Honoring the deep historical roots of coffee in New Orleans, Jim Currie launches the NOLA Coffee Festival.  

We all may think differently about how coffee is served and how to grow the coffee business following this event.

Jim shares 5 takeaways from this episode of the Close The Deal. Com Podcast: 

1. Best restaurant to close the deal in New Orleans
2. New Orleans historical significance of coffee to the United States
3. How collaboration with coffee stakeholders can transform the industry
4. The importance of coffee education - over 60 hours valued at over $1,000 just for the price of admission
5. How wine is served vs. coffee - and the possible transformation for coffee
6. An overview of the event

How to get tickets and info:

https://nolacoffeefestival.com/

Jim's Linkedin

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jim-currie-72275b8/

This episode is brought to you by franchise & funding - considering a franchise, visit YourFirstFranchise.Com

Products we ❤️  for our health:

• Athletic Greens - AGI

Show Notes with Jim Currie

NOLA Coffee Festival

Jim: I stress the opportunity is the sum of the parts. No one company, no one person is gonna make a real big amount of money from this. It's not, that's not how it works, but 3,000 companies all getting better and all getting better product and all getting better service. It's gonna grow the category.

That's our goal. Truly there's not gonna be one winner. We're hoping there's gonna be hundreds if not a thousand winners. That's really what we're trying to build.

Ewell: That is Jim Currie. He is the founder of the Nola Coffee Festival happening this September. Now, this is a leadership masterclass on how to pull together a fragmented industry to help everybody. And if you're a coffee lover, If you are a foodie, and especially if you're in the coffee business, whether you are on the grinding side, all the way to the serving side, this episode is for you.

You'll listening to the close the deal.com podcast. I'm your host, Ewell Smith. Now let's begin the show.

Jim, I wanna welcome you to the Close The Deal.com podcast. Yes. My first, my, this is gonna be a fun question to see what you come up with. 'cause I've known you for a long time. You've been in New Orleans a long time. You might as well be a New Orleanian.

Jim's Favorite Resteaurant to Close The Deal

What is your favorite restaurant to take somebody to? If you're trying to do business and you need to close that deal.

Jim: That is an interesting question 'cause we all face that challenge and I, love to give a smart alec answer, which is the next meal, the next one the next meal. But it comes down to having a place that's quiet, that you can hold somebody's attention and that you want good service, but you don't want service that interrupts you constantly.

And Crescent City Steakhouse has turned out to be a go-to place for me, for a little quiet one-on-one. That tends to work out pretty well.

Ewell: That's an iconic New Orleans restaurant. People, from out town listening to this that the locals love. It's been around forever. And you liked, I think you liked that mid-city area because you took me to Liuzza’s when we, when you hatch what we're getting ready to talk about.

But we'll save that. But Liuzza’s is another iconic New Orleans….

Jim: And I like Peter Mayer is the one that first introduced me to Crescent City where you could close the drapes and have a, good fellow type conversation. It was such a delight, and I think remembering that with him is half the fun. 

Ewell: That's the old that's as old school as it gets too, when you can close the drape. Alright. What are you grateful for from the past that helped you get you where you are today? Who or what are.

Two key people who guided Jim on this coffee journey

Jim: Oh, you're right. That's an easy question because it's the who, right? It's all the people that help. It's all the people that mentor us that give us those little nuggets and insights that make us better. It's people that are willing to talk to us openly and honestly, and correct us if necessary.

And honestly, that's a long list. During my career I've been blessed that people took the time to give me coaching or. Or just give me the advice and a little bit of correct course corrections. On this project I'm working on today it's, about coffee, which is not my native industry, and I'll mention that there's two older coffee families where the head of those families really helped.

My partner, Kevin Richards and I they sat down with us and coached us. It's a Shelby Westfeldt with Westfeldt Brothers Coffee. They've been importing coffee for literally six or seven generations. They were here when coffee came to New Orleans the first time. And Janet Colley, who's over at Dupuy also a six or seven generation type leadership.

And both of those women really took the time to, to share with us kind of coffee insights and it made an enormous difference.

