We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Derek Mensen a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Derek, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Do you take vacations? How do you keep things going – any advice for entrepreneurs who feel like they can’t step away from their business for a short vacation?

Try to… a lot of times I’ll take time to visit family & friends for “vacation” of course, however, within the business, we have a very unique opportunity to connect with the coffee farmers the we source from by visiting the country of origin 1-2 times a year that we call “Origin Trips”. Eric Johnson (Founder/CEO) & I just recently returned from our Peru origin trip in June! It was truly an unforgettable experience to say the least; we traveled to 4 different local coffee farms in San Ignacio, Cajamarca, Peru. We got to connect, visit and go through the full process of how Trident receives the raw “green” coffee beans and saw what we call the “Farm to Can” experience. It was awesome to work the steps alongside the farmers, these stages included: picking the coffee cherries, washing, de-pulping (separation of skin-bean or cascara), 2x fermentation stages, drying, and shipping to processing plants for distribution. We followed this up with a sensory evaluation, “cupping” which is the grading of several lots of coffee from the farms. This is very similar to a wine sommelier process. Now, I’m not a “sommelier” by any means… and being educated by someone who has done professional cupping thousands of times brought a whole new perspective and appreciation for the detail that goes into the industry that is coffee!

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Here at Trident Coffee, we are storytellers. All of our cold brew remind our customers that they are part of something bigger than themselves. We create connections through symbology & storytelling that engage customers on an emotional level distinguishing us from other coffee brands. We directly source our coffee to create a life cycle accountability that is transparent, organic, and empowers our coffee partners to be with us for the long haul. We take a scientific approach to brewing that captures different tasting notes and experiences with each cold brew to showcase that coffee is truly a craft beverage. “Good tasting” and “healthy” belong in the same sentence. We are here to prove it to you. We provide a variety of products from our nitro cold brew off-tap, health conscious snacks, nitro cold brew in a can to-go, and some pretty cool swag options found at our retail locations, eCommerce platform and wholesale suppliers.

I always had an infinity for creation (home brewing) and servant leadership; after 20 years of military service in the United States Marine Corps, as a Critical Skills Operator with Marine Special Operations Command (Marine Raider), I aimed to develop others frequencies, so they may transmute their growth into purpose. Many skill-sets can be transferred from the service, and utilized on a daily basis. Skills ranging from understanding organizational structure, standard operating procedures, small unit leadership, developing others, and problem solving are able to be implemented on a daily basis throughout Trident Coffee operations.

Our Mission: “Connecting People and Ideas in Order to Live Out Our Fullest Potential”

How’d you meet your business partner?

During my last 2-years of military service I prepared for “civilian life” and started my transition process by attending The Honor Foundation (THF). THF is a career transition program for U.S. Special Operations Forces that effectively translates their elite military service to the private sector and helps create the next generation of corporate and community leaders. It was through this program I learned of the Masters of Business for Veterans (MBV) program through the University of Southern California (USC), Marshall School of Business. During these two programs really opened my eyes for a lifestyle involving something that I’m passionate about and provided the tools to accomplish my goals, either through entrepreneurship or even a “intrepreneurship” journey. And it provided just that, as I strived to open my own brewery and build a business plan to do so. While attending the USC MBV program, I met one of my business partners Eric Johnson (Founder/ CEO, USC MBV Alumnus, USN Veteran) at a MBV Information Session in downtown San Diego, CA. We hit it off from there, and spoke with him about my transition from the military and pending retirement over the next year; I inquired to do an internship through the USSOCOM Warrior Care Coalition Program with Trident Coffee during my last six months of my military career. I mean, what better way to learn then at a “startup” brewery, although not a beer brewery as I intended, the brewery concept still the same. Through the internship I met Joshua Moffie (USC MBV Alumnus, USAF Veteran) and Eric’s business partner and Director of Business Development, and the rest as they say, is history. The fit was natural and I was eventually offered the position Director of Operations and business partner for Trident Coffee, creating a synergy of the “Three Coffee Amigos”.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

Sometimes during an entrepreneurship journey you must embody “invictus spiritus” or Unconquerable Spirit, because you will inevitably wear many different hats (jobs) during the growth of a company. We were excited as our sales team was kicking butt and landed a new wholesale account with SoCal BevMo’s via Gopuff, and was to start with approximately 45x stores. The problem to solve was the timing and it would take 1-2 more months for the on-boarding of the distributor that would deliver our product from business to business. Without hesitation, I made the decision to deliver to all the stores myself, and eagerly following with the desire to help and grow the business, was our production manager Pars Felix. To keep the overhead down, we back-planned and routed all locations to be delivered from Santa Barbara to Palm Springs, and San Diego areas to be accomplished in a 3-day span, with just (2) personnel, and (2) refrigerated vehicles. Doing what needed to be done, we accomplished just that with no incident; I’ll spare you the semantics of those delivery trips too…. :)

Contact Info:

• Website: tridentcoffee.com
• Instagram: @dereklmensen
• Linkedin: linkedin.com/in/derekmensen

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