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

Matthew, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you talk to us about a risk you’ve taken – walk us through the story?

I was a beverage consultant for a restaurant group in Oklahoma. The position was designed for me. I would change the cocktail program for multiple locations and assist in training their staff. It was a really good job with an incredible company. I left that company and took an hourly position as a bar back in Tulsa. Why? Risk. The job was incredible but I felt like I was beginning to piece myself together bit by bit. The former job showed me really good attributes that I had that would later be fulfilled in another role. While in Tulsa I passed my first sommelier certification and gleefully scheduled my second. The month I was purposed to take it – the pandemic swept into the plains of Oklahoma. These moments of distress made me dig deeper for something that can only come from me. I wanted to discover the answer to, “What are you hungry for?” In a weird sense I was rediscovering myself. It was scary and lonely and I gave up a ton to get here but I would do it again – a thousand times.

I learned a valuable lesson in this phase: Comfortability is your enemy. Sometime we daydream for a future that has the French windows, bear claw tub and descent neighborhood to raise your kids (that you don’t have). You dream of the concert in Iceland finished with an amber beer and lost thoughts, staring into the great northern lights. The financial security or the legacy you’ll leave for the ones that come after. I believe this vision and others like it have to be focused and consistent. When we fail to do this we create an alternate reality that we didn’t want – it becomes the result of another purpose when we channel away from our inner selves and begin to see the world through another lens. A dream and purpose someone else designed that promised money and happiness, but not fulfillment, not serenity.

I believe there’s a blueprint in all of us. It belongs to us and only we can crack the dormancy and comfortable state we put ourselves in to discover this inner revelation. Risk. It’s the hill you must jump and the answer we all know on a deeper sense derived from a place purposed to be actualized.

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.

I have been in hospitality since college. I started off as a dishwasher working in the Cate Center at The University of Oklahoma. Someone noticed me and pushed me through to work as a barista at Starbucks on campus. I would later pick up two more jobs while balancing school and the first job. I’ve always been a hard worker and knew how to balance more than one employment. I was slowly falling in love with hospitality for the complexity you don’t get anywhere else. It was an unusual space of strangers and other people that were slowly becoming brothers and sisters. Trust me – a twelve hour shift will make you long time friends faster than a summer trip. I learned time management, budgeting and work flow by understanding it in the visual sense. Always watching the pieces in a restaurant like a chess board, everyone has a role and every event has a protocol. I learned that there’s a necessary prerequisite for hospitality: A love and joy for the human condition. For people. I could talk all day about the guy that through a chair through a window because his football team lost or the young lady that vomited at the bar for having too many tequila shots. At times it felt like a pirate ship and I was young Jack Sparrow balancing the wheel whilst drinking an aged dark rum. I love it. The beer slinging locals and the five star concepts. Everyone tells a story of who we are and where we go to escape the routine of life. A space away from home that feels like home with friends that belong.

You have to have discipline in the restaurant industry. You do it long enough you begin to notice the vendors walking in the same time, same day. One day our manager took money from our check out to repay the restaurant for the pens that didn’t end up back where they belong. The thought begins to ring into your mind: “Everything is value”, the space I walk to get to my table took time and what I do with it dictates how much closer I arrive to my goal. The food took labor to make and its cost must justify a profit to keep the place in business, the owners happy. This visual taught me that goals won’t always be within my reach. They can be as simple as arriving at a table or figuratively taking steps in the right direction, day by day, it’s all the same. Culture has an ability of creating itself like the effect of an unseen Petri dish that collects everyones traumas and beliefs and dictates a system of hierarchy. The temperature of the place, the color of the walls – everything begins to come alive when you work somewhere long enough, and then it dulls into your peripheral.

My first company was birthed out of the pandemic. The name is Rose & Thorns Inc. and we’re based in Oklahoma City. We make premium syrups that honor an age of elixirs and flavors we’re proud to put in a coffee shop. Most of my customers are coffee shops in the city that I was a regular at. We’re pretty confident with our quality and we’re seeing exponential growth this year. You can always find me in a shop with my laptop out or a book in hand. I’m now invested in real estate and I have a couple more pursuits on the horizon as well. I will always be around people with the hopes of consulting and making their program better.

I think my ability to look outside the box is my strongest skill. I’m a visual person and I imagine the problem and solution, it’s a process. I see the things that can get in the way and I imagine ways to overcome potential issues that may arise.

I want all people to know that I love conversation. I love to get to know people and understand their story – we all have one. I believe we’re all connected in some way. Our company was birthed with this belief: That Rose & Thorns Inc. would represent a place. A utopian destination where the coffee was never cold, the sun is radiant and the customers are happy. A space where quality met art in a garden like Versailles. This is why there’s a French feel and Victorian gate on the bottle. Because it’s a space for everyone looking for quality.

We’d love to hear about you met your business partner.

I met Frank Schad in Tulsa. I’d been working on the company for a couple of years and was looking for a business partner. Every now and then I would meet someone and bring up the idea. Many didn’t believe in the vision and that’s okay. When I brought it up to Frank he responded, “When do we start?” I could not ask for a better business partner. Frank is the kind of guy that reads a book on How To Make Beer at the bar after he’s done working. He has passion and he’s daring enough to go after it. We are polar opposites in the things that make us strong. My strengths are vision, marketing, risk taking, talking to people and connecting. I always have atleast 3 planners (one in pen and two on my laptop and phone). Frank is calculative and meticulous. He’s obsessed with getting things right – he’s super competitive and I love it. We meet in the middle with passion and competitive nature to have the best. We truly believe in value and setting standards for the future. Our process for launching syrups are agreeing on a flavor founded on reason and demand in the market. Then we go to work: Creating a plethora of samples to get it right. I’ll never forget how many samples of grenadine we went through. I was pretty sure at one point or another that Frank would slug me across the head if I rejected another sample. However long the process -we both agree that there’s no limit of time it should take to make a flavor bounce out of a glass. We want our customers to have a “wow” moment – and they always do. We love it.

What’s been the best source of new clients for you?

We absolutely love it when someone reaches out and tells us we have the best syrup on the market. I recently had a gentleman reach out via social media and went in to one of our stores and almost bought them out. He later messaged us and expressed how pleased he was with the Lavender, that’s his favorite. Our approach to marketing has been pacing and for good reason. We’re analyzing the market and are okay with growing slowly. Profit and growth are important of course but we need to make sure our current customers are satisfied first. There’s a saying we have, “We didn’t start this business to be like weeds, to grow fast and then one day wither. We started this to grow strong like a tree, to pace ourselves and never focus away from the customer. Everything else comes after.” The relationships we grow are the number one focus for us and that will never change.

Contact Info:

• Website: roseandthornsinc.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/roseandthornsinc/

Image Credits
The image of the drink with white cream on top – Photo Credit: Barkeep Bar & Supply All the other shots are good!