Ewell: Y and that's the rich history we're gonna get into in a second, which I love. But you also make, you make mention something you. For taking in information, you're coachable. A lot of people aren't coachable and they don't value the value of mentorship or 

Jim: sometimes I laugh and good salesman should listen. Good salesman should ask questions, but I sometimes joke that the salesman think about what they're gonna say. The marketing people are always listening. Always listening. You gotta be a sponge right.

Ewell: I love it. I love it. All right You saw I, always ask, what's the problem? The entrepreneur silence in this show. But in this case, it's not such a problem. But you definitely saw an opportunity, a vacuum that had not been going back six and seven generations. There has been a vacuum that's never been filled.

What is that vacuum?

Identifying the Vacuum in the Coffee Industry

Jim: In coffee, and I'm an outsider. Outsider looking in, outsider trying to learn and ask a bunch of questions. You don't wanna say that people aren't really good at what they do. 'cause they're very passionate, right? And they are good. And you don't wanna say that they're not mature in their business.

And they are, they have very successful businesses all over the city, all over the region in coffee.

But I think what we saw as an opportunity became a question of education, coffee education. And that is how well is that industry that particularly networked? Are they sharing with each other? Are they learning and growing from each other?

And we felt the answer was, no. Some of them are so busy every day, grinding through 10 and 12 hour days that they don't have the luxury of meeting their peers and working with each other. And as it turns out, most people in coffee, most companies in coffee, they are collaborative, not so much competitive.

They are willing to work and help each other, but it's literally how much time do you have in the day? And who do you know? And so, we came up with a solution, which was a, let's provide coffee education, and I could talk more about that but, b, Let's provide it at one central place in time where you just can't resist coming together and meeting and networking.

So, the, silly answer is called trade show. There really was no coffee industry activity, coffee industry trade show where these people could come together, meet, get to know each other. It's not any more complicated than that. Every industry with good trade shows knows the value and our local people just weren't getting to experience that.

So, the solution was simple. Let's start a trade show right here in New Orleans for coffee.

Ewell: And, talk about the, because it makes sense. It is unbelievable that it hasn't happened, 

Jim: isn't it?

Ewell: For generations and the history of coffee starts where… 

Coffee's Rich History and Local Brands

Jim: Other places, other countries. But in the United States, the history of coffee really is bound and tied to the port of New Orleans. And so when it started coming into New Orleans in the 1850s and then growing throughout the eighteen hundreds, it was the New Orleans Coffee Houses. It was the New Orleans entrepreneurs that started roasting and grinding and making new blends.

And it was the New Orleans importers that were making these connections back and forth with Central and South America where these farmers and these co-ops were saying, let's do business with America. And what they meant was, let's do business with New Orleans. And so, for the rest of the country, coffee was coming through the port of New Orleans and passing through our hands and our companies and being spread to all the other places that the Mississippi River could take it.

And I will mention that today, single largest company is Folgers owned by Smucker’s, and their headquarters may be somewhere else, but all of their operations still right here in New Orleans because of the port, there's 2000 jobs because of the great connection with Smucker’s and Folgers. And even though all that coffee is not.

Consumed here, or we don't always think of them as a hometown brand. That's a lot of coffee jobs that they bring to our city. It's a big deal.

Ewell: That's huge. And, when we met you, you talked about how many coffee shops there were at one time in life, which was, which blew my mind. I had no idea. And I'm a New Orleanian.

Jim: Kevin Richards would do a better job than I telling you about that history where coffee and spirits are intertwined in New Orleans and that coffee house where the community meets and talks and gets to know each other. And a lot of times in New Orleans, if it wasn't cool to sell alcohol, oh, we're selling coffee.

But if you want something else, it's behind the bar. There's always been that connection in New Orleans coffee houses, but we decided to serve the Gulf South more than just the city itself. We're trying to reach out to coffee shops in rural. Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama. So it's not just the big cities, it's 3,500 coffee shops across the entire Gulf South that weren't going to trade shows, that weren't getting to know each other.

So we're trying to change that and say, individually, we're small little shops and little bitty towns, but collectively we can be a real voice and we think we can speak, and the rest of the country's gonna listen. We just gotta get organized.

Ewell: Wow. So talk about some of the brands that are local that you're working with, because we have some other brands or the other companies that have bubbled up over the years.

