[00:00:10] Ray Latif: Hello, friends, I'm Ray Latif, and you're listening to the number one podcast for anyone building a business in food or beverage, Taste Radio. This episode features an interview with Matt Roberts, the founder and CEO of groundbreaking instant coffee brand, Comeeter Coffee. How do you convince investors to bet over $100 million on your innovative beverage company? If you're Matt Roberts, you start by making them a great cup Onyx Coffee. Matt is the founder of Comeeter Coffee, which markets innovative coffee capsules crafted using premium coffee beans sourced from leading specialty roasters. The beans are ground and brewed using a proprietary process and then flash frozen to preserve flavors and aromas. The single-serve capsules can be used to make hot or cold coffee. Launched in 2015, Cometeer was developed in partnership with coffee industry legend George Howell, who believes that the brand, quote, will do for coffee what the bottle did for wine. He's not alone in his lofty expectations for the Massachusetts-based company, which has raised venture capital funding from coffee and tech heavyweights, including the founder of Keurig Green Mountain, the former president of Nespresso, and lead investors in Blue Bottle Coffee, among others. Cometeer has built a thriving direct-to-consumer business and is gradually expanding distribution to brick-and-mortar retailers. The brand is currently available in over 500 stores nationwide, including Sprouts, Central Market, New Season, and Gilson's. In the following interview, I spoke with Matt about how he identified the opportunity to disrupt the instant coffee category by delivering a high-quality drinking experience, how Commoteer has crafted an effective consumer education strategy, and why his constant desire to learn more has helped him become a better leader. Hey folks, it's Ray with Taste Radio. Right now, I'm honored to be sitting down with Matt Roberts, who is the co-founder and CEO of Cometeer.
[00:02:20] Matt Roberts: Matt, great to see you. Thanks for having me, Ray. Really appreciate it.
[00:02:24] Ray Latif: Yeah. Well, great to see you again, I guess. We were upstairs drinking coffee for the last half hour or so. So thank you so much for bringing all of your wares for us to sample.
[00:02:34] Matt Roberts: Of course, of course. And it's great being in Newton. I mentioned earlier, there's some great craft beverage pioneers out of Newton. So it's so cool for you to be just down the street from us in Gloucester.
[00:02:44] Ray Latif: Yeah. Now you just need to move to Newton to be a part of that group of craft beverage pioneers. You got Jim Cook, as you mentioned, George Howell. And as soon as you move out here, Matt Roberts.
[00:02:54] Matt Roberts: Yeah. Yeah. Hopefully that's, that's, that's the tough two to compete with, but maybe one day that would be incredible.
[00:03:00] Ray Latif: Wow. You have a lot of history in Massachusetts. Your company's based in Gloucester. You live in Boston.
[00:03:05] Matt Roberts: How long have you been living in the city? I've been living in this city for the last 10 years, but grew up in the Boston area. So I grew up in a town called Ipswich, very well known for our clams, right? Which is actually right next to Gloucester, which is where our factory is. So when we ended up moving to Gloucester, everyone thought we moved there because I was a mama's boy. Not because the flash freeze revolution started there. I mean, why can't it be both? But that's why we're in Gloucester. It's home of the first Clarence Birdseye plant built in the 1920s. So really cool to have that history and infrastructure there. So the town kind of sees lightning striking twice. You had the flash freeze plant that was originally built and it's had a huge impact on the fishing industry there. And now we brew the best coffee up in Gloucester and flash freeze it right after it's freshly brewed.
[00:03:56] Ray Latif: Yeah, you would never think that Gloucester is a hub for premium coffee in the United States, probably globally too. But that's really interesting. Whenever I think about Gloucester, I think about that movie, The Perfect Storm. I'm sure everyone does as well. Well, at least if you've seen that movie, Gloucester has a very large presence in the movie. Unfortunately, Diane Lane has probably the worst Boston accent in the history of cinema in that movie. But Clooney, Walbur, these are all They're pretty good in otherwise.
[00:04:24] Matt Roberts: Oh, yeah. And then there was that Apple movie, Coda, which was based in Gloucester. Oh, yeah. That was an Academy Award winning movie. Was that the Boston Globe? No, that was the Spotlight. Coda was about a family of fishermen that were all deaf. And the daughter was like this incredible singer, but they needed her on the boat because you can't go out fishing in the middle of the ocean. and not hear anything. It was a drama, but it won a bunch of awards. And then, of course, there's the show Wicked Tuna up there. So everyone sees Gloucester as this fishing hub, right? But what people don't know is that before it was Fishtown USA, it was Freestown USA. So all the fishermen living on the coastline of Massachusetts wanted to move to where they could always sell fish. And the only person who was always buying was the guy who was buying the fish off the boat and could freeze the fish and preserve them. So, so interesting.
