Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Kelsea Richmond. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Hi Kelsea, thanks for joining us today. It’s easy to look at a business or industry as an outsider and assume it’s super profitable – but we’ve seen over and over again in our conversation with folks that most industries have factors that make profitability a challenge. What’s biggest challenge to profitability in your industry?

We felt this issue most right outside of the pandemic, when inflation rates were skyrocketing. Everything cost so much more; our compostable to-go products went up 40%, all of our food products were substantially more, our employees (and ourselves) could barely afford gas or groceries.. it was just insane. The kicker here is that a coffee shop can only charge so much for a latte! If we actually raised the price to what it should now cost, you’re looking at $10+ for a drink. At that point, we will start to lose customers, which means we cant pay our bills, and we have to close. So instead, we have to eat the cost and make almost no profit during this time, with absolutely no help from anyone on how to survive this.

The second biggest challenge that has been there all along, is the amount of bills we have to pay that we had not expected to be so costly. We rent our property, but for some reason we have to pay property taxes on it each year (what?!). There’s also our business license that changes each year based on how much money you make – so if we make more, we have to pay them more. Those are just two examples, but there are many more to speak of. The whole point is that it’s so hard to save when everyone is taking their cut of something we have done completely on our own! Especially those two examples, where its our own county taking from our small business.. we just feel they should be supporting more than they are taking.

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?

Long story short, Captain + Stoker Coffee Roasters started out with two people who had no idea what they were doing, and actually didn’t even drink coffee. It was the warmth and excitement of our community that started it all, and what continues to push us to do more. The name Captain + Stoker comes from the two positions on a tandem bike, the front being the Captain and the rear is the Stoker. We use this as a kind of motto, or way of life. We work in tandem with our crew, community, and our Earth. We have all compostable to-go products, coffee bags that we know exactly where and what they are recycled into. We organize events for our community, and collaborate with other local small businesses to create experiences and products for everyone to enjoy. We have always had a huge focus on our employees well-being, and we push them all to be their best selves in + out of work by encouraging them to take vacations and supporting their dreams/hobbies.

We now have three locations; cafes in Monterey + Pacific Grove, and our roastery in Sand City! The farmer’s we work with matter a lot to us, since they are the reason we exist. We only have one person between us and the farmers, so we know they are treated well and paid fairly for their hard work and dedication to their generational craft. This year, we are going to a small village outside Antigua, Guatemala to visit David Solano’s farm. He is creating some INSANE experimental coffees, and it is absolutely changing the coffee game world-wide!

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

We opened C+S in July 2018, my fiancé Tyler and I worked every single day, open to close, for about a year and a half. We were lucky to have a few days off here and there, but for the most part it was nonstop until December 2019. In January, we were finally feeling the fruits of our labor and saw the light at the end of the tunnel.. until the pandemic started. We finally felt like we knew what we were doing, and everything was perfectly in place, and then it felt like suddenly it was all ripped out from under us. When we heard about the pandemic, we decided to have a meeting with out crew of about 12-15. We explained to them that we were considered “essential” and could stay open during the lockdowns, but we wanted to hear from them before we decided to stay open or not. We listened, and we agreed – we shouldn’t be open. It didnt feel right to be ~all about the community~ while inviting them to come outside when they are supposed to be staying in. Since we also wanted to make sure our team was able to hop on the unemployment funding before the site glitched or ran out of money somehow, we decided right then and there we would close.

Our landlord wasnt going to give us a break on rent, so we had to figure something out. Our website was still open, and everyone was DM’ing us to make deliveries. So after a few days of planning, we figured it out! With the help of one employee who went down to part time to roast the coffee, we started our coffee bean delivery business. We teamed up with our local bakers to provide sourdough and pastries, our local pressed juice vendor, and a few other random goodies – all in a special C+S box! Out of nowhere, we were getting 20+ orders a day! We would start our mornings picking up the baked goods, printing + filling the orders, creating a time-effective map with all the addresses, and then we would spend up to 4 hours delivering to our regulars! We would wave to each other from outside, and to be honest, we teared up a few times seeing how happy they were. It really meant a lot to us to still have our community close to us, even when it felt like they were so far away.

A few months later, we decided to re-open.. and here we are a few years later, still trying our best to survive through the inflation. It’s still a battle of resilience, and we are constantly doing our best to keep our heads above water. We are in it for the long haul

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

What we didnt realize when we started C+S was how hard certain aspects would be compared to others. We learned that it’s the people that are most challenging – not because of any of them in particular, but because they are all so different. Something that works for one employee, wont work at all for another. Once of our biggest issues that took us years to understand was with co-dependence. We couldn’t figure out why our employees could be so great when we were there, but slacking when we weren’t. Every time we were with them, we would make sure to show them how things were done and correct them when we saw something done incorrectly. We thought this was the best way to go about everything, but when we realized nothing was changing, we were forced to look at it from a new angle.

The more we did for them, the more they started to feel like they couldn’t do it without us. It felt like we had created a monster, and we would ask ourselves “how do we reverse this”?! Long story short, we first had to frame everything differently within ourselves so that we weren’t always there to save the day. We would tell them how much we trusted them, and how we knew how capable they were. There were times when employees were so unsure about themselves, but once they made it out alive on the other side, they were so proud of themselves. Not only were we becoming better leaders, but they were becoming more confident versions of themselves. It really was a beautiful transition, and we are so grateful to have learned this lesson so early on in our business!

Contact Info:

• Website: www.captainandstoker.com
• Instagram: @captainstok
• Tiktok: @captainstoker

Image Credits
Mike Grambush, Brandon Scott