Jim: A couple that everybody would know and, I'm proud to say they're local community coffee is an obvious one, right? They've done a great job with coffee then a great job with promotion and positioning, and they're really the brand of Louisiana and most of the country would recognize that.

And they're very strong, a real success story. But I would also point to PJ's.

Where they're more about franchising and taking process and method and teaching people to do it and here carry our brand, but really carry our processes. And they're probably the, other than Starbucks, they're probably the most successful chain of teaching people how to have a process around coffee.

And then a really, a traditional brand that's important is Riley Foods and French Market coffee and a lot of the chicory influence that has come and gone through that company over the years. So those, three plus Folgers, those are some powerhouses and they're all based here in the local because of the river.

They're all based here.

Ewell: When you were putting this together, you and I met you, met with a bunch of different folks. Are there other sectors of the industry that you reached out to? About the coffee set. What about the people who make the equipment and all that type of stuff?

Jim: You're right. And we have, and a lot of those people we've said, will you come to New Orleans? And they said, where? No kidding. The industry's kind of forgotten about us because, and it makes sense because think of yourself as a salesperson. If you're a sales rep and you're assigned a part a region of the country, I'd rather have the Northeast with more population.

Educational Aspect of the Event

The cities are closer together. I could ride the subway if I want to come down or ride trail rail car down to the south. I've gotta drive in my car, drive into those little towns in Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana. This is a terrible, unless you like driving. These territories are tough, and so a lot of coffee companies, they're not coming down and talking about their new products, their new equipment, their new trends, and so we're missing out on some of that education.

It's not that our coffee people are no lesser than anybody else, it's that we're literally not a convenient place to sell to. All the more reason why we give the salespeople, here's a place to come to and sell to all of our people at once, let's make these connections and networking happen. That's a big part of the story.

Ewell: Okay, so you and you, the key word I think here is education, and you've talked about that. But before we go into the show itself what you plan on doing, putting something like this together. It's, that's a big lift and

Jim: It's a labor of,

Ewell: a big vision to pull you through to get that done

Jim: it's a labor of love. No one's paying us to do this. Kevin and I are semi-retired, and so we have some, time. And we don't play golf. We don't really watch tv. We wanna help business and business in New Orleans. So, when we really looked at the coffee industry, we felt like we could help and we could give some time.

And the reality is it's not a profitable venture, especially not first year. And so no one's done this work because you can't monetize it. In fact, we've got a three to five year plan to grow education and grow the marketplace and hopefully break even ourselves and get some of our investment back.

But you have to have a long vision or no one would do this.

Ewell: And that makes a lot of sense. It's a fragmented industry clearly. But you're bring, but you're trying to do what the franchises do. They, bring, there's opportunity, there's chance for technology. There's a chance for education. There's chance for marketing. All those pieces come together.

The Bigger Picture

Jim: I stress the opportunity is the sum of the parts. No one company, no one person is gonna make a real big amount of money from this. It's not, that's not how it works, but 3000 companies all getting better and all getting better product and all getting better service. It's gonna grow the category.

That's our goal. Truly there's not gonna be one winner. We're hoping there's gonna be hundreds if not a thousand winners. That's really what we're trying to build.

Ewell: And that's the vision. We, need more leaders like you because, What you're doing is you're creating and I, see this with grassroots always starts, everything starts grassroots. And you're creating an economy, or you're taking an economy and you're going to actually build on it. You're gonna leverage it.

That's gonna feed the tourism industry, that's gonna feed the restaurant industry that's gonna feed the business itself of coffee, it's becoming a marketing tool, and you'll see more interest in people coming. And there's so many things about coffee. Before we get to the education piece, I want you to educate the listeners on how many different ways there are to serve coffee.

How Many Ways to Make Coffee?

I was shocked when you started explaining that to me. I had no idea. I always just add all my coffee out the pot, black and or chai latte, whatever it is. But I keep it really simple.

Jim: Me, too. And let me say, this is where Kevin and I would say we're not creating anything here, right? We're just bringing people that are very talented, people that are doing amazingly think we're bringing them up to be more visible. We're not creating the coffee wonderment, we're just sharing it, making it easier to, share.

And to your point, how many different ways do you brew coffee? And people not say I've got two favorite ways and one exotic way, and maybe a fourth way. I tried that one time. The, world would say there's probably 10 to 12 really great ways to brew coffee, but most of us only know three or four.

