Matt Gregory (00:11): Hey, how are you?

Patrick Dyer Wolf (00:13): Hey, let's just start. No preamble. We're just going right into it.

Matt Gregory (00:15): no preamble just welcome to our living room. Seems like all the hot podcasts are doing this soft intro.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (00:20): That's right. Yeah, and we want to be hot.

Matt Gregory (00:31): We are hot. Well, yesterday was really fun. I went to 4A coffee in Newton Mass. And it was, I feel like I have something on my face.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (00:44): Yeah, how was it? It's your nose.

Matt Gregory (00:53): Yeah, was really cool. shit Seeing that my uploads only at 53 % what is going on with my Wi-Fi?

Patrick Dyer Wolf (01:03): Dude, I'm at 93, 97, 99, 93.

Matt Gregory (01:07): Yeah... hmm... I think it might be worth, is it worth me restarting my router?

Patrick Dyer Wolf (01:17): jeez. I mean if that's what needs to be done, turning it off and turning it on again is still the leading IT action item.

Matt Gregory (01:25): It is. is. All right. think we made it last. I mean, you can, it's not like laggy with me, right? Right now.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (01:33): no, looks honestly pristine. Like it usually looks worse than this. Maybe there's an inverse relationship.

Matt Gregory (01:36): Okay, cool. All right, let's just keep rolling. Yeah, I'm sure people are just hanging on. For all our listeners, in the analytics of the podcast, there's a graph that shows how long people listen before they shut it off. And so I expect that we'll have 100 % listenership through these Wi-Fi questions.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (01:40): All right, keep all this. This is great stuff. Yeah, yeah. That's right. I mean, you know, I just thinking about this because somebody sent me a video about, you know, how the internet works yesterday. I mean, I know, I know how it works. It's a complex system of tubes. Everybody knows that we're taught that that Al Gore invented. But, you know, just the way that the way the algorithm works is it's like it needs you need to provoke outrage in order to

Matt Gregory (02:14): Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (02:30): to be shared and become viral. And I don't think we're doing that enough. We need more outrage, Matt.

Matt Gregory (02:32): yeah. That's a good thing to aspire to.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (02:41): Yeah, our society needs more outrage.

Matt Gregory (02:45): Yeah. Or they need more mundanity. Is that a word?

Patrick Dyer Wolf (02:52)

Yeah, Mundinosity. We're bringing back the new Mundinosity. Come here for your vintage, vintage VM. Matt Gregory (02:54): Mundinosity. for your daily dose of Mundanosity. Maybe that could be the new name. Anyway, I went to 4A coffee yesterday at Newton and in a show where we encourage people to take risks and do the things that are interesting to them, I went and recorded myself talking to Alan, learning about the coffee roasting process. And I mean, guess, spoiler alert, today our guest is Alan, who's the founder of 4A Coffee, which I first got to know because they had a cafe in Coolidge Corner. And that's where we live, in Brookline Yeah, yeah.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (03:44): Where's that? You live in Coolidge Corner? I didn't know that this whole time. That's your neighborhood? Or is it your... Okay. Geez, sorry, I didn't know that.

Matt Gregory (03:52): Really? That's our neighborhood. Yeah. Yeah. No, no, it's okay. I don't know your neighborhood's name. Okay. Well, it's actually a fun time of year in Coolidge Corner because the marathon goes right through our neighborhood. So the Boston Marathon. So that's on Monday. Yeah. Yeah. So I, yeah, I'm taking the day off and I'm going to go watch a lot of the marathon.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (04:13): cool or you can watch you go outside with

Matt Gregory (04:23): And I talked to Will about going to watch the marathon. And my thing was like, oh, it'd be fun to go watch the person who's in first place, the leader, come through just to see how fast they're running. And he's like, what time would that be at? And I'm like, don't know, maybe 9 or 10. I'm not sure. I have to look at the schedule. And he's like, ah, can we go a little later? He's like, I.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (04:47): I have something.

Matt Gregory (04:50): don't really I like it better if maybe we go around one and then we can get some ice cream after we go. And and I was like I was like but by that time the runners are kind of slower and he's like dad they're still faster than I am. And I was like OK that's true. Maybe we could do both. He's like I don't think I'm going to go early. Yeah.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (05:15): It's like you can go if you really want to make that a priority. I love that.

Matt Gregory (05:20): Yeah, so anyway, yeah, so excited for excited for the conversation today. How are you doing? What's what's new with you?

Patrick Dyer Wolf (05:29): Good man, I just love, you know, I'm a simple, simple man. I'm a simple dog. I love the springtime, it's so beautiful. The trees coming to life. Somebody sent me a James Vanderbeek video, post-mortem RIP, talking about like, have you noticed that your New Year's resolutions are like kind of hard to keep? It's because you're doing them in January. Don't do them then. Do them when things are coming to life. Like the world comes to life in the springtime and it's beautiful and like, you know, it's a rebirth. It's a spiritual rebirth and so I, yeah.

Matt Gregory (06:04): Yeah, there's a lot of hope offset only by the drag of allergies.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (06:10): Oof, yeah. I don't know what I did, I didn't do anything to deserve it, but I'm having a great year this year, allergy-wise. I don't know why. Thank you, how are you doing with that?

Matt Gregory (06:16): Good. I was hoping that for you. Fine. I've started taking Zyrtec just because it feels like the right thing to do. And my family all takes it. So why not? Family drug sponsored by Zyrtec. That'd be cool if we got by Zyrtec. Cool.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (06:35): right it's family it's the family medicine that's right that would be sick flash this logo Just reading up on Alan in little bit here. Kazakhstan, it's wild.

Matt Gregory (06:50)

Yeah. Patrick Dyer Wolf (06:53): How did you meet him?

Matt Gregory (06:55): by buying coffee from him. then I reached out to him because I said, your business is so cool. Could I help you at all? And so I helped him. I ran a survey for 4A Coffee of all of their customers to help him get some insights.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (07:16): Wow.

Matt Gregory (07:18): And then, you know, I said, I'd love to have you on trail map. And he said, sure. So,

Patrick Dyer Wolf (07:24): Nice.

Matt Gregory (07:25): Do you drink coffee these days?

Patrick Dyer Wolf (07:27): Yeah.

Matt Gregory (07:27): cup a day sort of thing.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (07:30): My current thing is that I have a tiny mug. Do remember the small mug? The Moomin mug? And I do it in little cups. I don't even fill up that mug, because I love the fresh out the pot temperature. And I guess it ends up being maybe like one or two cups. I haven't really been scientific about it. But if I do too much, I spin out and it makes me feel weird.

