You’ve recently returned from a trip to visit a coffee plantation in Columbia, where some of your beans come from. Tell us a bit about why you went over?
At the start of the year, I decided that I wanted to get more connected to our ingredients. It’s something that I am personally really passionate about at home and in my day-to-day life. Like, I go to the markets and buy food straight from the farmer – for me, I feel that things taste better like this. I think there is something to be said about being more connected to your ingredients. I’ve ben running the business for six and a half years, and I talk about coffee and coffee farms all day, but I had never seen it with my own eyes. When the opportunity with one of our suppliers South American Bean, I jumped at it.

Was it what you expected it to be?
Before I went, I kind of had the mindset to go over and see it, and see how we can help or what we can do to be more involved. But, I think what I came back with, basically is that the more that we support high quality and pay more for higher quality coffee, the more positive impact it will have on the workers and the farm. There was one farm we went to that had 16 pickers working on it during the harvest – but those guys get fed three meals a day, and they get paid well, because they have to be really specific with the ripeness of the cherries being picked – that coffee here demands a higher price, and it tastes better as well. It’s not a thing of us to be ‘charitable’ – the workers there are actually really content with the way they are living, and this new industry of specialty coffee is really benefitting the region.

Do you think this concept and way of operating for coffee farms will continue to spread further?
I think it will. When I came back, I was like, man, if we drink amazing coffee like this, and we know where it’s coming from, then this is literally the effect that it has. I want to run a business that only buys coffee from farmers that we know and have visited. We don’t currently do that. We buy coffee that we have all the information about, but we want to eventually only buy from farms where we have seen and the practices they use, and are benefitting everyone involved – it’s benefitting them, and we get to drink beautiful amazing fresh farm coffee, our customers we supply wholesale to are benefitting, and the end customer is stoked because they are getting a delicious brew.

Do you find it difficult to educate the public on traceable, sustainable and ethical coffee?
We don’t jam that info down people’s throats – we just want them to have a really good coffee, and if they want to know more and scratch under the surface a bit, they can. It’s still about the coffee though. I don’t find it hard educating people, but I think you have to let people educate themselves and have the info available. Some people don’t want to know where it’s from, and that’s fine, but if they are still drinking our coffee, then that’s a win. The coffee has to be amazing. You can’t just be charitable about it – it has to be good quality. We only support quality and everyone has to be accountable for that.

What spurred this involvement in traceability and sustainability?
Like anything, I think it comes down to how much you understand. If tomatoes are in season, you go to the market and buy a tomato and you’re like ‘wow, this is the best tomato ever’, whereas if you go to the supermarket where tomatoes are readily available all year round – and they always taste like shit, so for me, that’s where I get inquisitive about stuff. I go, ‘oh wow, this tastes so much better … WHY?’ And then generally, when you dig a little bit deeper, the things that taste better have more care and more purpose behind them, and they have been created by someone with more intent. And that’s what I find with coffee when it’s made with care and has better practices behind it. It’s our job as a roaster to ask those questions  provide the customers with that information … or just give them amazing coffee and let them trust us and what we’re doing.

What’s the biggest lesson you’ve learnt?
I could write a book on that I reckon! I think when people start out, you have certain personal goals and we tell ourselves that to achieve our goals, we’ve got to comprise our values. There are a lot of pre-written rules in our mind, but I think I’br discovered now that none of that actually exists – it’s just what we tell ourselves to help us justify doing bad practices that make a lot of money to help us achieve personal goals. If you really dig into it, you can work out that you can do things that really sit with your personal values in a way that you don’t have to compromise. Not that I have every really compromised, but there are always little things that you do when you say “why are we doing that?”, and “do we really need to be doing that?” It’s like our bio-degradable pods. We could have made plastic ones, and they would have worked better in the machines, but it didn’t fit with out values. I was like – if we are doing it, this is the way we are going to do it. If your goals only sit around financials, then you’re kind of setting yourself up for dissatisfaction. I think to truly enjoy hospitality and to do it long term, then it’s better to get into the values of how you want your business to run.

How do you balance the focus on being ethical and offering traceable coffee, whilst being commercially sustainable?
Money is no doubt the blood of an organization. You definitely need to have the commercial mindset and make the right decisions, especially when there are a lot of people involved. Like, there was a point like three years in when there was a real possibility that things were going to go tits up, we were too big for the amount of management time we could put into it. Things just became inefficient. So, we decided to sell a few of the shops we had at the time and refocus on what we were really good at. Those times, when you think everything’s going sweet, then you get knocked down – it’s a reality check. That was a really steep learning curve at the time. But now, we’re in a really great position and we want stick to our values – and if we grow as a result of that, then … rad. But, if we were still in this position in five years time, I wouldn’t be disappointed. If the only thing that changed over the next few years was that we were buying more coffee from farmers we know, then I’d be stoked.

What is it that you find most challenging?
Doing too much. I have gotten heaps better at balancing stuff. Even six months ago, I was still trying to push a little bit too hard. I just kind of have to check in and realise that we’re in this for the long-term, so it’s a marathon, and we’re not trying to create the end goal ‘tomorrow’.

What do you find most rewarding?
If you asked me two year ago, I’d probably say my goal was to have my own house, so that by the time I have kids, I can spend more time with them. I always thought that spending time with family and having a business were mutually exclusive – whereas, now I realise that there are no rules. I’m doing this long term, and not just building the business to sell it. So, now the most rewarding thing is seeing Blackboard become its own identity on its own, where it doesn’t need me. It’s not so much sitting with me anymore. Which is great. Our staff understand what Blackboard stands for, and I really believe in these guys and their roles and fulfilling their personal goals. It’s a sustainable growth.

Tell us your thoughts on the growth in the Gold Coast cafe scene?
The Goldy is changing and has changed so much. There are a lot of small cafes around, and it’s not hard to get a good coffee anymore. I think we need to see more long-term hospitality establishments become icons – I feel like there have been a few that have opened and been quite gimmicky, and have closed really quickly. Like, it’s good that people are having a crack at small business, but I think it would be great to see more ‘purposeful’ cafe establishments put together, which we’ve seen happen in the dining scene, which is really cool. It would be great to see more full table-service cafes pop up that aren’t just making smashed avo, and are creating their own identity around breakfast and brunch.

On a day off, where would we find you?
Cabarita Beach, we live down there. I’ll usually be at the markets, fishing, surfing and generally something around cooking. I am definitely a creature of habit.

What’s your idea of complete happiness?
Just being resolute on who you are and not living through who you think you should be. I think for a lot of us, particularly with social media, we decide what we want to portray or what we think we should portray and its not necessarily coherent with who we are. I think to be happy, you have to figure out who you are first, and be that unapologetically.