So, the aha is that when we go to special places like the trade show and they show us these new brew methods, it's not just a different method. You'll say, gosh, same bean, same water. I get a completely different flavor profile when you brew it this different way. Yeah, there's a lot to experience in Discover, in coffee, and even those among us that might really think we're really great.

Coffee connoisseurs or coffee nerds. I promise you there's so much out there on the flavor wheel and so much out there in the brew methodology that we haven't even experienced yet. That's what we think is the fun part, right? Bringing people together to have fun around coffee. It's not hard.

Ewell: Let me hop in here for a second. Jim brought up franchises with Coffee Houses as a franchise consultant. I did not ask him to do that, but I'm glad he did because I'm also the founder of franchise and funding.com, and we represent over 600 franchise concepts, including coffee houses. Check out franchise and funding.com.

Now let's get back to the show.

All right, so let's talk about your event. 

Jim: Okay. 

Ewell: Tell us about what's happening at the event and what people can expect when they come, and then we'll talk about where to go and find everything.

NOLA Coffee Festival at the New Orleans Convention Center

Jim: We, did decide to hold it at the New Orleans Convention Center, partly because we want New Orleans to be the home for the Southern Gulf South Coffee narrative, and partly because it's big. We're gonna have one of those major halls with 50,000 square feet. And I think the part we're more proud about, we've got 50 exhibitors down there, we're gonna fill that hall up, A lot of cool stuff.

60 Hours of Coffee Education

But up above Orleans Convention Center it's, Exhibit halls on the bottom, classrooms on the top, 

and we've got large rooms that hold 75 to 120 people, and we're doing college lectures all day long. We have five different classrooms.

The first one is barista topics. Every 30 or 45 minutes, a new speaker, a new topic.

The next room is for roasters and all this technical stuff about their equipment and roast time and how to read these things. The next room is for cafe owners and managers, how to make these equipment decisions and day part decisions and menu decisions.

The next room we call Coffee Talk 'cause it's really a collection of all this other stuff that didn't fit in the first three rooms, but there's so much heritage to talk about and cool new ideas to talk about.

And the last room is really just a theater. What we're trying to show. There are tons of great coffee documentaries, tons of great coffee, how-tos on the internet, but you gotta know where to find 'em. So we're gonna use that theater to coach up people to say, this is your homework. Go home and study this stuff.

But we've got 60 hours of education going on upstairs. It's a true coffee college education.

Ewell: And the, and what about vendors themselves? Is it, obviously you got coffee. What about with the equipment side? Are there vendors for that?

Coffee Equipment Playground

Jim: We've got La Marzocco coming in. They do espresso machines at a very high, level from Italy and they're probably the biggest player in the United States. But they're gonna do commercial machines that are the new stuff that have the semi-automated and baristas just need to put their hands on that.

It's one thing to read about it on the internet, it's another to touch the machine and play with it. You can do that. We have an equipment playground, but beautiful thing is the equipment playground. Also 50% of it is for home machines. Things that people at home can learn to do and improve their home barista skills.

And I'll mention a, local company that's gonna be fun is re foods and French market. They're bringing in a Mardi Gras float and we're gonna throw in things and carry. So, we want people to get a sense that this is not like a festival or not like a trade show that they would see in other cities.

Rethinking How Coffee Should be Served at Restaurants

It's more like a festival at our trade show. Hamilton Beach is coming to talk about blenders. We got a lot of people like that. I'll mention one more. Bellwether is coming in to say, instead of these giant cast irons, it's this little slender thing that fits in your in your hotel restaurant where you can do micro roasting and really get to the point of, just like we do with wine, we pair that wine to certain foods and certain flavors.

You know what, chef? You can roast coffee every day and change that flavor profile to match your menu description. What other city in America could adopt new culinary trends better than New Orleans? So next several years, we don't wanna be talking about meet the equipment. We wanna be talking about meet the innovations that are coming from the coffee community.

And we believe in that We, we believe our southern chefs, if we gave 'em a little more access to the education and the equipment, we think they're gonna do great things.

Ewell: All right, so you just answered the next question for me was who is your audience? And your audience is both the trade and the consumer for this, correct?

