I’m Terrified

Since I was 18, I always worked as the grunt in a team… But I was ambitious. I wanted to learn more and grow constantly, but I felt I was always held back by the red tape created by upper management. Towards the end of 2020, at the height of the COVID pandemic, I found the opportunity to leave my job as a delivery driver in the beer industry to go work in coffee. Even before the world essentially came to a screeching halt, I was already reaching a breaking point from the monotony of just doing the same thing every single day with no end in sight. By September of that year, I was working less hours as restaurants weren’t open and although I was receiving partial unemployment, the company I was working for at the time changed our unemployment submission to a paper based system. That caused our payouts to take months to receive. Since I was working less hours with no overtime, I couldn’t wait that long and needed to find a full time job. Luckily I knew someone at Bird Rock Coffee Roasters that was able to put in a good word and bump my resume’ to the top of the pile.

I was offered the position within a couple of hours after the interview and immediately put my two weeks notice as a delivery driver. Was it a step up? Kind of, but not really. I was making the same hourly wage but I didn’t have to drive all the way up to Riverside on a weekly basis. I wasn’t getting overtime but at least I had a stable job with a steady paycheck. It were the little wins that kept me driven. I was officially the person in charge of making the cold brew for all the cafes and it seemed great. All I had to do was dump coffee into a tank with water, filter it, and then put them in kegs. Spent the rest of the day packing mail if I had time. I was still delivering the cold brew to the cafes but at the time there were only 6 locations and that beats 20 up in the Inland Empire.

I did that for about a year before it got old. Real fast. I was aching for more again. One day, I think maybe mid 2021, I was delivering to the cafe furthest up North and saw the Operations Manager on the phone, hovering over the espresso machine with the top and sides off. He was troubleshooting some issues I was far from knowing anything about. Mind you, I came from beer and knew NOTHING about coffee. We had some training on the different coffee processes but unless you went through barista training, that’s as far as the coffee knowledge train went.

I walked up to him and asked what he was doing. I mean OBVIOUSLY it was having issues, but I was merely breaking the ice. He was quick to respond, “On the phone with tech support because sa3!#$^#$%^er468WEr#$^%@#$^4G\ stopped working.” Yeah, there were words I’ve never heard before. Well anyway, I asked, “Do you generally do that yourself or is there a guy for that? How does one even get into working on those?” He responded but I don’t recall the answer. He did however, follow up with, “Why? Are you interested?” Absolutely, Get me out of that cold brew room.

It was maybe a few days or a week after that interaction when he came into my room with an espresso grinder. “Fix this. Let’s see what you got.” To be fair, it probably didn’t sound that cool but that’s essentially what I got from it. The grinder wouldn’t adjust and apparently no one could figure out how to do it. So, like any resourceful person would, I googled it. I had no idea where to start or even open it but someone online had to have done it and share the info. Long story short (because I can’t recall), I fixed it. The threads on the burr carrier was seized and just needed to be removed and cleaned. After that, it was just a balancing act of making cold brew and repairing small facilities issues at the cafes, as they weren’t quite comfortable with me opening the coffee equipment yet.

I think it was around August or September 2021 when the owner flew me out to Kansas City, MO to train with Marty Roe. THE GUY. This guy had the solution to every coffee problem. He had reopened an SCA tech training course post pandemic. It was an 8 hour day class for a whole week. It was so much information. He knew we wouldn’t remember anything but later stated that when we do encounter these issues, we should be able to recall the training. He was like, half right. I did recall, but I would later experience new issues, specific to different brands and models, and those would damn near break my brain. I was ambitious, maybe overly, but I persevered. It reached a point by the end of 2022 where I was on top every cafe repair or update so I spent a good amount of time twiddling my thumbs. That was when the owner of the company decided to branch out, creating the opportunity to repair cafe equipment outside of Bird Rock Coffee. By January 2023, Espresso Medic of San Diego was born.

I was excited to get out there. Learn new machines, building relationships with the coffee community along the way. The intake of new problems and solutions flooded my brain to the point I damn near had 3D maps of most commercial espresso machines burned into my head. Then it got busy. Bird Rock was expanding. We had closed a cafe but gained 5 more in the past 2.5 years. I was picking up new accounts but I was falling behind on Bird Rock repairs. Towards the end of 2023 I was reaching another breaking point, so they were able to get me help. A part-time employee and he was ambitious as well. Even going as far as flying herself out the same training I went to, before she even landed the job. It was, however, short lived as her goals were ever changing and they soon didn’t align with the type of work we do. The uncertainties of the job prevented her from doing the things she wanted to do outside of work hours, so eventually she left. I was back to square one.

By that time I was stressing so much, unable function normally to the point I needed to start seeing a psychiatrist. Was started on ADHD meds as well as therapy. Apologies for the TMI, but this IS a blog post. Anyway, time went on. About six months into 2024 and we were able to finally hire her replacement. His interview damn near mirrored my start into this position so he was a definite shoe-in. It wouldn’t be until January of 2025 where we were able to fly him out to the training in KC, MO with Marty. He came back with almost that brain dead look I had. By that time he had already some field training from me, so he was able to take that course with some context. I had none when I went in.

He hits the ground running and now we’re getting BUSY. Bird Rock Cafes are getting busier, newer Espresso Medic clients are popping up. It was becoming almost too much for me to mentally and emotionally balance the rapid growth of both sides of the company, and I was unable to shut off my brain after an 8+ hour day. It wasn’t until I had gone to Bellingham, WA for the wedding that I had a moment of clarity. I should do this on my own. If you’ve never been to Bellingham, WA, it is the quietest, nicest, slowest place in the US I’ve ever been on the west coast. Absolutely no stress. It was there that I was able to take HUGE step back and see that I’ve reached that limit and could no longer balance both Bird Rock and Espresso Medic. I needed to come to terms with the fact that I’m in an annoyingly constant need for growth. I needed to focus on that and wanted to focus on the coffee community. I wanted to focus on the current and future potential connections all throughout the industry. I came to the conclusion that if that’s the goal I needed to pursue, I had to leave Bird Rock and Espresso Medic behind. It was an extremely tough decision coupled with such uncertainty towards the future. Never have I ever thought I would reach a point where starting my own business was going to be the next step. Luckily, I’ve received tremendous support from friends and the coffee community alike, so there is hope. So, as excited I am about this new venture, I’m terrified.