one does stand out. I built my cafe on the back of an old pedicab frame- you know, the kind where two people can sit in the back and a guy rides the ‘bike’ part up front to take the passengers on a short ride. A few friends of mine were talented welders, so we had cut the frame down, lengthened it, narrowed it, and reinforced it. But the cafe we ended up building was quite a bit heavier than we had planned. Even so, we got it finished and it worked! For months I rode it from the storage garage fabrication facility I was storing it in out to the road for a day of business, and then rode it back each afternoon. Well one day I hit a bump and all of a sudden the pedals were turning but the Cycle was stopped. I was in the middle of a sort of industrial parking lot, in front of a loading dock and a bunch of trucks, and my creation was just stuck. I ran to the back wheels to look at what was wrong, and the axle had broken. One of the rear wheels had effectively folded in and was no longer connected to the drivetrain. The cart was going nowhere. I ran back to my garage and grabbed some tools and supplies and tried to swiftly build a solution. It’s not usually a great idea to grab power tools in a moment of panic, and sure enough I managed to do some pretty good damage to a finger. Ignoring the wound, I ran back to my stranded coffee cart with my materials and tried to make it work. It didn’t work. Luckily, a few workers at the loading dock took pity on me and came out to help. They grabbed a power dolly (for moving around heavily laden pallets in the warehouse) and used it to help get my contraption back to my storage. One of my welding friends was able to come down to attempt a repair, but he worked on a bit of a different schedule from me. He didn’t end up finishing until about 4:30 in the morning, at which point it was time for me to go buy a bag of ice and start getting ready to set up the cart for the next day of business. I had maybe gotten 45 minutes of sleep sitting in a chair over the course of the night, and the next day was really difficult. At least I had coffee to help me through it!
Can you talk to us about manufacturing? How’d you figure it all out? We’d love to hear the story.
For many years we served coffees provided by other roasters. From my years in the business, I was able to connect with some incredible coffee roasters and serve coffees that were award-winning on the national and sometimes international scale. The idea of roasting my own coffee seemed a bit intimidating after that. Really intimidating! At one point, though, an opportunity came up that was hard to pass by. Many years before I had a friend move down to Costa Rica. He told me when he moved that he might be investing in a coffee farm down there. I knew the friend had done a lot of nonprofit work and environmental advocacy work, so when he told me he wanted to get involved with the supply chain down ‘at origin’ to help promote a sustainable business model for the hardworking folk at the farm level, I got excited. But I didn’t see him again for close to 8 years. He reappeared in my shop at Coffee Cycle one day and told me he had green unroasted coffee from his farm in Costa Rica, and he was hoping I might be able to sell it in my shop. Ultimately, the process of getting our own in-house roasting program got started from there. We temporarily contracted a small local roaster to roast it for us, but when another good friend of mine opened up Acento Coffee Roasters, we were able to rent out time at his facility to start the process of roasting for ourselves. The learning process was pretty intense, as I really tried to fasttrack our launch. As with all things I’ve done so far with my business, I was incredibly fortunate in my friends, who provided advice, support, and sometimes green coffee to practice with.
Contact Info:
- Website: http://www.coffeecycleroasting.com
- Instagram: coffeecycleroasting
- Facebook: coffeecycleroasting