Jim: It is, and we a good marketer would say, pick one, not both, but in coffee there's, we're only about 5% penetrated on specialty coffee, 5%, which means the whole world has so much more to learn. 

Ewell: Wow, 

Jim: be teaching the consumer at the same time we're teaching the trade. We can't afford to just talk to one.

Ewell: and you just tapped into something really cool. I didn't realize you were going there. Chefs, New Orleans, we've got the best chefs 

you are opened up a door. You've opened my eyes up. I think you're gonna open the eyes up of a lot of chefs, but foodies will love this. lovers will love this, and the general public will love it as well. Is that correct?

Jim: I think so I'll say this to you. What if you went to your favorite restaurant, high-end white tablecloth restaurant, and they brought you this wonderful menu, or they brought you the first few? Items. Items, and they said, oh, by the way, we got one wine that we serve to everybody. It's the house wine.

It's in a pot over here and we're just gonna serve it to you. You'd say that's a little weird. So, we don't do that with wine. And yet that's exactly what we do with coffee. Our coffee program is, one choice. That doesn't make any sense. I think once we, I think once we crack that box open, 

Ewell: Wow. 

Jim: back.

We're all gonna think differently about coffee as we go forward.

 How to Get Tickets for September 15th & 16th

Ewell: All right. So where do people go to find out about the event and when is the event and where? I know it's at the convention center about hall? That kind of stuff.

Jim: Hall B. So, it's right there by the, if you went to River Center parking, you'd be really close and it's, gonna be a Friday and a Saturday. So, it's Friday, September 15th. That's really our B two B day that we're emphasizing trade, hotel directors, coffee people. That's when we want you there. Because it's B two B on Saturday, the trade can come back and they will, but we're also gonna include the consumer.

On Saturday, September 16th, we're gonna say we got all this cool stuff, classrooms, equipment, a consumer. You can come explore this stuff too, so it'll be a much bigger crowd on Saturday.

Ewell: And what about, is there a website? Where do people go to get tickets in advance and so forth?

Jim: Sure, and the best way to, you can buy 'em at the door, but the best way is to buy 'em in advance, and that is www.nolacoffeefestival.com. If you go to nolacoffeefestival.com, you can buy a ticket package right now. It's a bargain. It's $15 a day to get in. We really are giving you about a thousand dollars worth of curriculum.

So, the whole point is we're not trying to monetize all this. We're trying to get the education and the experience out to the public. And you'll also be able to sample about 25 different coffees that are gonna be spectacular. They're not all the same for $15, you're gonna get quite a good day of value.

Ewell: I was gonna ask you if you call to action, but I think you already did it.

Jim: It's, nine. It's nine to four. And I encourage people to come early because they're like, festival. Maybe I'll spend an hour. Yeah, maybe you'll spend six or seven hours. There's a lot of information to cover.

Ewell: Jim, this has been a blast. I can't, I cannot wait. I'm flying back in that riday, late Friday night. I'm gonna miss the Friday, but I'm definitely gonna make this Saturday and I'm looking forward to it. And, folks, if you're listening to this, make sure if you're in the New Orleans area, get to this show.

This is gonna be a lot of fun,

and it's just, 

Jim: we need you to be there on Saturday cause we want you be a coffee judge. We're gonna have a competition to have 

Ewell: Oh, I love it. I'm, in. All right. Thank you. Thank you, Jim, and we'll see you at the next episode. Thank you.

That is a wrap with Jim Currie. I hope to see you at the Nola Coffee Festival. Check out Nolacoffeefestival.com to find out more information to see the vendors and get tickets. Or you can get tickets at the door, as he said. Now. This is a cool episode for us because Jim was the very first person for us to go live with on video and we're growing and it's not gonna be perfect like any other business starting out.

We're still growing. This is cool. I want to thank you for being part of this journey. If you're listening to this on a podcast player, You can also check us out on YouTube, and please share this with your friends and family and help Jim out as well. This is, that's, that's what this show is about.



Just like Jim is gonna help serve the coffee community, bringing that industry together and leveraging all the resources of that industry to grow that sector. That's how we grow as well, and I love helping entrepreneurs and I'm glad you're here and I cannot thank you enough. Now you know the drill. Be intentional and make this a great day.