Matt Gregory (07:33): I've seen it. Yeah. Yep. Yep. Yeah, I feel the same way. Alan's got the same thing too. Yeah. Dude, we were doing some cupping yesterday of coffee, is where the first thing that you do is you you put the dry grounds in the cup. Bring the cup close to your mouth. I mean your nose and you do like deep inhale.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (08:15): you know what? you know what I did do? I think I did do this when I started working at Starbucks. They like trained me with this. Yeah. Yeah.

Matt Gregory (08:23): yeah, I'm sure they did. You should tell Alan that you worked at Starbucks. I think that'll be interesting. So then and then you put you then you pour hot water over the grounds and you let it steep for four minutes and so it's just a cup full of grounds and then you you push the grounds out of the way or scoop them out with a spoon and then you and with two spoons and then you you bring it to your mouth and you do like a Like a real slurp so you get like this blast of

Patrick Dyer Wolf (08:39): Mm-hmm.

Matt Gregory (08:57): olfactory and taste sensation. It's fun.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (09:00): Hmm.

Matt Gregory (09:02): Hey, Alan, how's it going?

Alan (09:02): Hey guys. Nice

Patrick Dyer Wolf (09:03): Hey, how's it going?

Alan (09:05): So Patrick, nice to meet you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Yep.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (09:07): Nice to meet you, Alan. Thanks for doing it. I'm jealous that you guys already did a cupping and like hung out. I wish I, you know, such are the limitations of geography.

Alan (09:18): Yeah, I think what I after Matt left, I think what I'm going to do is I'm trying to, you know, use my wonderful computer skills and set up a sign up. I think we're to be doing cuppings a little bit more often, just trying to figure out the time. So

Patrick Dyer Wolf (09:33): awesome. just before you got on, Matt was talking about you guys were doing that yesterday and then it triggered a memory I had totally forgotten. I worked for Starbucks in 2007 in San Francisco and I'm pretty sure, I don't know if that term was used, but I think we did that. We did a cupping, which is not, you know, don't think of Starbucks as being like, but there was this whole training process that like, yeah.

Alan (09:52): Yep. There was, there was. Yeah, I remember that. I've talked to Starbucks people, yeah. They had some golden years where they were really trying to do their best and, yeah, yeah. It's automated, yeah, it's automated, yeah. I get it, you know, because it is a lot of training and yeah.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (10:02): Yeah. Yeah, it's probably over, yeah.

Matt Gregory (10:08): Now it's just push a button. Yeah. Yeah.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (10:16): In my day, we didn't push a button, we pulled a crank. Steaming the milk though, I think I probably could still pull out a good latte if I needed to, if I close my eyes.

Alan (10:27): Yeah, you don't lose it. You really don't, don't think. Unless you get old and decrepit.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (10:29): Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I never learned the leaf or anything, but my consistency was pretty good.

Alan (10:39): yeah. Yeah, yeah. Not many people. So I was down in, we opened a place in Newport called Beaucoup and was training those, young women. they, I was surprised at how long it does take. You know, we just went through so much milk. And then after you've done that for a few weeks, then they still have to take orders and. they still don't quite have it sometimes. You get that rare guy who's got that kind of perfect sense of where his fingers are and is very good at that. Like people who can paint and draw can usually, but even then it's a mixture of a couple of things. So it took me a long time, probably several months before I got it down way back. Yeah. It's nice.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (11:25): Yeah, I mean that aspect is definitely an art and I know, I mean I was just reading up on you a little bit, talking about just the roasting process as an art takes a long time.

Alan (11:34): Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, which is makes it hard to train anybody because it's a commitment, you know? The mechanics of it are pretty simple, but it's knowing what you're trying to get out of the coffee that you're roasting and kind of really having an acquaintance with it, like a good acquaintance with it. But I'm sure there are ways to train someone on particular coffees and they'll get it pretty close. Like I said, the mechanics are pretty simple, but it's the artistry that's a little bit more difficult to teach. Not that I'm an artist, but more like the craftsmanship of it.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (12:14): I don't mean to be hijacking the whole thing at the beginning here, but I just, the distinction between art and craft, I've had so many conversations about that. think it's sort of, in a way, it doesn't really mean much, but you don't think of yourself as an artist, really?

Alan (12:35)

No, I don't. I can't say I do. There's craftsmanship, there's knowledge. I guess what would be an artist? Someone who has a vision and can tease something that wasn't done before from that vision? No, can't. I can't go that far. can't. Yeah. Yeah. Matt Gregory (12:58): What about, mean, creativity is a big part of what you do, right?

Alan (13:05): You know, what I'm trying to do is get a certain profile out of a coffee, given all the things going around on around me and certain other conditions. And I try to nail it, but usually it's just precision. It's really caring and not automating it because that's the way that you would take care of all that. But I think when you automate it, you're losing something because like we talked about yesterday, you can always be

Matt Gregory (13:23): Yeah.

Alan (13:33): a few seconds off where you want to be because of changes in environmental conditions and changes in the age of the bean and the moisture level. I mean, there are some companies who have everything dialed in, like a Starbucks, but even companies that are smaller than Starbucks have almost everything dialed in. But I still don't think you're going to get that. For example, there's a famous Starbucks, and I hate to be talking about Starbucks so much. I'm pretty neutral about Starbucks, to be honest. But they had that Pikes Blend. And there was a time when I didn't even have a place to use my sample roaster, which is what I usually do when I don't have a big roaster. This was when I took the hiatus and I was buying that a lot because I just wanted to see what was going on and it was cheap. But I thought I would get a little bit more consistency. out of what they were doing. But there were times when I said, huh, this is a little bit different from last time. so not even they can get it perfectly because obviously too, when you're sourcing from an origin, say like Guatemala, now Guatemala also uses blends when they ship coffee. So. on the farm, they'll have several different varietals of coffee. They'll have a say a Katura, Katwaii, they'll have other new world blends on their farm. And those blends are ripening at different, those varietals are ripening at different times. And you know, when they're harvesting, they're obviously trying to go through the fields and the trees and pick the ripest berries. And those are from different varietals. And even though they might have a similar growing season, a similar development time, there's gonna be some variance. so there's never a way to perfectly reproduce what you've done all the time. So maybe there's some artistry in that, but yeah.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (15:44)

And there's definite comparisons to wine and what you were just talking about. You can't A, B, compare coffee in the same way you can wine year to year. Alan (15:48): Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Matt Gregory (15:51): We were talking yesterday though, Pat, about the relative complexity and there's like significantly more flavor compounds and stuff going on in coffee than there is in wine. Yeah, so there's a lot of complexity there. So I guess Alan, just to ground us in like your background. you started, well, I think, and this is largely drawn from the 4A website, but like you started your coffee journey

Patrick Dyer Wolf (16:03): really?