[00:05:20] Ray Latif: So the technology was already there. Did you think when you, when you were starting Cometeer that you would just adopt the technology? Cause you had, you have a patent on what you're doing. And for our listeners who are not familiar with Cometeer, just kind of just take us through what it is that you do and the technology that enables you to make what you make.
[00:05:40] Matt Roberts: Yeah, absolutely. So Cometeer delivers the absolute best tasting coffee from a new frozen format capsule. We work with the best roasters and farmers around the world. We get their beans in fresh. We grind and brew with advanced equipment and then flash freeze the coffee just seconds later. And we've proven that this new approach to the coffee supply chain, this new packaging format actually preserves flavor and nuance that you can't capture and preserve in other formats. So Freeze tech has been around for a very long time. Our focus was really on the brew tech. We are the best brewers on the planet. We have the most advanced systems because if you brew coffee poorly and you freeze it, it doesn't taste like good coffee. So our challenge after we made the discovery that when you brew coffee and freeze it, it preserves better than any of the other format. Was to scale up and develop the technology for brewing, right? So we put all of our effort into the grinding in the brewing technology in brewing hundreds of pounds Onyx Coffee at once as well as a master barista is Challenging and then when you do it with one-tenth of the water which is what we do so that you can melt it down into a hot cup without stealing all the heat and That was really the big curve ball and luckily there's a lot of passionate engineers and chemists out there when it comes Onyx Coffee. So we're able to get a great group of chemists and engineers out of Northeastern and MIT to help us develop this tech.
[00:07:10] Ray Latif: Yeah, so to be clear, the coffee is already brewed in this capsule form, and it comes packaged in something that looks like a Keurig K-cup, but it's obviously not that. You're not putting it into a machine and brewing it. You're opening up this little pod, you're putting it into hot water or hot milk, and you have yourself a gourmet cup Onyx Coffee.
[00:07:29] Matt Roberts: Yeah, absolutely. So we consider ourselves a category creator. When I think about it, you know, coffee can be packaged in a whole bean format, a ground format, a bottled liquid format, an instant format, which is brewed and then dehydrated, and then our format, which is brewed. and then flash frozen. So you don't need to worry about owning a grinder. You don't need the fancy equipment. You don't need the YouTube lessons on how to do a pour over. You just melt, mix, and enjoy. And you can make the product hot, ice cold, as an espresso-based beverages. The espresso martini slap, the lattes are incredible. So you can make anything on the menu without a machine, which is pretty incredible. We want to make specialty coffee. as easy to enjoy as a great glass of wine or a craft beer. And uncorking a wine bottle and cracking a can is a lot easier than, you know, turning your kitchen into a science fair and brewing the perfect cup at home. If you really think about it, you know, it's almost the equivalent of being handed a bag of grapes when you want to enjoy a glass of wine.
[00:08:35] Ray Latif: Interesting. That's an interesting way of putting it. I think about comments here, and I always think about the question, what's your point of difference from your competitors? How significant, how stable is that point of difference between you and your competitors? And I'm thinking about the patent or patents that you have. Would you consider them to be your strongest assets throughout the company?
