Unseen Bean: Part 2

James Host: I’m with Gerry Leary, the 67 year old blind coffee roaster from the last episode. Before listening to this episode I recommend checking out part one. This episode will make a lot more sense.

Gerry: Okay Dillon let’s go right.

James Host: I’m with Gerry Leary, the 67 year old blind coffee roaster from the last episode and we’re outside his Colorado home walking towards his front door.

Gerry: Well, come on into my mess.

James Host: Gerry isn’t joking. Cardboard boxes are scattered everywhere. His living room looks a garage.

James: Shoes off? Shoes off?

Gerry: No.

James Host: Devon, Gerry’s guide dog, runs up to inspect my microphone.

James: Hey Devon. She wants to eat the microphone.

Gerry: You can’t eat the microphone. No, no, no, no. That’s to talk to not to eat.

James Host: Gerry brews up a cup of his own roasted coffee. On the ground I see worn out coffee dispensers and dusty pastry trays. Meanwhile his logo, a blindfolded dog smelling a cup of coffee hangs on the wall. These are the remnants of a closed coffee business.

[Musical interlude]

Gerry might have learnt how to roast but he wasn’t able to keep a cafe afloat financially and just a few months ago , Gerry locked the doors of the Unseen Bean Café for the last time.

Gerry: January came around and I was looking at the books and we hadn’t cleared more than 200 bucks in a week or two and I just said I can’t keep this going, I’m just gathering debt.

James Host: Gerry is starting from scratch all over again. Now, most 67 year olds would be winding down from the workplace but Gerry doesn’t have that luxury and the reason comes down to his disability. Before coffee, he worked as a car mechanic for 30 years.

Gerry: They were afraid that we can’t put you on the books because we can’t get coverage for you as a blind guy for insurance and they were afraid of liability most of the time…

James: And that’s one of the reasons why you don’t have that much of a nest egg?

Gerry: Yea, I used that all up in the coffee shop. That’s why I closed it. It kind of ran to zero.

James: Your life savings?

Gerry: Yup. That’s alright

[Musical interlude]

James Host: After the last episode, maybe you thought that there’s nothing left to say about Gerry and coffee. Well, coffee is so much more than turning green beans brown because coffee is social media, psychology, marketing, trust. So this episode explores the coffee world from Gerry’s perspective.

[Filter Stories intro music]

I am James Harper and this is Filter Stories. The untold stories hidden in your cup of coffee.

Gerry and I sit down, enjoying a cup of his roasted coffee. I get round, sweet flavours. It’s the kind of coffee I could drink all day.

Gerry: There’s pieces of business that, as a blind guy I haven’t done a good job of adapting to the administrative side is one of them.

James Host: Gerry struggles as a blind coffee shop owner because he can’t read invoices, write contracts or even count paper money.

Gerry: Oh, yeah and for me one of the things that I learned is that the only way that I can even keep up is to define and delegate all that work to other people.

James Host: Gerry tells me the story of an employee that I am going to keep anonymous their version of events is different to Gerry’s but it illustrates why Gerry can sometimes struggle with trust. So, Gerry has an employee. They look after the books, they handle invoices, read letters and at one point, Gerry promotes them to run the coffee shop. Gerry’s management policy is simple.

Gerry: Just tell me what you want to do before you do it. That’s the rule. I have to approve what you want to do. Get your plans right but you just tell me and if I disagree we’ll talk it through and we’ll work something that we both like.

James Host: And under this arrangement, Gerry is happy with how the cafe is going.

Gerry: We were chipping away at my debt and I said as soon as we get out of debt let’s open another restaurant and then you can either have the new one or this one. I’ll just give it to you.

[Musical interlude]

James Host: Years go by and then inevitably, this employee gets itchy feet. They want to move up but there’s nowhere else to go in Gerry’s business so they decide to start their own business and they plan to use Gerry’s roasted coffee and Gerry himself as a persona in their branding. The details get complicated and Gerry isn’t able to fully participate in this world of written business plans, branding alignment, website design. Gerry is trusting this employee has his interests at heart. But then, one day….

Gerry: One of my coffee clients comes up to me and slaps a piece of paper down on the counter and says, “What the hell is this?” I said well, it’s paper. He says, “Well what are you doing? What…what…what?” I don’t know, you have to tell me, it’s print. “What the hell are you doing sending a contract out? I’ve been buying coffee from you for 10 years, isn’t that good enough? and I said well, wait a minute. I didn’t put any contract out there and he says, “Well then listen to this,” and he reads this contract that says that he is buying coffee from us for X amount of dollars….

James Host: Gerry begins to think this employee doesn’t have his interests at heart anymore and whether or not Gerry is right, the fact he’s blind makes it hard for him to recover that trust. He can’t see the website landing page, the financial projections, the fine print and as soon as he loses trust, he gets them in a room…

Gerry: And I said look, it’s time to go.

[Musical interlude]

James Host: Once this employee left, Gerry’s cafe slowly fell apart.

James: Why did the business close ultimately?