Matt Gregory (16:21): in Europe, right? And you opened your first 4A coffee in Kazakhstan in 2005. Is that right? So I'm wondering how did it happen in So how did that happen?

Alan (16:28): Yep. Yep. 2004, believe. Yeah. Yeah. Somewhere around there. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, I had always been on a teaching track. I had planned on becoming a high school teacher and a wrestling coach. You know, that was, but I had always had this kind of wanderlust that like it consumed me all the time. And I just so fascinated by other cultures and people. I had my father who passed when I was young, before he passed, he worked for a European airline called Sabina. He didn't have a huge salary. We grew up in Dracut So not that Dracut doesn't have a high upper middle class, but he made an average salary. But one thing he was able to do was get free flights. That was back in the day when flying was still a luxury and a joy. So he got to take us to Europe and a few other places. Anyway, I had always wanted to live abroad, spend some time abroad. I always approach this topic in a circuitous way. I don't know why it's not linear, but I had wanted to live abroad and experience life abroad. And I'd become fascinated with Russia and the ex Soviet Union. I went into a library in my, in Lowell, the Lowell Public Library at the time. You could really, there was no internet. So I just picked up books that. to teach you Russian. And so I became a little bit consumed with it. And I said, wait a minute, I actually have to go there if I really wanna speak it. I went in the early nineties and was completely blown away. They call it the wild nineties in Russia. It's when the Soviet Union collapsed and it was a period of chaos and excitement and misery and a really wild time to be an American there. are over-appreciated, let's put it that way. a young American, actually the first city I went to was called Chelyabinsk and it was closed up until very recently. So they had no foreigners in that city. So I kinda had a wild time that always stuck with me, a special time. It was exciting. And I said, I have to get back there. And at the same time, I had met George Howell. I had been to his shop and I have to put him down as a major influence, what he was doing. And I said, what did... would it work if I learned about this business and took this over there? And so that's kind of what I set out to do. In the meantime, I had met some Kazakh people from Kazakhstan and I told them about my plan and I thought it would be great to do that there because some of these countries like Russia and Ukraine and Kazakhstan were actually developing rapidly. Kazakhstan in particular due to oil and gas and the various precious metals that they still have. So they were experiencing a boom and they were looking for Western products. something in my mind said, I gotta do this there. So we went out there, met with a few investors and we brought all our equipment from the US. We brought a container, including two kiosks that we ended up setting up. outside their grocery stores. That's how we actually started. But I brought everything, espressos machines, the cups, everything from A to Z, we shipped over there. And that was quite an adventure. It took six months in the end. We lost the original site that we wanted to start our cafe at. It had gotten taken over. In the meantime, we were desperately trying to find other sites.

Matt Gregory (20:16): Wow.

Alan (20:28): Finally, the shipping container came in and a lot of stuff was damaged, stuff was missing. It was really a fiasco. I was ready to call it quits, but we had all this equipment, including a roaster. now we're desperate to find a place just to do the roaster. We had the kiosks, that was fine. And we found this old dilapidated building and we set up the roaster. And we got it all set up, all ready to go and

I said, I don't know if this is even a place where it's proper to be doing anything that people are going to consume. So luckily at that moment, there was a spot that was a convenience store on the central kind of thoroughfare where there's no cars, almost like a Newbury street type of place and it had become available. So we said, let's do this. Yeah, this is where in Kazakhstan. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're in Almaty. Matt Gregory (21:22): This is in Kazakhstan.

Alan (21:29): We said, we got to do it. And it was really this old little convenience store and we gutted it. We blow out the windows, we repaved the walkway, we did everything. It took a few months. Out there, labor is much cheaper. So a project like that over here would have probably been prohibitive, but over there, we're just under the gun, money-wise, we got it done. We created a cafe, we put the roaster. It was an L12, so that means it could roast 25 pounds at a time. So was a nice little perfect size roaster for that spot. We had 47 seats, we had outdoor, and it became kind of a cool expat type of cafe. People were kind of excited to have something Western, and also that was real. It wasn't cookie cutter. We designed it ourselves. And we ended up, when we got that roaster in there, it was a building that was nine stories high. They call them Khrushchev, and they named after Khrushchev, who built all these buildings. They're almost all the same. They're ugly as hell. But we had to shoot from our roaster a stack all the way nine stories high. And we got these old Soviet fans.

Matt Gregory (22:51): for exhaust.

Alan (22:53): Yeah, for exhaust and yeah, we got it done. And luckily there are some people over there who are so resourceful and we got it done and we ran that for about nine years. Had three kids, they're getting older. So we decided it was time to move back. They needed proper schooling. Almaty was having certain issues at the time. I thought the environment was getting very polluted. It's located in a basin. surrounded by mountains pretty much. the air quality was getting very poor. And you know, we did our thing. Now it's been taken over by a Dutch company, a man who I know and he's doing very well there. yeah. Yeah, it's a different coffee shop, but yeah, he redesigned it a little bit, but yeah, it's still there. Yeah.

Matt Gregory (23:35): So the shop is still a coffee shop.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (23:44): The pictures just from your website look, the vibe looks impeccable.

Alan (23:46): Mm-hmm. Yeah, it was a special place. It was tough to leave, but it was time to leave. It was cool. It was cool. was real. Yeah, we enjoyed it and we were kind of pioneering. So it was nice. And then we came back to Brookline and, I think you remember what that was all about. Yeah.

Matt Gregory (24:00): Yeah. Yeah, I'm curious though, what was the coffee culture like in Almaty before you opened 4A? Was there anything like it?

Alan (24:15): Great question, yeah, great question. I could tell you million stories, but there are tea culture, obviously. But as we saw with the Russians, and I'm talking about Russia proper, know, Russia is an entirely different country from Kazakhstan, as you know, but Russia was noted as being the biggest tea drinkers, more tea drunk by them per capita than anywhere else in the world, apparently.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (24:44): Didn't know that.

