Josh Taves is the Founder of Dialed Coffee Services, a coffee equipment maintenance, repair, and equipment sales business in Western Michigan. He joined Coffee People to chat about stress testing his business and not taking coffee too seriously.
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Guests: Josh Taves, Founder of Dialed Coffee Services in Grand Rapids, MI.
What they drink: Coffee
Find On Online: https://www.dialedcoffeeservices.com/ • @dialedcoffeeservices
"Essentially, we want to go in and not just make the machines work, but make the coffee taste better."
• Josh Taves
Vist with the Roastar Team (and me!) IRL at the upcoming Coffee Fest NYC (March 8-10) at the Javits Center. You'll find them at Booth 2716. Learn more about the upcoming event at: https://www.coffeefest.com/new-york
Listen or watch the entire episode!
I really enjoyed chatting with Josh. He has thoughts. He isn't afraid to share them, or himself, with us as the audience. He comes off as confident in who he is to himself, his family, his team, and even to the coffee industry. It's important to understand who you are if you want to be sincere in what you're selling.
At Dialed Coffee Service (DCS), he's selling a solution for how to approach coffee machinery maintenance and repair. The goal isn't just to make the widget go. It is to enable the user to create a better-tasting coffee with it. It is a mission that requires the perspective Josh gleaned over the years on the other side of the counter (so to speak) as a barista.
With DCS, Josh hasn't just created a career for himself and the technicians who work there. He went into entrepreneurship with an idea of the type of life he wanted to lead. One where he maintains a sense of autonomy and creates space for other aspects of his life.
He does something most owners wouldn't risk. He leaves. Every year, he takes an elongated trip into the outdoors to hunt.* During that time, his team is doing the work, navigating the customers, and making decisions, often without access to him. They either succeed or they do not. When he comes back, he's able to see where the business and individual employees thrived and where he needs to put in more time to either improve the business, employee skills, or the company's foundational operations plan. It is a risk that requires the willingness to trust his team.
Near the end of our conversation, Josh offered a bit of advice for everyone. It's a reminder, really, that coffee is just a drink. We don't have to take it too seriously. It's okay to be really excited about coffee and voraciously devour knowledge about it. But don't only find your being in coffee. He proffers that it might let you down. The lesson I interpreted from that was to be sure to build a foundation outside of work.
*A different type of work. He hunts with the goal of providing enough meat to last a year's worth of meals for his family.
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Josh mentioned Service Layer as a place to find a coffee tech in your region. Service Layer is "an Independent Network of Local Coffee Technicians. Strategically placed between equipment manufacturers and coffee shops."
I was drinking a mug of Roasted By Mom coffee while working on this episode. I had a chance to stop by the Hillsboro, OR micro-roaster recently, and picked up a bag to take home. Founder Keri Elliot was a guest of our original Roast! West Coast coffee podcast way back in season 4. We had a different name and intro music back then, and Roasted By Mom was called Elliot & Murray Coffee Roasters.
I just learned that you can "play" a game that simulates VanLife. In the description it says, "Hit the road, explore open-world landscapes, face wild challenges, and live the dream in the freedom of van life and camping."
Is this a modern version of The Oregon Trail, a game I once played on a floppy disc, while my more tech savvy classmate recoded all the computer log-on screens in the lab to only work with the passcode he chose. It was not elementary school friendly.
I understand there is a place for a game like this, but I encourage anyone interested to go out into the open world to experience camping and van life for real. The coffee will taste better next to a running stream, towering mountain, near the campfire, or even broken down on the side of the road. I promise.
*Is it to soon to drop an apocalypse mention into the newsletter? Things are pretty wild out there in the world right now. We have family visiting the Middle East, and are hopeful that everyone stays safe.
The conversation with Suneal Pabari and Grant Gamble, Co-Creators of Leaderboard: The Coffee Game. Suneal is also the Co-Founder of Coffee Wallas, a roaster specializing in Asian coffee.
Alex Pyne is the President of the Blue Bottle Independent Union (BBIU) representing the employees of some Blue Bottle Coffee locations. In this episode of Coffee People, we chat about his draw to organizing, what a union does for its members, and his version of the best cup of coffee.
Jing Lin shares her path into entrepreneurship and coffee shop ownership with Coffee People. We discuss how her career climb in the film industry wasn't getting her to the more engaged, creative mountaintop she strived to stand on, and how the Covid-19 pandemic jumpstarted her foray into business.
Will Reif shares his path into enrepreneurship with Coffee People. We discuss how some post collegiate exploration led him home to Wausau to launch Roastar, a coffee packaging and manufacturing company.
This is a Bonus Coffee People Coffee With episode featuring Emily Lavalier. She is the Owner and Artist behind EmLavArt, and trip leader at Hammer Travel, where she and a team guide adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities on fun-filled vacation adventures.