Adam Torres and Scott Hagg discuss Arabica Coffee House.
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Show Notes:
Arabica Coffee House is on a mission to provide the best tasting coffee in the business. In this episode, Adam Torres and Scott Hagg, President of Arabica Coffee House, explore the Arabica Coffee House story and why it’s partnering with Mission Matters to get the word out about its superior product. Learn more and experience the coffee for yourself here: https://arabica1976.com/
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About Scott Hagg
Experienced leader with a demonstrated history of working in the food & beverages industry. He has done everything from starting his own small business to starting his own franchise concept, to International franchise development. He also believes business is changing and they as professionals must think “outside the box” and be open to “new and fresh ideas”. He has opened over 100 restaurants, bars, and cafes over his life and it is not just a job for him, it is his passion.
About Arabica Coffee House
Arabica Coffee House was established in 1976 in Cleveland, Ohio. The goal of Arabica® was to serve gourmet coffee in an inviting environment where their customers could relax and enjoy the nuances of a true Coffee House environment. This concept proved to be very successful and Arabica drew a huge following. In 1981 they began licensing their concept throughout Northeast Ohio and the rest is history.
Specialty coffee is the term used to describe higher grades of coffee in which every aspect the coffee goes through is a concentration of the highest standard. This includes growing, picking, and roasting of the coffee beans to the delivery and serving of their coffee products. They import the finest green coffee beans from over 40 countries around the world. They roast each origin bean separately to ensure the optimum roast for each specific bean. They then blend their beans after the roasting process and distribute them all over the world in their cafes, coffee houses, and private retail labels.
These coffees are cupped and re-cupped throughout the purchasing, roasting, and packaging process to ensure that you are always getting the best quality possible. Many make this promise but few are able to deliver as consistently as they believe they do. Asthey like to say “The proof is in the cup”
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of mission matters. My name is Adam Torres. And if you’d like to apply to be a guest, just head on over to mission matters. com and click on, be our guest to apply. All right. So today is a very special episode. This episode, I don’t know. It’s probably going on two years in the making.
So I have. Scott Hague on the line. He is president over at Arabica coffee house. First off Scott back from travels. I know you’re heading back out. I just want to say welcome to the show. Finally, I got John. Thank you. I pleasure to be here. I’m very happy and thank you. So Scott, we got a whole lot to cover today.
So we’re going to talk about, of course, Arabica coffee house. We’re going to talk about the new, the new branding, the new, the new product. We’re going to talk about expansion of Arabica. I mean, it’s going crazy and I’m so excited to be a part of your journey and to work on this with you. So we’re gonna, we got a lot to cover, but we’ll get this episode started the way that we start them all with what we like to call our mission matters minute.
So Scott at Mission Matters, our goal and our aim is to amplify stories for entrepreneurs, executives, and experts. That’s what we do. Scott, what mission matters to you? Well, at Arabica Coffeehouse, our mission is, is really to, to try to make everybody feel at home and comfortable in our settings. We feel that our coffee is up and above, I would say, 95%.
Of our competitors in the country and around the world. We roast each bean separately. And then if it’s a blend, we combine them after. So, so all the properties are correct and all, all of our products and our beans. We really do cater to our customers. We have a basic Menu, but we do allow every area is a little bit different.
So we do allow the local culture or the local people to dictate 15 to 20 percent of what we do. So we listen, we’re there for our people and we try to, to get our franchisees, the biggest bang for their buck. Yeah. And so just a big shout out to Dave Andrus. I know he’ll, he’ll be watching this. And so that’s who originally introduced him.
Us together and started talking about it. And I believe he was correct me if I’m wrong. I believe he was a franchisee or is a franchisee, excuse me. And he still does work very closely with the company. He was one of our authors, of course in our mission matters series. He also is a host on the, on the podcast network.