[00:08:57] Matt Roberts: When it comes to our moat, right now it's our Willy Wonka factory up in Gloucester. It's the process. It's the know-how. It's just the scale that we've built out. That's really the moat right now. But of course, we're falling back on a ton of IP, supply chain exclusivity. We've built quite the moat around this category, but I would say it is the plant that we're operating right now and the trade secrets around our tech, not just the construction, but how we use the equipment to brew the coffee. Because I could put the most advanced espresso machine on your countertop and you're not going to know how to use it right away. So it's years of know-how at this point in time to brew every coffee the best way possible. Who are your competitors? You know, there's enough cups to go around, but I would say that when people are looking for convenience, right? That's like table stakes at this point in time with our fast lives. People are expecting convenience and they want quality. And I would say some of the capsule platforms are our top competitors. When we see, hey, where are we grabbing customers from? It tends to be from the higher end capsule platforms. We are obviously very different from other what we call pre-ground capsules out there. Onyx Coffee in general is a very misunderstood industry, right? When you ask a coffee lover what they prefer for coffee, they end up comparing two big, you know, large mass roasting conglomerates. And then when you look at wine, right, you ask a wine lover what they like, and they'll start talking about the grape varietal, Merlot versus Chardonnay. They'll talk about the region where the grape was grown. They will talk about the harvest year. And customers overlook this Onyx Coffee, and they don't know all of the steps that it takes to make a cup great. And we don't expect them to know this. But one thing that most customers don't know about is that when coffee's roasted, it starts venting flavor and aroma rapidly. That is why every coffee bag you've ever seen in your life has that little circle valve on the back of it. It is not for free smells. If that valve didn't exist, the bag would explode. So you have to think, how do these ground capsule manufacturers fit freshly roasted, freshly ground coffee in a capsule without having a valve? The truth is, they need to grind the coffee and then run it through a 24-hour degassing process, which is essentially a staling process, where they grind the coffee, then all that delicious flavor and aroma, and then seal the coffee in a capsule when it's a shadow of itself. So anything that's coming in a ground format is just not going to have the flavor and sophistication and complexity that we have in our cup. Frankly, they're, you know, they create a crummy cup Onyx Coffee in our process of grinding the coffee, brewing it fresh and flash freezing. It delivers a cup that just screams with flavor. You tasted it upstairs. So just quite the difference. And one thing that's interesting is it was easy for us to get. experts in the coffee industry to lean in and get excited about our product and invest. But to get the tech investors and the consumer investors on board, we actually needed to validate these claims. And we ran a study out at Stanford University back in 2018 that we've been sitting on for a while, where we compared our process to a variety of other processes and formats Onyx Coffee. And we were able to prove that we can capture and preserve the fingerprint of a freshly roasted, ground, and brewed cup, when all these other formats, including a pre-ground format, just lost a significant amount of flavor. So, you know, we got the coffee experts on board, but once we had the scientific validation, it kind of opened up a new interest from tech and consumer investors out there. So we can confidently say we deliver more flavor and aroma than any other capsule out there. And there's no, you know, flat earth argument behind that. It's all rooted in science.
[00:13:10] Ray Latif: I mean, I think it's kind of rooted in taste too. I was tasting some of your coffee upstairs and some of the cups that you poured were unlike anything I've ever tasted in my life. And you mentioned capsules and it's crazy to think that one would compare what you make and those in capsules, coffee in those capsules, because It isn't like apples and oranges. Maybe it's apples and crab apples. I think that's probably a better analogy right there. Because I mean, I've had some really terrible, everyone's been in a hotel, you put in, you know, it's a, I didn't want to say names, but it's an espresso machine or a K cup or a Keurig machine. It's really bad coffee, and people grew up and have continually consumed bad coffee. So that requires education, and that requires education about what good coffee should taste like, the nuances that you should be experiencing when you're drinking premium coffee. But that's hard. That's expensive. And you're really well spoken on the subject. I mean, I think you could convince people day and night, if it was just you and them talking for two, three minutes. But that's not how it works. That's not how consumer education works. What's been your strategy, especially when, and this is from, I'm pulling this from your TikTok account, the description is, Cometeer, Earth's first hyper fresh coffee.
[00:14:28] Matt Roberts: But you're a frozen brand. Yeah. Oh yeah. And there is that negative stigma around frozen. So customer education, education and trial has been our battle. If we can grab someone's ear for 30 seconds and give them a taste of our coffee, most of them convert on the spot. And if we're able to actually sample our cup next to an incumbent or a current go-to, that's when customers can really taste the difference. When you say most of them will be convinced
[00:14:59] Ray Latif: Is it a higher number? Is it like a little over 50% or is it like 90% of your customers or your eventual customers are buying into this idea?
[00:15:08] Matt Roberts: It is most customers. So if you do, I mean, when we've done taste test challenges out in the field, we've had days where it is just 100%, but not everyone has great taste and that's fine, you know, but for people who are looking for more out of their cup when they have that five minute coffee break every day, when they're sipping on something for 30 minutes, like we want to make that cup as delicious as possible. And more and more people are looking for fuller flavor and more variety in the beverages that they drink. That's why the craft beer market, you know, has exploded over the last 20 years. People want the fuller flavor, the variety, and they want to support next generation and regional businesses, which is a big part of our strategy as well.