Alan (24:45): I can't give you a site for that statistic, but it was something that's been bandied about in our world, our coffee world. But what happened after the Soviet Union fell, especially in the 2000s, is Russia became major coffee drinkers. So they were the fastest growing coffee market. now places like Ukraine, Eastern Europe, the Baltic countries, and even Kazakhstan, which has a very diverse population, they were kind of in the same, And when I got there, they had, they had Lavazza they had Illy they had coffee. And they actually did have one coffee shop, but nobody was roasting. So we thought we could bring coffee there and it could be much fresher. But what I did see that was common was this packets that everyone drank. They sold them in every store and it was called Mac Coffee and it had an American Eagle on the packet. And it was called Three in One. And I looked at the ingredients and the biggest ingredient was the sugar. And then there was the milk product, which it was a combination of like fats and solids. I don't know what it was. It was powdered milk. And so.

Matt Gregory (25:57): Hmm. like an instant coffee?

Patrick Dyer Wolf (26:06): You don't want milk product.

Alan (26:11): When we first got there, I actually had people's local scoff at me. said, American coffee is awful. It's just terrible. How can you sell American coffee? I said, and that coffee is not American coffee. Don't worry. This is, and actually this coffee is not from America. I just happened to be American, but you know, the conceptions were out there. The misconceptions were out there. So it was kind of fun dealing with a lot of that, you know.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (26:37): Was there any spillover from Turkish coffee, tea culture? I mean, you're pretty close to China over there, not the big cities.

Alan (26:45): Absolutely. Yeah, excellent question. we so probably most people, even today, a lot of people in the ex Soviet Union in that part of the world make coffee, Turkish style or Turkish coffee. Of course, there's a reason for that. All you need is one piece of equipment, you know, and nothing else. But I once had a guy come in, he was Armenian. There a lot of Armenians in Kazakhstan as well. there's a considerable number and he was in our shop and he said, Alan, this is not coffee. You come up to my apartment, I'll show you coffee. And I said, okay. I'm up, let's do this. So he brings me up to his coffee and he's pluttering around. I see him pull out the Jezeve and he's get going and he's doing his thing and I can smell something and it doesn't smell great and you know. He comes over, he pours the coffee very deliberately, very carefully, and he says, you try this, and put it to my lips. my God. Tasted like rotten wood. And I said, okay, all right, this is a learning moment for me. I said this to him. And I think we all have this cultural, maybe you could call it baggage, or we have these cultural notions where what we think of as something.

Matt Gregory (27:49): Hahaha

Alan (28:09): has to be that way. So I learned a lesson and it was early on when I started there, just to take everything in stride. But yeah, it was a big success. We had a degree of distribution there. were selling our coffee to restaurants and other different cafes and so forth. yeah, so it ended up being great.

Matt Gregory (28:32): I feel like the people that you intersect with when you're in the cafe business who have opinions about what is coffee, what isn't coffee, you see some real characters, right? mean, for better or worse.

Alan (28:49): Yeah, I'm kind of unplugged from that world. When I first started, I was attending certain things and events like the SCAA, as it was called back then, the Specialty Coffee Association of America. Now it's just called SCA, but they had had events and they still have them. They had one last weekend in San Diego, but they're great. They become a little overblown and they're meant for people who are entering the industry mostly or starting a new project. So I'm kind of unplugged, but in a lot of coffee people aren't plugged because we're kind of annoying. We all have our own ideas of how things should be. We're all extremely sensitive, extremely proprietary about what we do. So it doesn't lend itself to be this kind of group. with lot of camaraderie. Although there are roasting events where people get together and roast, but I think most of those events is people who are just starting out because roasters who've been doing it for a while aren't going. I should go, because I could probably pick up a thing or two,

Patrick Dyer Wolf (30:00): I mean, obviously, Boston is different than Almaty in probably many ways, but what is, how is it different in ways that we maybe are not immediately springing to mind?

Alan (30:10): Yeah. You know, I envy because in the 90s, I graduated from college in the early 90s and I had actually always wanted to open a coffee shop. I saw it and I fell in love with that notion. I fell in love with coffee. It just wasn't in my cards for several years. But The people who got into the coffee business in the 90s, it was great because nobody knew anything about coffee. Getting into it in the 2000s and the 2000 teens, everyone thought they knew everything about coffee. It just changed completely and that's when Yelp came out. So I tell you, I did go a little crazy in that place. I said, I'm gonna be an owner-operator. I'm gonna be here. People can talk to me.

Matt Gregory (30:37): Mm-hmm. You

Alan (30:59): and I did not know what I was getting into because not only did you have the heyday of Yelp where people were being these, becoming these Yelp reviewers and it was especially young people. the other thing about, so I didn't have that in Almaty. I had other issues. Usually it was about price or the way we did service, but. Brookline is a relatively affluent, and it's an affluent community, and it's very international. And you get a lot of people from places like California where they're very food and lifestyle oriented. And so I did run into people who had their notions and their ideas of what coffee should be, how it should be roasted. And I had to hear that a lot. That was also the era of the pour-over, which I consider myself an X-er I think probably you guys are millennials like my nephew. you know the poor... I don't know. I don't know if it is, but it's over at least in cafes. I've had some foresight in my life. I have a lot of blind spots as well, but I just said to myself, because I'm an X-er I grew up with the espresso experience and the pour over and the cold brews came.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (32:04): Is that over? Is that era over?

Alan (32:28): and hit me, you know, just as I opened and I had practiced pour overs and I said, there's no way I'm going to be able to do this in a busy environment. There's just no way. And I said to myself, you know what? And my wife at the time, she was my partner. She agreed. I said, this is a great thing to do at home. Or if you're in Japan, you know, but to run a coffee shop and actually to, to be successful financially.

Matt Gregory (32:45): You

Alan (32:56): And it wasn't necessarily a financial choice, but you have to have some volume. And I just, at that time, I couldn't get the idea of doing the pour overs at scale in the moment and actually put out a good product and take care of everyone, give people the service I need. Because my experience at the same time too, is I was looking at other cafes, as I said, I like this pour over thing, but. It's really choking up the experience for people. so I always admired it and I knew it had its place, but I couldn't fit it in to my mindset. And I did get a lot of grief for that. did, people would, harangue me all the time. How can you not do pour? And quite frankly, they judged you like, he's an old guy. He doesn't know about pour overs yet. I'm like, no, do. And so yeah, that was tough. That took a lot of years off my life.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (33:29): Yeah.