So and Dave still works with him as a franchisee and everything else, right? Like he’s a partner. Yeah. Correct. Yes, he’s a franchisee and he’s a partner. We actually, I developed a an easy concept called Arabica Express. And what this is, is it’s a simple way to put a mini Arabica or a type of kiosk into another existing business.
And this, the goal was to really create extra revenue at a really low cost to our franchisees. Like he put one Arabic express into one of his gyms, his clubs, Ohio gym. And he also has Northern Ohio business center. And he put one in an Arabic express in one of those. So it’s just To help really our franchisees or even people who have an existing business.
It could be a second concept. It could be a ghost kitchen type of thing. So it’s working out well. And Dave’s a great guy. Yeah. So I want to take a step back in, in your career and get into what you’ve done. Even prior to coffee, cause you, you’ve been a restaurant guy for a long time. Am I off of that hospital?
I started when I was 11 years old in 1981, I guess that tells how old I am. My father and my mom, we actually moved from Detroit to Cleveland to open a pizza restaurant and they worked so hard. They put all of their time, their money into this, and in 18 months we had three locations. Wow. Wow. Whoa. You know, Detroit was already pretty pretty well established.
Cleveland is, I like to say 10 years behind Detroit. So we came here with the aim of growing and that kind of. I love the pizza business, but it also let me know that I wanted to do more. And that’s when I really decided I wanted to explore other avenues. Yeah. And so just fast forwarding a bit, how’d you discover coffee?
Like, was that always a fascination or like, like how’d you get to Arabica? Well, being of the middle Eastern descent, we’re very much coffee drinkers. I had developed a brand called wraps international, and we had eight locations in just under two years. And the people from Arabica loved what I was doing and they contacted me and they said, Hey, we want you to incorporate what you’re doing with our coffee.
So I started working with them for maybe a year or so. And things just were. We’re not, well, it was just not organized. And I told them, I said, look, I’ll do the work. I’m willing to do it, but I would like to take the company. I’ll buy it. And we finally came to a deal because our, our views just weren’t the same.
I wanted to expand. They wanted to stay in Cleveland. And so I won, the company came with me and the rest is history. Where that was that the original owners and the original like establishment. Well, it was the second owners, the first owner. Actually the first owner, I have to commend him. He was excellent.
He started in 1976 and he was one of the first coffee houses in the United States. I mean, he was really ahead of his time. And that’s why I asked you that question. And as well, because I think when I, like when we first met, I was thinking to myself and I’m like, wait a minute, coffee houses in the seventies.
Cause I know this has like, this is a, I mean, nothing against any new Coffee brands, by the way. So I don’t need any emails or mail from anybody like what, just because I just started, it’s okay if you just started your coffee brand, I’m pulling for you. Like, no, no, we’re about empowering it and encouraging the entire coffee industry, other than the ones that sell sugar.
I’m not going to say any names, but I won’t say Starbucks. I won’t say that. But that being said, like, I was just so impressed by the pedigree and even just the origin of the coffeehouse, like in the seventies, a coffeehouse, like, how did that happen? He really was ahead of his time. His name was Carl Jones and he wanted a place for people to relax, sit, be able to enjoy themselves.
He actually roasted on site in our first store on Coventry road in 1976. And then it really expanded in Cleveland. And then around 2007, when the economy really took a hit, it really hurt us bad. And that’s when I decided to go international. So the franchise model, like let’s go a little bit into that before we maybe talk about some of the international stuff and how you’re expanding, like, like, how did you come up with the, with the franchise concept in terms of like how to, how to start spreading this thing and growing it?
Well, being in the business for so long franchising it’s, it’s not super hard because you’re not really reinventing yourself. You’re following a strict model. So basically there’s a template. You put your standard operating procedures in the template, and that’s basically how a franchise goes. So if you’re successful in one location and you feel that you can duplicate it, that’s basically how the franchising system works.
So it’s really our systems of operation. The quality of our products and the fantastic people that work with us. Yeah. So, so I, I got a story for everyone. So I when I first started getting into so when I first met Scott, Dave introduces us and he’s like, ah, I’m going to send you some coffee. Like I was expecting a bag or two, like, and I’m like, okay.