[00:15:53] Ray Latif: I think part of the success of craft beer and craft beverages as a whole has come from people willing to spend disposable income on these affordable luxury items. I mean, let's be real, like a $10 glass of beer is not something that everyone is going to be able to afford. And coffee is consumed by millions of people, tens, if not hundreds of millions of people every day. But price point, I think, determines who can drink what and where. And I was going back to an article that we wrote about Commoteer a few years back, and I'm just going to read from here. Commoteer began by focusing on winning over the coffee community, trying to prove that fast coffee can taste good. But the ultimate plan is to target a more massive shopper. Now, you have education, that's a hurdle, but you also have price, that's kind of a hurdle, because I think each pot is about two bucks on average.
[00:16:45] Matt Roberts: Yeah, two dollars is the starting price point. And now we're going all the way up to five, six dollars to really put some of the best coffees on the planet, the award winning coffees under the spotlight. But in the future, we do plan on working with what we call like the mass specialty market. That's my first love Onyx Coffee, Dunkin' Donuts. I mean, I grew up in Massachusetts. You're 12, you're an adult. Here's the adult chocolate milk. Yeah. So anyway, when I, when I think about Commetteer, like Commetteer is not an award winning Pilsner versus Bush light. Let's go with bush light. I went to Bentley down the street here That was the drink of choice on campus. So it is not an award-winning Pilsner versus a bush light It is an award-winning Pilsner that was brewed last week Versus a bush light that was left in the trunk of your car from last summer so we can make that bush light taste fresher and better as Well now when you have a technology that preserves all of the nuance and coffee you want to start at the top and work your way down. So we do plan on applying our technology to more mass market blends moving forward. But right now we're laser focused on the specialty space and making sure that these farmers out there really pushing the limits are being paid for their hard work. Because the challenge with coffee is it's made twice after it leaves the farm. Wine, it all happens at the vineyard. You put in the bottle with the cork, it doesn't change. The farmer, once they ship the coffee to the U.S., I mean, it can be messed up in the roasting step. It can be ground incorrectly. You can do everything right, but use the wrong water. And it just destroys the flavor in the last five feet. So really, we want to make sure that these farmers have a bridge to protect their craft. And what we're hoping is that more and more people drink specialty coffee. We're paying about 2x the price of fair trade right now. So if people are buying more specialty coffee because we make it accessible, more dollars will flow to the farmers. The farmers will be able to reinvest back into the farm and we can contribute to this beautiful loop where coffee is just getting better and better and better for years to come. So we really want to focus on the specialty segment and not the commodity segment. market that exists out there. We want to focus on kind of mass specialty and above, and we could spend all day talking about the different tiers Onyx Coffee and the grading systems. There's a very similar grading system Onyx Coffee as the one that exists in wine. It's a hundred-point scale. Like, for example, the mass roasters out there, Starbucks and Dunkin' Donuts, that is still considered specialty-grade coffee. What people don't know is that, like, when you go to, let's say, Costa Rica, and you're, you know, downtown San Jose, and you go get a cup Onyx Coffee, everyone thinks it's going to be the best tasting coffee that they've ever had. Unfortunately, the good stuff gets exported. So we see a lot of the best coffee around the world making it into the U.S., even what makes it into kind of mass market blends out there.
[00:19:53] Ray Latif: It's an honorable vision. It's an honorable strategy to be able to support these specialty coffee farmers. When you are talking about the big picture and reaching those mass consumers, it almost feels like the investment that you have to put into growing more coffee and supporting those farmers in a way that's going to be able to allow them to supply more coffee to more consumers is just as important. Is that part of the long-term purview of what you're doing? not just buying their coffee, but helping them build out their infrastructure?
[00:20:25] Matt Roberts: Yeah, absolutely. And we're not the only ones focused on this. I'd say our roasters, we have partnered with the roasters we've partnered with because they are the ones really leaning in at the farm level already. And we want to follow their footsteps as well.
[00:20:40] Ray Latif: And just for context, just so our audience understands what you're talking about, the roasters you work with are ones that people might know from ThirdWave Coffee and beyond.