Alan (33:55): The whole, the pour over thing, yeah.

Matt Gregory (33:55): I think like we had an earlier episode with a chef in LA who makes ramen. He makes vegan ramen in LA. like the hospitality business is a grind. like, you know, it's a lot of interactions. You don't really get to choose who walks in your store. So.

Alan (34:11): Mm-hmm.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (34:12): Unintended.

Alan (34:14): Yeah Yeah.

Matt Gregory (34:24): You and I know like you also like you ran 4A you you closed during the pandemic. But like, you you did that for a long time. And then, you know, and now, and we talk about this a bit during my visit, but like now you're running an e-commerce business, where people can, you're roasting beans, people can buy beans from you.

Alan (34:31): Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Matt Gregory (34:49): So it sounds like part of the reason you're doing that is because it was hard. The hospitality piece was hard.

Alan (34:56): Matt, you're absolutely right. There was a time when it was really grueling and I came across this article. It was actually Yahoo News. You know, when someone's reading Yahoo News. They're probably a little bit old. I still have my Yahoo mail. So, you know, I had this news feed pop up and it said the 10 most stressful jobs. said, okay, click bait. I clicked on it. And one of them was barista. And I was like, of course. And people don't realize that unless they've done it because it's so hard to get the coffee right. And I used to say, it's so easy to open a bad coffee shop. It's hard to have a good one. It's excruciatingly demanding to have an excellent one because every cup needs the same amount of care. And you've got people standing over you, watching you, talking to you. asking you questions about your kids, asking you why you don't do this, how come you don't have that, why don't, and you're trying to make 20, 25 drinks that have different milks. And that was also the time when we went through all the alternative milks. people were saying, it was the alternative milk craze. We went from 90 % soy, and then we went to all, sorry, oat. And then you couldn't get oat. And there was this major stress because all of a sudden that was the new it milk. And then all of a sudden that wasn't anymore. know, people were going to almond and I look at my refrigerator, I've got all these milks and I had one customer and I don't know why I did this, but she would bring in her own milk that she wanted me to steam for her. had people would, so one day my wife opened the refrigerator. She sees, you know, open jars of milk. I've got soy, coconut, almond and

Patrick Dyer Wolf (36:48): Whose milk is this?

Alan (36:50)

you know, we've got decaf and I said, this, something's gotta be reined in here. You know, we have to rein this in because I just cannot function this way. And then, so yeah, it was extremely demanding. Anyone who's worked in a coffee shop will tell you that. And as you get older, you said, okay, I've been there, I've done that, time to step back. But like Matt said, having an online e-commerce business is a completely different brain. Matt's been kind of helping me out with suggestions and so forth, which have helped a lot. Matt Gregory (37:25): Yeah, I'm excited for you. mean, I'm so happy. know, I was a frequent customer of 4A and the cafe version was sad when it shut down because honestly, I don't think like in our neighborhood, I don't think we've got great cafe options right now. And so, but it was so exciting when 4A opened back up with a roasted bean option.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (37:52): How was how was the cupping by the way do you we didn't really I didn't really get the deets Yeah, how Matt? How was it?

Matt Gregory (37:56): Yesterday? Yeah, it was incredible. So, so Alan set up an Ethiopia and a Honduras roast for me. And we did, we did the, you know, the smelling of the dry grounds. And then we did the liquid taste tasting. And, you know, Alan was really trying to be a good, I can see, can understand like you mentioned earlier in the conversation that you thought about being a teacher, like you clearly didn't wanna lead me too much in terms of the tasting, but it was really cool to hear Alan talking about the flavor notes that emerged and stuff, because I think there's, I could taste the complexity, but I couldn't put words to it necessarily, so, you know, it takes a lot.

Alan (38:33): Yeah.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (38:47): I remember having that feeling when I was doing my Starbucks training, this was 20 years ago, but I don't think I have a good nose. I'm not good at tasting wine. And then I had this coffee passport where I was doing all the different types. And I just remember looking back at my coffee passport a few years later and laughing out loud at how ridiculous some of my notes were. was just like, this is the boldest one. I don't know, it was just, I didn't know what to say. My wife, Mary, has a great nose, which is a blessing and a curse for when your house stinks in different ways. she loves coffee, she loves coffee shops. She will insist that she is the greatest lover of coffee shops in the world. And she has a very specific thing that she wants. She's from Chapel Hill, North Carolina, which...

Matt Gregory (39:18): Yeah.

Alan (39:35): Mm-hmm.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (39:40): Another unofficial statistic, I think they have the most coffee shops per capita, like in the universe. I

Alan (39:46): it's funny, your experience, like, there is a theory about women having a better sense of smell, and that- might have to do with evolutionary principles, but I've been in scenarios. I did a course, years ago, and there were two women, and one of them had actually never worked in coffee. And she was picking out certain things that I couldn't get. And I would actually say she had a better nose than I did. And I've heard people are super smellers. people have very high perception. But one of the things that you have to learn when you're evaluating, in particular coffee, is that whatever you perceive, it has to be somewhat in line with what other people are perceiving. And that's called calibration. Because whatever you score a coffee, somebody in another part of the country or another part of the world is going to use that score to give them an idea what the price of the coffee will be, whether they want the coffee. yeah, so having a wise sense of smell, I guess you would call it, or a balanced sense of smell is good too because sometimes some of these super tasters or smellers, they can be so quirky because they're getting certain things. they're perceiving certain qualities in kind of in a different way than the normal person. So they might perceive one thing more and in that one flavor note might not have that big of a role as far as the whole cup is concerned. yeah, it can be a curse. It can be a curse. Yeah.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (41:42): Well, mean, it's right. it's similar to, you know, in music or art, like you can go down a rabbit hole chasing something that's really innovative or like gives you a particular response. like, if you're going to do a business, I mean, you know, artists like to sometimes divorce themselves from the economics of it. like, if you're, if you're trying to do business, like there has to be some level of like, I don't want to say lowest common denominator, but like,

Alan (42:05): So true.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (42:12): universality to it where people, know, a high percentage of people are going to be like, I can relate to that. I like that.

Alan (42:14): Yes, yeah. That was put very well. That's exactly what I meant. Yeah, that runs across anything. When you've got someone who has such a particular sense of something, it might not reflect in the general population. And they might focus on defects. I think it was Picasso who said, never judge a work of art by its defects. And there are some people in the industry who will do that. They just can't handle a defect in coffee. And I tend to be a little bit more charitable because I look for other.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (42:23): Yeah. Yeah.