Cause I like coffee. And I actually, before meeting you, Scott, I think I’ve told you this. I thought I knew a little bit about coffee. I was like, oh, I like going to this place. Place. I like going to this place like, yeah, I love some coffee. Let’s try it. Let’s see it. ’cause we were thinking about like where maybe mission matters or where I fit into this whole equation.
I’m like, yeah, let me taste it. And I, the funny story is Scott sends me this box. There had to be, I don’t know 10, minimum 10. There might have been 15 different blends or different flavors and the organic, oh my gosh. We’re gonna talk a little bit about the organics in, in a minute. But, but I, I started going down this journey of exploration that just.
Opened up my mind to like what real coffee was. I realized, honestly, I never really had like real, real coffee. I thought I had, but it was nothing like this. And I was started going through the sumatras, the organics. Like you had all of these different kinds. Even the regular, like the American blend, like, which was a little bit different flavor.
And I was like, wow, like there was just a different level of quality going. through all of this. And then I was like, Oh, I was hooked. Like after that, I was hooked. So maybe like, let’s spend some time, Scott and talk about the product because what just me going through my tasting journey and what you’ve also taught me about product, like I don’t, I feel like many people that are watches think they know coffee and maybe like me, they, I thought I knew coffee and I didn’t.
So talk to us about the product. Well, we source beans from over 40 countries around the world. We only use the select either grade A or triple A Arabica beans. We never use Robusta. And as I stated earlier in the show, so what does that mean? What’s the importance of that? I don’t want to skip over that.
The Arabica bean is the taste. It’s better. It’s a smaller bean. There may be a little bit less caffeine in it, but the quality and the taste, it’s just, it’s not coming. That’s where that, that flavor comes from. Correct. The robusta, you get a lot of beans. bitterness at the end. And you’re like, Oh, that’s what a lot of instant coffees are made.
Or some, some companies will, will say, okay, here’s an Arabica blend, and it’ll be 50 percent Arabica and 50 percent Robusta. We don’t do that. We roast everything separately and everything is blended at the end. So each bean, it’s like a vegetable. If you’re cooking a vegetable, Each vegetable might take a little bit of a different amount of time to be soft where you want it to be able to cook to throw in your soup or whatever that may be.
Same thing with coffee beans, the texture, the size, everything’s a little bit different. So we roast each bean separately. We blend at the end Arabica, we have, I believe, 12 or 13 of that real quick, just to juxtapose that. So that’s. I’m guessing a little bit more of a difficult process takes a little bit more time than normally.
Like if you’re cutting corners, you wouldn’t do these things, right? Correct. The big monster roaster, again, I won’t mention their name, but they throw all their beans in at once and they roast them dark. And that’s the way that you pretty much hide the flavor of the coffee. If you’re roasting it to a full city.
Roast which means it’s it’s pretty done. You hide a lot of the flaws in the beans where we We’re totally opposite. We’re more of a boutique roaster Roastery, but we’re not because we can service everybody. Yeah. And you’re roasting quite a bit a year, right? Like is this correct? Yeah. Correct. We’re several hundred tons a year.
So it’s not, when you say boutique and you’re like several hundred tons. I’m Boutique. Boutique in, in the is different. I know. Yeah. The way, the way that we roast that would be, it’s more of a specialized roasting company. So, so continue the story. I just didn’t want to skip over that because those nuances, like those nuances is come up in the flavor and the palette and everything else.
So these aren’t like, it’s not a common, it’s not a common thing. That’s why I, whenever I’m telling anybody about the product or otherwise I’m like, no, you got to try this. Like you got to tell me most of the time you’re not going to have access to that. And it’s go ahead, continue on, on, on the product.
