The Interview:
N: I want to start with the beginning.
L: So this weekend is our six month anniversary. We opened up right after Thanksgiving (2021). I would classify that as opening in a pandemic. Two weeks after we opened was when Omnicon news broke. We had two weeks of no masks and then like two or three months of having to wear masks and check vaccine cards.
N: Can you talk a little bit about what the build out process was like? How did you find this space?
L: It was “right place right time”. I spent almost five months honestly, looking at different restaurant spaces. The original plan was a full service restaurant doing breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I ultimately decided to scale it back a little bit and just think about morning service. I started doing a little bit of research about coffee and then started looking at places that were more geared towards a coffee shop. I struck upon this place on Craigslist and saw it on a really hot August day. Then I saw it again the next week and I pretty much pushed the landlords to move quickly on it.
N: So you mentioned before that For The Record is just you as the sole owner. How did you navigate the process, (which is very big), of finding contractors and figuring the build out?
L: I was lucky. A lot of the space was already built out from a coffee shop that had closed sometime during the pandemic. I still wanted to add a lot of my own projects to it. My uncle is a wonderful contractor and he was between two jobs, so his guys came in and helped me out. We did have to go through the whole architecture process so everything took about a month longer than when I wanted to open. There was no need to rush but it can be frustrating when things don't work at the pace that you're on. So relinquishing a little bit and loosening expectations was really helpful.
N: Were you bouncing all of that kind of stuff off somebody else? Or were you just figuring that out all by yourself?
L: Just myself. That was always kind of like, not scary exactly, but you're dealing with things that are just so official. I didn't want to screw anything up. I didn't wanna make any mistakes.
N: Once you decided that you were going to do coffee, what were you looking for inspiration of what you wanted to do in this space specifically?
L: That's a good question because For The Record is really two businesses in one place. The record store and the coffee shop. Part of the reason why I opened this place and why I train my baristas a certain way and why I carry myself in here in a certain way is because I didn't like being in other coffee shops. I didn't enjoy the typical experience of being in a coffee shop or a cafe. I didn't look to too many places for inspiration because a lot of the reason behind this was that I was trying to break away from the mold. Same with the record room.
N: I was curious to see what informed your coffee equipment choices.
L: Not a single thing. That was a really challenging part as well. The only coffee experience I'd ever had was managing a Le Pain Quotidien. I had no idea what I needed beyond an espresso machine and a grinder. I had to figure out, oh, I needed a drip machine. What is good? Where do I even start with that? I'm kind of a wizard on Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist. Most of the equipment that we have I found used for really good prices and cleaned it all up. The plumbing and the install was totally all ourselves. My girlfriend helped when she could. It was all these little things that I had no idea how to do. Figuring out what those water towers were, figuring out like the filter situation, all of that. I couldn't really find the information online, all just trial and error.
N: I see you're roasting your own coffee. What made the decision to start roasting?
L: My interest in coffee really peaked when I was managing corporate dining at Bank of America. At one of their events one of the bankers specially requested us to get a La Colombe coffee cart there for him. It kind of made me think about coffee as a really versatile kind of instrument. So that got me thinking a lot about other coffee companies. So I talked to a few about wholesale. I went to a counterculture tasting.
N: How was that?
L: It was fun. I brought my mom, it was a fun time. I still was not really convinced that I could open a shop in good faith, knowing myself, and not roast my own coffee. I started talking with the owners of Shared Roasting and took the roasting class that they offer. I reached out to traders, roasted samples, and did a blind taste test with my girlfriend. We struck upon two that we really liked and from there I made up a recipe and it started coming out really nice. We've been making really, really wonderful coffee here. It's something to be proud of. Even if the coffee wasn't that good, it's still I'd rather serve okay coffee that I made as opposed to okay coffee someone else made.
N: That is a really interesting perspective that I personally don't see a lot of people have. What do you sort of look for in the coffee that you bring on and how do you sort of curate your menu?
L: So because I don't have that advanced of a palette, I really wanted to get rid of the snobbery in coffee. It’s what really brings down the whole trade. It's the same problem with wine and weed. There's a lot of information listed the on packaging that I think is all made up. A lot of coffee companies now have a sliding scale on retail bags for taste, acidity, mouth feel and all that. I think it's all such BS. I think people got really too bogged down in the details. Plus most people that come in here order lattes. It's mostly milk. I just try to stay away from the smoke and mirrors and just serve good coffee. We have only two roasts, two single origins, and that's, that's really it.
N: So I know you're looking to continue doing three things with For The Record. You're doing wholesale coffee roasting. You got comedy shows going on. Then you're getting into vinyl sales online. Can you just talk more about one of those and maybe what else you have in the works?
L: The wholesale coffee is the biggest beast. It's something that I knew right from the get go to really expand and to scale up. That's been tricky. You really have to dedicate a lot of time to it, and for pretty much the entire time that this place has been open it's just been me and one extra barista. But he unfortunately just left so I have to kick it into high gear.
N: How do you find baristas?
L: Craiglist.
N: How do you hire? What kind of people do you look for?
L: Coffee experience isn't a must. There are certain things that you can see right off the bat. Being friendly and courteous are all things you can't really train, not in grown adults. Interest is the biggest thing. If they care enough to ask questions when they don't even have the job, they might care when you're paying them. Training is really exhausting, takes a lot out of me and you want to make sure that it's worth it right? You put a lot of faith in them. I'm essentially looking for someone to watch my child when I'm out of town or when I'm away, when I'm doing work in the office.
N: Going into scheduling, how do you balance business and your personal life?
L: With running a business by yourself, it’s really tricky right now. But you know, it is just something that you have to do. When we opened up this place, my grandfather came for opening day and that was pretty much the last time I saw him healthy. He passed away in December. It's okay now, but we didn't miss a day here. Even more so the morning of his funeral, one of my employees ghosted and I had to come in that morning to work and then rush home, get on a suit, and go to the funeral. You just have to do it. That was a really brutal time, but you know, we never missed a day. I still want to be working, not so much for myself, but for the business. I want to get out there and make sure my customers are happy. My regulars are happy. I take a lot of pride in our reviews. I also just love being here. I love seeing my regulars. I only take one day off every week to just recharge and maybe do a little bit of work from home.
N: What do you do on your day off?
L: My main goal is to just totally unplug. You can't really half ass if you're really trying to relax.
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