Alan (42:49): things like super flavors, unusual flavors, large flavors.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (42:53): What's a defect that you would overlook?

Alan (42:57): Matt and talked about this yesterday, you know when you're when you're picking coffee obviously off the tree as much as the harvesters are instructed to pick only the ripest berries or the ripe berries not overripe not underripe that doesn't always happen you know they're paid by volume and so and also it's just it's very hard to do that and there's a lot of sorting that goes on that goes on at origin but it's not perfect And so you get different moisture levels sometimes, different levels of ripeness. So that will create an imbalance. As far as a defect is concerned, there are several defects that pervade coffee. that could be defects from insect damage, which used to be a lot more common than it is today. I almost never see it anymore. And that's a whole nother topic. but defects as far as coffees not being at their right state of maturity that wind up in the cup. We're talking about very high end coffees, expensive coffees. A lot of times those coffees are just harvested, sorted, and processed impeccably. And... And sometimes, most often, they're a single varietal, like the Geisha varietal we talked about, which is a prize varietal. It could be a Pacamara on its own. It's a very beautiful varietal if you get a single Pacamara. Some of the Kenya varietals on their own are just so beautiful. And that's why they appear without defects. They're not blended with any other coffee. They're very impeccably harvested or picked.

Matt Gregory (44:25): Mm-hmm.

Alan (44:49): and processed and dried and sorted. And that's what creates those really expensive coffees that it's very hard to get your hands on.

Matt Gregory (44:59): So as you're talking, I could listen to you talk about this forever, because I think it's fascinating. What's behind your commitment to coffee? Is there something about coffee, I mean, you clearly enjoy drinking it, but what's driving that?

Alan (45:03): Mm-hmm. Probably shame. You know, it's like, I come from, you know, I never was behind the scenes. I don't know what's wrong with me. I always put myself out there, you know? And everyone knows it's me, you know? So I really, I'm very sensitive, and Matt, you've been very good with this, I'm very sensitive to people not liking my coffee. I don't know why. Maybe because I also need to earn a living, you know?

Matt Gregory (45:21): you

Alan (45:48): this isn't a labor, I mean, this isn't just a hobby and it never was. And I was putting scenarios in Kazakhstan where you go way over budget and so you are trying to make money. You don't want to lose any customers. You don't want to hear anything wrong. Everything has got to be perfect. And you paint yourself into a corner because you try to become a perfectionist, which no one can be, no one can accomplish. And so, yeah, I think even here, If I disappoint anyone, I feel it. I don't know why but I definitely feel it and yeah, probably a little bit of pride pride and shame Mixed so yeah, and also I love it when I get a good coffee and You guys know you reach a certain age you're like wow, this is kind of the best part of my day For real, yeah. Yeah

Patrick Dyer Wolf (46:40): for real. Yeah, I wish I what we were talking about how much coffee do we drink and it's like I kind of wish just like all day could be coffee time but if I go more than two cups I start to kind of spin out. Yeah.

Alan (46:48): Yeah. No, there's something, yeah, go ahead.

Matt Gregory (46:53): I it's interesting. My generation, our generation, millennials, and then younger generations, and older generations too, I think are drinking a lot less alcohol. I remember growing up when my dad and my uncle would have a cocktail together at 5 p.m. on vacation or whatever.

Alan (47:09): Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Matt Gregory (47:21): That was like a real highlight for them, that moment of having a drink. A, it's interesting that like beverages are such a, like can be such a highlight of the day. And B, it's just interesting. Like I think coffee, coffee consumption has, I would imagine been pretty stable. know, caffeine hasn't gotten the hit that alcohol has just from like a health perspective. In fact, the opposite, like it's, you know, there are a lot of people that believe that caffeine is

Alan (47:23): Yeah. Yep.

Matt Gregory (47:51): a really good thing for your health.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (47:54): just whatever recent reporting, like the antioxidants or whatever.

Matt Gregory (47:57): Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Alan (47:57): Yep, MIT from the early part of the century apparently did a lot of coffee research. I always get feeds and a lot of things that I get have to do with circulation and contributing to the postponement of things like dementia and Alzheimer's. But you're right, it's not something, you can't tap that well.

Matt Gregory (48:21): Yeah. Yeah.

Alan (48:27)

constantly. Your best coffee is your first one. It's like there's something about sleeping all night, being in that fresh state of just your mind just starting to wake up, you've got nothing in your stomach that needs to be metabolized to draw in your brain has such clarity. And then that coffee just adds to it. And then, and then you know, the day goes downhill from there sometimes. But then you get at the end, you've got the glass of wine and Patrick Dyer Wolf (48:49): But then.

Alan (48:55): I don't know. think if you have some balance, can sandwich your day in between two great rituals. Although I think probably the alcohol can get a hold of certain people. But I don't have a problem with alcohol. And I think if you know how to have a few drinks at night and not go nuts, I've got my Italian landlord. He's 87. And he still comes in here. He walks in here with the cigarettes.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (49:04): Yeah.

Alan (49:23): and he tells me still drinks a few glasses of wine at night. So what can you do? Yeah. Yeah, he didn't know, he came when he was 17, so he doesn't know what grappa is, but I'm surprised you know that. Yeah, I've had that in coffee, yeah.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (49:26)

You can do a nice grappa. Matt Gregory (49:27): ...in

Patrick Dyer Wolf (49:35): yeah. I'm a big italophile, so...

Alan (49:41): Okay, yep, they know what they're doing over there. Yeah.

Matt Gregory (49:46): cool. Well, Alan really appreciate your time, with us, the, the last two days. it's been fun to learn from you. I guess I'm curious. So, so first off, you know, with, with trail map, we, published this episode on, YouTube and also through Spotify and Apple podcasts, et cetera. but I'll put in the show notes, the link to, to 4A so that if people want to try your coffee, they can order some and, and give it a shot. what, what,

Alan (50:14): That's nice, yeah.

Matt Gregory (50:16): What blends, maybe you could spend just a couple of minutes talking about like what blends you'd recommend people trying of yours if they're ordering for the first time. Yeah, we could start with that, I guess.