Our statement, our motto is the proof is in the cup. You know, when somebody says, how is this? I give them a cup, please taste it. You tell me, you know, when we go up against the big guys, we win nine out of 10, 10 out of 10 challenges. Yeah. Not a problem. Somebody who’s a lifelong Starbucks or Dunkin drinker, you know, they might like that and that’s okay.
There’s no problem. Our product is superior. We also try to sell a little bit below market so we can hit as many people as we can. But quality is job one. I mean, that’s really our motto also. And so, and so part of this was me kind of explaining. Because I, I found it super unique that as you start expanding like internationally and start doing this, that your product is not only like standing up and superior in the United States, but you’re even being called to, you know, other countries.
And I’m like, especially some of the countries that you mentioned to me, which you can definitely talk about here. I was thinking, wait a minute. They’re coming to the us for. Coffee for like, what these, some of these are some pretty old cultures. Right, right, right. You know, I was just in Saudi two weeks ago and I’m going to have, like, for example, I would think that they have their flavor for everything, like they’re set in stone on the way they do things.
Super old culture. And then you tell me, Hey, we’re experimenting. Spaniel, this, I’m like, really, how’d that happen? So the product, like you can’t do that without the product, right? The younger generation there, it’s like 80 percent of the population now. And their coffee is just booming in the Middle East.
Yes. Tradition old time companies, things like that. They’re all there. Yeah. I, I had some, some Saudi coffee. Saudi cafe coffee, not the traditional Arabic coffee. And I’m telling you, it was probably 80 percent robusta and I couldn’t even drink it. And I’m spoiled to say that, you know, not just ours, but Arabica coffee itself, it’s just head and shoulders above.
The rest. Yeah. So, so talk to me about some of this international expansion, like the countries you’re working in, like the, the calls you’re getting. And for context, for everybody that’s watching this, every time I talk to Scott, I’m like, where are you at? How, what, what time zone he’s always somewhere else.
So I’m like, so, so talk to me about this expansion and just plans. Well, we’re, we’re blessed this year, especially it’s been really good. I just got one on a four country trip to Kuwait Egypt, Turkey, and two cities in Saudi. We’re opening in all those countries. I’m going to Pakistan next Bangladesh, Thailand.
We have a lot going, I mean, really, we’ve been blessed and it’s really, it’s about the product. Yeah. Our fairness, our openness with the people. And let’s face it at the end of the day, American companies are still respected around the world. And that’s something that we’re hanging our hat on. It’s great.
It’s a great story. And so one of the things that that I’m proud to announce is that we’ve been working with really hard to get product available online, online website, and really just making it user friendly. Friendly so that others can get can get access to it so they can order it and enjoy it in their home too.
Cause they don’t know Scott. So he’s not going to mail them something. So, so, so Aravica 1976. So we don’t, we’re doing it. We’re in the middle of a soft launch right now. com and we’re and now we’re going to be accepting online orders. So I’m super pumped and super excited about this. And really just this next, again, this is a soft launch and we’re going to Start bringing this into into more of mission matters marketing.
So you’re going to hear a whole lot, whole, whole, whole lot more about this product and about and about the partnership. And this is just really, this is your, I think this is your first time on the show, right? Scott. Yeah. First time. Yes. Yeah. So we have, we have a bunch of media marketing and what I’m, and even outside of like our partnership, and I’ve told you this before, Scott, like even outside of what we’re doing and, and this, and this coffee and obviously we’re promoting it, but even outside of that, I’m.
Just so interested at the other entrepreneurs that are out that are opening up new Arabic locations and express locations and other things. Because ultimately because you’ve gone the franchise model, like you’re providing a lot of opportunities for others that want to be in the coffee space with the superior product.
So talk to me a little bit more about your vision for providing this opportunity and for the specifically for the franchising side of things. Yeah. And kind of what that looks like. A lot of people watch this and they’re thinking about, Hey, thinking of a franchise, what space they want to be in or otherwise.