Gerry: Because we just weren’t getting enough business, we were down to a couple hundred bucks a day which was barely enough to pay the staff let alone pay for supplies

James Host: Not enough people walked through the door. Why not? To look for clues, I hop on Yelp and I read some customers reviews of the Unseen Bean Café and one of them jumps out at me.

“In summary, if you just want a cup of tasty coffee to go, this is your place. I you want an experience…check out one of the dozens of other Boulder coffee spots.”

This gives me an idea…

[Street scenes]

We’re on the streets of downtown Boulder. We’re here to explore how Gerry’s Cafe experience differs from ours.

[Street scenes]

Let’s become Gerry for a few minutes. We’re going to walk into a new cafe, into your competition.

[Walking into cafe and introductions]

With these sounds, try to figure out what type of cafe this is. Think about the type of customer, what coffees are on offer.

James: Want to find us a seat Gerry?

Gerry: Sure, which way do we go?

James Host: We visit the bathroom. Gerry then orders a sandwich and then he pays for the sandwich.

Waiter in café: So, your sandwich sir is $10.71

Gerry: Wow, for this?

Waiter: Well, we get the bread from a from a [inaudible] restaurant…

Gerry: Oh, no, no, I don’t eat out very much.

James Host: We sit down, order a coffee and then I ask Gerry to talk about his experience.

James: I want you to describe your experience.

Gerry: Well, my experience it’s been a good one. The coffee isn’t the type that I would enjoy the most but it’s good. I thought the sandwich was way overpriced but the people are very nice, the servers, the cashiers, all the people that work here have been very, very nice. That parts been very pleasant.

James Host: In a nutshell, for Gerry the most important aspects have been the flavour of the coffee, the price and the service. Now, let’s contrast this with the experience of sighted coffee drinkers.

James: Introduce you to Kat

Kat: Hello

Gerry: Hi, I’m Gerry

Kat: Nice to meet you.

James Host: And to do this I invite along some coffee friends of mine.

Kat: and this is my friend Sam.

Sam: Hey, I’m Sam.

Gerry: Hey, how are you?

James Host: I ask them to describe their experiences.

Sam: Seeing inside I describe this space as trendy and upper crust. It feels like a wealthy space with all of the artisan cheeses and you name it and even you mentioned it when you came in your sandwich was $11.

Gerry: Yea, I know.

James: Talk to me about the coffee.

Sam: The coffee, yeah.

James: The coffee apparatus.

Sam: Yea, I’ll talk you about how the equipment that’s behind the bar that they are making coffee on looks quality like even if you didn’t drink the coffee you would assume that the coffee being made behind the bar was high quality because of the machines that they have and especially on the bar. It all looks very high quality.

Gerry: Interesting. Interesting. That is very different than what I thought.

Sam: Sure.

James: What did you think Gerry?

Gerry: I don’t know that I would have a good perception of high class as far as décor. I might as to how people acted and what they said and their grammar.

James Host: But then Gerry reveals something that he picked up on that we didn’t.

Gerry: I mean, I know they had a fancier expresso machine because it’s solenoid operated instead of a twist valve.

James: How did you know solenoid operated?

Gerry: Because when I would hear the steamers run, they would click on and off instead of fade in and out.

James Host: I look at Kat and Sam, their eyes are wide open.

James: I’ve got some official reactions out of you here.

Sam: It’s impressive. I never noticed that.

James Host: And what’s also interesting is Gerry’s interpretation of this information.

Gerry: But, to me that doesn’t mean anything. it just means they spent a lot of money on an espresso machine.

James Host: It’s here that I realise that blindness impacts Gerry more deeply than not being able to see objects and colours.

[Musical interlude]

Specialty coffee is a luxurious experience. Compared to regular coffee, specialty coffee has fancier packaging, rarer flavours, costs more money and nothing screams specialty coffee like the 2 foot high, $2,000 coffee grinder a few feet in front of Gerry’s nose. This is the EK43.

Sam: An interesting thing actually about specialty coffee is you’ll find a lot of baristas even have this grinder tattooed on their body. It’s that ubiquitous with specialty coffee.

James Host: If you’ve been to a fancy coffee shop, you’ve definitely seen the EK43. It’s made of black metal, and looks like it belongs on the set of Star Wars. Despite this thing defining specialty coffee Gerry has no idea what we’re talking about.

James: Gerry, do you know what an EK43 feels like, looks like?

Gerry: No. An EK43, how much will the hopper hold?

Sam: The one they have on here is, I think five pounds.

Gerry: Oh wow! See, I’ve got the same… [Musical interlude]

James Host: Blindness makes it difficult for Gerry to appreciate why specialty coffee is so popular. Our little group discusses how visuals impact our appreciation of coffee.

Kat: But I wonder if we package two coffees differently, not with no packaging but if we put two different packaging options out there with the same coffee what would be peoples experience?

Gerry: They would taste different.

Kat: Yea.

Gerry: Which is weird. That was always hard for me to get and I had to realise that I am not affected by that.

Kat: You have the taste advantage of not being influenced by something that most people are supremely influenced by.

James Host: So what does a lighter roasted specialty espresso taste like to a man who’s never seen the trendy visuals?

Gerry: Oh, you guys, I don’t think I can drink it but smell it.

James: Why not?

Gerry: Smell it?