Alan (50:24): Yeah. You know, obviously I would recommend the one that we liked yesterday, the Ethiopia natural. But I remember when naturals were first really getting on the scene and I got really excited, probably because it was something different and unusual and it was also great. But that's not for everybody. And I remember having coffee returned for the first time. And it was actually by a friend. You know, a lot of those people, especially at 4A became our friends and she's like, oh, I can't drink this. and she's gonna put it on the counter. I said, okay, this is another new lesson for me, I got it. So I usually start people with like something more familiar. We had a great Mexican coffee last year that everyone seemed to love, but we've got a new Peruvian that just came in. I'm about to sample roast it today. It's got a nice score to it. It's got a good story, it's organic. It's got that kind of nutty, creamy body, milk chocolatey flavor to it from the sample they sent me. So I'm going to see if I can get that coffee going on the website real soon. Yeah.

Matt Gregory (51:39): Nice, nice.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (51:40): I'm going have to order a pound or

three here. well, you don't have to. Yeah. Matt Gregory (51:43): Yeah, I'm going to send Pat, I'm going to send you a Mary a bag of 4A I'll get it for you.

Alan (51:49): Would he like the Ethiopia?

Matt Gregory (51:51): Pat, you like, what profile do you typically like of coffee? Like, do you like lighter roasts, darker roasts?

Patrick Dyer Wolf (51:59): I mean, I'm kind of all over the map. I'm sure I'll like it. Yeah. Yeah.

Alan (52:03): Yep, yep, you're easy. Yep.

Matt Gregory (52:07): And do you, do you guys grind beans at your house?

Patrick Dyer Wolf (52:11): yeah, we, so here's, here's my, approach is I get coffee from the grocery store, like, just so we have some. then when I go on the road, I'm a traveling musician. When I go on the road, I get like local, local pounds and I bring one home with me. So we got, we're either grinding or not. You know, it's. yeah.

Alan (52:30): Yep, yep, yep, yep. Yeah, I get you. I get you. I like that lifestyle.

Matt Gregory (52:32): And do you do like a pour over or what do you, or do you have a coffee machine or what do you do?

Patrick Dyer Wolf (52:36): We got both. So Avi's wife, Dani, made me little pour-over thingy, so I like to do that sometimes. But yeah, we got a coffee. We got a coffee. But yeah, ceramic thingy. And we got presses. We got it all. Yeah. Yeah.

Alan (52:49): Yeah, nice.

Matt Gregory (52:49): all the toys.

Alan (52:51): Geez, I'm sorry I don't get to meet you in person, because I think you're a cool guy. I you're whole MO. Yeah, yep, yep. Absolutely, we're here. Yep. Yep.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (52:55): I mean, likewise, I gotta come into the shop next time I'm in, I'm up there.

Matt Gregory (53:01): Yeah, we'll make that happen. Pat is a, Pat's a wonderful guy.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (53:03): Can I?

Matt Gregory (53:05): Go ahead, Pat.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (53:05): No. I just had to ask, so I mean like 4A, like is like the word 4A, but where does the 4A, does that have another meaning?

Alan (53:16): Oh boy, I forgot about this. Wow, I haven't asked that in a long time. Okay. No, no, no, no, no, because my answer, used to get that question like a hundred times a day and it was my fault. Why would you put a letter in a number? You did it to yourself. But I like the question now because, but I always wonder, did they want the short answer or the long answer? I'll give you the medium answer.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (53:21): Or if, mean, you don't have to.

Matt Gregory (53:24): We don't have to gather here.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (53:43): Okay.

Alan (53:44)

The medium answer is that we were sitting, and by the way, the name of a company is really hard to decide on, right? Yeah. So we were sitting there and my wife is from Kazakhstan and she's kind of like, they're very, I don't wanna say superstitious, but they're superstitious. So. Matt Gregory (53:50): Yeah. Yeah.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (53:51): So hard.

Alan (54:06): She loves symbolism and things that tie into your family. we went through a million names. We were living in apartment 4A on Babcock Street. my God. Yeah. So it was 122 Babcock Street. It was 4A, the apartment we were living in. Yeah.

Matt Gregory (54:15): Really? Wow, that's my street. That was so beautiful, thought. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (54:23): There you go.

Alan (54:24): So we were going through names and I said this and that and this and that and then, so the people in our family, were four of us at the time, it was before we had our youngest. Akar K is my wife's name, Alan, Ayan and Aloha. And our number was 4A. And I remember Jerry Seinfeld lived in 5A. So I was like, 4A coffee, you know, 4A coffee. She's like, yes. And I'm no, no, I'm just kidding.

Matt Gregory (54:42): Mmm.

Alan (54:53): She's like, no, that has to be it. And I was like, crap, what did I just do? So I couldn't get that out of her head. She's like, 4A is the name. Yeah. And then, so I was like, all right, I can't tell everyone that story every time they ask. can't, you know, I'm no Matt Gregory, but I know something about branding, you know? And I'm like, I can't put that. So I was like, 4A means coffee from the four continents, Africa, Asia.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (55:03): This, wow, that's incredible. you

Alan (55:21): the Americas and what's the other one? Asia, yeah. Australia, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, no, sorry, was North and South America, Africa and Asia. Yeah, because Australia doesn't really grow any coffee commercially. and then, so that was it. But yeah, that's the meaning of 4A coffee. yeah,

Matt Gregory (55:23): Wow.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (55:24): Australia. yeah, yeah, Right. That's a great etymology.

Matt Gregory (55:45): So I'm wondering, maybe a last question here, what's next for you with 4A? Is your plan to just continue to try to build it and grow it? Do you have any thoughts about what you want to do next with the business?

Alan (56:05)

Yeah, Matt Gregory (56:08): that you can share.

Alan (56:10): Yeah, exactly. Initially, I thought that we were going to have an opportunity to, like the delivery in these areas, local fresh coffee delivery is something that I really wanted to do. And I want that to grow a little bit more, but I also wanted to get into equipment service. I have some Ukrainian. friends and people I've known over the years. One of them, he's a guy who came over about 15 years ago before all this went on and I call him MacGyver because he saved my life. He can fix anything with his eyes closed in a minute. He's just gold and unfortunately his brother who's in his 40s, he's got a family, he had a farm there. He had to leave the Ukraine a little over a year ago. I believe and I've met him and he's helped me out and I wanted to do some equipment service because that's a huge issue. I know when I had problems with some of my equipment to get someone out there who was good and timely and so yeah, I'm trying to figure out how to implement that with him. He's starting to get his status squared away so we'll see what happens. Yeah, yeah.