So I want to make sure to get, get your hat in the ring on this one. Well, the one thing I would say that separates us is basically everything’s run through me and my team, and we’re not a team of a hundred people. We have 10 quality people. That we sit down or we’re on zoom. We make our decisions and we move we feel that acting fast and appropriate is really how to do business Especially in this day and age if you snooze you lose and we’re not going to lose we pride ourselves and nobody outworking us Now, as I say that, as again, and we offer a little bit of flexibility in our franchises where most of them are very hard on the line, you must follow ABC and there’s no variance.
We’re a little bit different where we’ll give variance as long as we help create the product and make sure it’s up to our standards. So we don’t want. To let anybody down. We want to make sure if they get an espresso or if they get a latte or if they get a bubble tea, it’s all great quality. That’s what we do.
Good quality at fair prices. We want everybody to be able to enjoy our products. And that makes sense, right? Because you’re also doing you’re going into different markets. Like you couldn’t service the, let’s say the middle East, Turkey the United States, like different palettes, different types of products.
Products that they want and that are going to sell. Right. Am I, am I misunderstanding? I just want to make sure I’m on. I think no, that’s you’re a hundred percent. Right. Like I said, we have our basic menu with the, the European espresso drinks and things like that. We have some Asian influence in our bubble teas.
We have all the cold drinks, everything. But as I say, in the Middle East, if there’s something like a certain flavor syrup or something that they like more, like they like pistachio there where here in America, it’s not so popular, why not let them serve it? It’s not hurting us if we have it and it’s already good quality product.
There’s no problem with that. As far as I’m concerned. Yeah, it makes sense. It makes sense. And then if you think about the like just the brand, I, I think it’s interesting, like, I, I can’t, I crack up about this when I think about it. I’m like a Cleveland company started in the seventies has a coffee place in, in, in the middle East or in Turkey or in like all these other countries you’re looking at, like, what does that feel like for you just as an entrepreneur, like you, you personally to be able to spread and continue to spread that brand really worldwide, what does that feel like for you?
For you, it’s, it’s nice, you know, honestly, though, pride and the joy is if my franchisees are happy and if they keep continuing to expand, then I’m happy if I always tell somebody, if I think that there’s a chance, you’re not going to open in a particular location, I will tell you, no. Many people will not do that, but I don’t want the money, right?
Like the franchise or they’ll be like, Hey, yeah, great. I don’t want to hurt them and I don’t want to hurt my brand. So we’re doing what’s best. We’re opening in Arkansas and Fort Smith, Arkansas in a few weeks. That’s our first one in America outside of Cleveland, Ohio. Yeah. Congratulations. That’s amazing.
That’s Perry Patel. Shout out. We’re I just, I’m just. If it’s a good person and good location, and if they’re financed, because I don’t want them to struggle just in case that takes a few months to get on their feet, then I’m all for it. You know, we want success. We want to grow our brand properly. We want everybody happy and to grow together.
If we grow together, we’re successful. And who’d you say that was? You said it was in Arkansas. Yes. Perry Patel is his name. Fort Smith, Arkansas. Amazing. Congrats, Perry. And Hey, we got to get Perry on the show. I want to hear Perry’s story. Cause this is interesting. Another entrepreneur to feature like in the, in the Arabica family.
So welcome to the family, Perry. That’s amazing. Yeah. Well, well, Scott I just have to say it has been great catching up with you finally get you on the show. I know you’re heading back out. You’re going somewhere abroad pretty soon. Like always. That being said, if somebody is watching this or listening to this and they want more information on Arabica Coffeehouse and just, you know, connect and follow the journey, what’s the best way for them to do that?
The best way is www. arabica cafe. com, or check out our news website that we have with Adam, Arabica 1976, if you’re interested in some coffee, we can make it happen at reasonable prices shipped. And we’ll put all and for everybody watching or listening to this, we’ll put all that information in the show notes and don’t forget to hit the subscribe button if you haven’t already, we have many more interviews coming up and we don’t want you to miss a thing, Scott, thank you so much again for your time and I can’t wait till the next time we get to do this.
Thank you, Adam.