Kat: It’s very sweet. There a good amount of florality to it.

Gerry: No, it’s not well developed. This coffee I don’t get the sweetness, too acidic and too bitter. I get a way bitter after taste. I could make that coffee taste like chocolate.

[Music plays in background]

James Host: Even if Gerry is right, you know that these lighter roasted specialty coffee espressos are unbearably acidic, as a blind person, he’s in the minority and as long as we sighted people eat with our eyes, he’s going to stay in the minority and eating with our eyes goes beyond the cafe. Some of us spend almost as much time looking at pictures of latte art on Instagram than actually sipping it and social media is another concept that Gerry hasn’t quite grasped.

James: What is your social media experience? What is it like for you going through Facebook?

Gerry: Boring. I don’t spend much time in it.

Automated Voice: Back button, Trident book sellers and café, [15:34 inaudible] Trident book sellers and café search field, share button, page info and ads button, profile photo…

James Host: This is Gerry’s experience of Facebook.

Automated Voice: bookstore, learn more button, message button, more button….

He’s on the Facebook page of a local cafe trying to understand what’s on the menu, when are they open, the address?

Automated Voice: tab one of six, about tab, two of six photos…

This is goes on for a minute.

Automated Voice: Share, see all videos, video….

Two minutes.

Automated Voice: Happy, happy springtime from…

Gerry begins nodding, gently.

Automated Voice: 145 views, video zero

His phone starts slipping out of his hand and hits my microphone.

James: You fell asleep?

Gerry: Yea. This is what my phone does to me. [Gerry laughs]

James: You were holding that phone for three minutes and that’s a social media experience that I see within 10 seconds and for you it took three minutes and you fell asleep just trying to get to the bottom of it all.

Gerry: Yup. [Gerry laughs]

[Musical Interlude]

James Host: When Gerry bought the cafe in 2007, specialty coffee was seeping into Boulder’s high streets and as Boulder fell in love with this new, luxurious coffee experience, Gerry was left in the dark. He struggled to offer a competitive coffee experience, both in the cafe and online on social media, and he struggled to get the help he needed from sighted employees. The Boulder community voted with their wallets and chose not to go into Gerry’s cafe anymore.

[Musical interlude ends]

Gerry: What is failure? The piece of my business that failed was the finances. I did put good coffee out, I didn’t fail at that, at least that’s what everyone said. Gosh, I kept it going for 11 years so yea, there’s parts that I didn’t do correctly and there’s parts that didn’t work well and so there’s failure in that sense but I wouldn’t have failed if I didn’t try and that’s why I say I may do a coffee shop again. If I teach myself enough about how to get the right people going again I’ll give it a whirl.

“Growth and expansion in Colorado may have pushed a small business owner to his financial end but…”

James Host: The good news is that the community has stepped in to help.

“After the community heard about the Unseen Bean on Denver 7 this is how you responded.”

“Running a small business…”

A local TV station shone a spotlight on Gerry’s financial difficulties in August 2018 and then a local beer company and local charities raised money to get Gerry back on his feet.

“And we are hoping to raise at least 10,000 for this [18:34 inaudible]

“And until today Gerry didn’t know that number.”

Gerry: Wow.

James Host: The community ended up giving him $18,642.

“The more the Unseen Bean and the man behind it can get back on track.”

Gerry paid off lots of debt, bought some fresh green coffee and is now roasting more and more every week.

Gerry: The feeling that I have is so wonderful I don’t know how to express it and it’s excellent beer.

[Music playing in background]

Gerry also has new branding and social media help. You can find him on Instagram @unseenbeancoffee.

[Filter Stories theme song]

Credits

Thank you for listening to part two. So, next time on Filter Stories I am going to bring you three episodes where we are going to go deep into El Salvador. I spent almost a month in the country trying to figure out where our coffee actually comes from and I discovered social issues that roasters never told me about and I’m pretty sure they don’t want you to know about it either.

Also, the next Filter Stories kickstarter is going to launch the day the next episode drops. This will be a chance to taste an exceptional coffee with an exceptional [19:57 inaudible]. If you missed that last one and you want to get on board this time subscribe to the Filter Stories email newsletter, there is a link in the episode description or follow me on Instagram @filterstoriespodcast.

So, many people have asked, hey where does your piano music come from and I am happy to say that it is yours truly. I have been playing piano and composing music for about two decades. If you want to listen to more of this piano music I actually put the credits, the piano credits of the Firefly episode in the music edition of Coffee People Zine! This is a magazine put together by Kat Melheim. This is the same Kat from the episode you just heard. There is a link to the piano music track on the website filterstories.org and in the episode description and, by the way, if you own a cafe, get Coffee people Zine on your shelves. It’s a celebration of all the talents coffee people have over and above making great coffee.

This episode was sound engineered and mixed by Dom Edgley a Berlin based sound professional. You can get him at domedgleysound.com and the Filter Stories logo was created by Headquarters, a branding and packaging design team. You can find more of their work at headquarters.studio.

Okay. Until next time.

Gerry: Sit down, there you go woofy, he’s a woof, he’s a woof. That’s right you are a big old woof. [Petting dog]