Matt Gregory (57:32): That's cool. Like servicing the trade. Like cafes. That's cool. know, appliances need to be serviced and it's, we're thinking about this with our dryer, with our like clothes dryer. It's not working well So yeah.

Alan (57:37): Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, fixed, yeah.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (57:48): Roof.

Alan (57:49): Been there.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (57:52): It's kind of the rarer appliance that can be serviced these days.

Alan (57:55): Yeah, yeah.

Matt Gregory (57:55): Yeah, it is. They're mostly designed to throw away.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (57:58): Yeah.

Alan (57:58): Yeah. Well, you know, sorry, we could talk about this another time, I've been in your situation. You get that fancy new refrigerator and all of a sudden it's not working and you're calling A &E Repines Repair and they charge you $75 to drive in, $75, and they don't know what they're doing and you're like ripping your hair out. Yeah, I think we've all had our stories like that,

Matt Gregory (58:21): I quickly, somehow we put our refrigerator into demo mode a couple years ago, which is, cooling shuts off and basically just the light works. It's like the showroom thing. So we didn't know we had done this. The fridge has two digital displays. One says zero and the other says

Alan (58:30): Okay. Yep. Yep. Yep. He had no idea. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Matt Gregory (58:50): zero F. We didn't realize that if you read the zeros as O's, said off. And we were like, God, we're going to get this fixed. so it took that we got the repair guy to come. He's like, you have an issue with the fan. Like this is a fan error code. And he orders a new fan.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (59:00): Oof.

Alan (59:01): Yeah.

Matt Gregory (59:16): And we're like, oh, we don't have a fridge. We got to get a new fridge. we bought a cheap fridge. And then he comes back, he puts the new fan in, doesn't do anything. And then he's like, I'm going to get my manager to come out. And the manager comes out. This is like six weeks. Manager comes out. He's like, let me try one thing. And he presses two buttons and the showroom mode goes off. The fridge comes back on.

Alan (59:22): Ugh. Oh god, oh god, oh god.

Matt Gregory (59:45): They were like, my god.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (59:47): As I said at the top, turning it off and turning it on again is still number one in IT.

Matt Gregory (59:50): Yeah, yeah, that's the way to fix it.

Alan (59:53): Yeah, when you call a service and they said, have you tried turning it off? Of course I tried turning it off and on. I'm not stupid. wait a minute. Maybe I didn't. Yeah. All right. Yeah.

Matt Gregory (59:58): Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, Alan, thank you so much for your time, Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:00:00) Where am Matt Gregory (1:00:06) yeah, happy to continue to support what you're doing. I love your business. So. Alan (1:00:09) Yeah. Thank you. Thank you, I really appreciate you guys. Thanks guys. God, God bless you. Keep in touch and good luck with the. Matt Gregory (1:00:14) Yeah. Cool. All right. Thank you. Alan (1:00:20) Talk soon. Matt Gregory (1:00:20) All right. See ya. Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:00:21) Great. Matt Gregory (1:00:23) Well, that was fun. Great to chat with Alan. Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:00:27) That was awesome. can't wait to, I mean, if you do send, listen, you don't have to send me a pound of coffee, but if you do, I will relish it and then I will also relish the opportunity next time I make it up there. We got all these people that I gotta like go see, like, we gotta see Kris see Alan, gotta follow up with all these people, these great guests we've had. Matt Gregory (1:00:42) Yeah, I think you're Yeah. Yeah, think maybe that maybe, well, Kris had suggested doing like a virtual reunion of all the trail map guests. Yeah. Which I think would be kind of fun. And maybe doing it virtual is more realistic than trying to get everybody together in person. having it. Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:00:59) Altogether. We could do a cupping together. That would be fun. Yeah. Right. It would be to do it in an actual bar somewhere, if we could ever swing that. But Boston, the alumni events in a certain city, and it's like, anybody in the New York area, come by. Matt Gregory (1:01:18) Yeah, having it in person would be really fun. Yeah. Yeah, and like the people are just, it's just a phenomenal group of people. So that would be, that'd be really fun. Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:01:31) Yeah. I have two thoughts, I have two jokes that I need to follow up on that I didn't want to waste his time with. He was saying how the, you know, getting into coffee in the 90s, like it was nice because nobody knew anything about coffee. And then in the 2000s and 2010s, everybody thought that, you know, it was saturated. Everybody thought they knew everything. To my mind, very similar parallel even to the trajectory of being a Red Sox fan where Matt Gregory (1:01:38) Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Mmm. Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:02:05) You were legit if you had been with them for the 20th century never winning. Soon as 2004 rolls along, everybody's wearing a pink Red Sox hat from here to Arizona. And then it's like all the... Matt Gregory (1:02:17) Yeah. Yeah. Well, there was still a huge amount of loyalty for the Red Sox beyond Boston, even before they got put again. Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:02:26) that's true. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that's true. That's true. I like I think I one time saw the, know, I think it was Facebook data of like, what's your favorite team? And it's like Red Sox and Yankees are kind of like everywhere. Well, that is true. But still, there's there's a that you were in that or you won't after after 2004 2007. It blew up. Everybody's just like, Sox. But if you were in before, you know that you're legit and that these people. Matt Gregory (1:02:35) Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:02:55) or charlatans. Yeah. Matt Gregory (1:02:56) OG, OG. Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:02:58) Same thing with music. Music in the 90s was cool and then it sucked in the 2000s, 2010s. Matt Gregory (1:03:03) So what's the through line here? feel like, I think the internet's ruined it all. Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:03:08) 90s were cool. Matt Gregory (1:03:13) ruined us. We've gotten too demanding. Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:03:13) Yeah, it's ruined us. Everything has two sides to it, Matt. Everything. Even coffee. It's a dynamic balance of good and evil. and then my other joke, what was it? Shit, that was one. Matt Gregory (1:03:36) You should never feel like you can't share a joke. Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:03:40) No, I just, thank you. Thank you for that. Matt Gregory (1:03:43) Don't self edit your jokes. I can edit your jokes in post production. Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:03:49) I will edit your jokes for you. There was another one that I was keeping and now it's gone and I'm gonna think of it later in the day. It's, yeah. Matt Gregory (1:03:57) Okay, well, we can edit it in in post. Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:04:01) You're gonna do that Matt Gregory (1:04:03) Cool, man. Well, I hope you and your family have a wonderful weekend and fun to chat with Alan today. And yeah, be well. Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:04:18) You too. Matt Gregory (1:04:21) All right. See you, Pat. Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:04:19) yeah, you guys have a great weekend too. Later.