[00:20:49] Matt Roberts: Yeah, I mean, they're honestly the most decorated coffee companies around the world, from James Hoffman Square Mile in London to Onyx Coffee Roasters. I think the last, you know, eight coffee brands we've signed have all had a barista champ on the staff. So these are the best of the best across the board, the roasters that we work with. And they have been leaning in. at the farm level for a very, very long time. And their challenge has always been like, okay, they'll source the coffee, they'll make sure it makes it to the U.S. fresh, they'll cook it to perfection. But then they know they need to rely on the home brewer to actually extract the flavor and aroma that exists within the bean. And it's much more complex than people think to actually brew a great cup Onyx Coffee at home. So they're leaning in at the farm level. We visit the farmers that we work a lot with. We're following their steps. I would say when you kick the can out 20 years, the challenge in the industry is how can we continue to grow coffee that tastes good. Because with climate change, it is getting more difficult to grow coffee. And there's a lot of great work out there where there's, you know, genetic changes we can make Onyx Coffee beans and make sure that coffee grows, you know, it could grow on a rock. the challenge is going to be how can we genetically modify a coffee bean so that it can grow on a rock and also taste good. And there are more and more people poking at that, but that's a space where I'd love to see more attention on the coffee genetics, because there's more research right now that goes into watermelon varietals than coffee. And I don't know about you, I don't eat watermelon every day. Coffee's more of a stateful, so when we kick the can out 25, 50 years, you know, what we can do with coffee's genetic profile and how we can manipulate it and evolve it and advance it while we're burning up the atmosphere is going to be, I think, the number one challenge in continuing to deliver absolutely delicious tasting coffee.
[00:22:51] Ray Latif: I think it's incumbent upon founders to express their vision to investors in a way that is big and bold, right? I think investors are looking for big, amazing ideas for different reasons. One, you know, maybe they just want to see a company do well financially, or maybe they just really believe that there's an opportunity to do something great for the food system. In your case, again, raised over a hundred million dollars at this point. You know, what is it that has convinced your investors to buy into your vision and the, I guess, short-term success that you've had, but more importantly, the long-term future. And that includes perhaps, you know, a potential acquisition from one of those big companies that, you know, we referenced earlier.
[00:23:41] Matt Roberts: Yeah. So, I mean, most of our investors are also coffee consumers, and I think it's just giving them the extended, you know, coffee TED talk. People go into the meeting not knowing anything about coffee, and then they leave, and they can school their neighborhood barista by the end of it, and it is just the same issue with our customers. It is trial and education. So it's educating the investor base. It's letting them taste the coffee. And then of course having great financials helps as well and showing the retention and the growth that we've been able to produce over the last couple of years has kept the investor market leaning in. And then of course we can point to a company like Nespresso, the most profitable beverage business on the planet. And I mean, put a comment here next to a cup of Nespresso and, you know, you tell me which one tastes better. Do you think Nespresso do 7 billion? They do about 7 billion. Wow. I never would have guessed that. Yeah, just online every year. It's actually, you know, a beautifully built company, the machine, the platform, the marketing, the design. Actually, they inspire us in a lot of ways, the coffee and not so much. But yeah, from what we know, they are the most profitable beverage business. on the planet, $7 billion just online every year. So you imagine if they really leaned into retail, which they haven't done in the U.S., could they really up that take?
[00:25:03] Ray Latif: Your investors love coffee. They love the idea or the fact that they can go in school, their local barista after a few minutes with you. But like every investor, they want that payout at some point. They want to see that there is a potential exit strategy here, or there is an exit strategy with a potential windfall. At least I think the investors in your cohort or your group. You know, I always worry, however, that when a sale takes place, the brand identity is going to change. Everything about the brand is going to change. We talked a bit about this with one specific brand. I won't mention it, but before we hopped on the mics, we talked about this brand. And I feel like the essence of what it was completely changed. How do you think about that when you, I guess, get in bed with certain investors that have a certain perspective on an eventual sale? Cause I, it just, it just feels like. With the amount of money invested, it's going in that direction. Yeah.
[00:26:02] Matt Roberts: Well, we're lucky because our investor base has been very patient to date. And one thing that is super important to me that we just don't go and grab, you know, the first great liquidation opportunity and then someone comes in and messes up the company. I want to be able to reach into my freezer 10, 20, 30 years from now and know that if I'm grabbing a Cometeer out of my freezer, it's the best tasting coffee on the planet. That bean in that cup, like there's no way to make it taste better. And when I think about the acquisition market, of course there are a lot of great companies out there that can preserve brands in food and beverage. But as I mentioned, like we consider ourselves a coffee company, but also a tech company. And we believe because we are building out the full infrastructure, the frozen supply chain Whether it's a D2C or in retail, we own our manufacturing, like we have the patents, we're checking all the boxes to really leave ourselves open to even like a tech player to come in and buy our closed loop platform, if that makes sense. And I just think technology companies are more future forward and there's probably a better chance that they would protect what we're trying to do with the brand. Right now, near-term, mid-term, we're thinking about staying fiercely independent on this mission at this moment in time.
[00:27:25] Ray Latif: Yeah, and I think the business model of most of your revenue coming from online, coming from direct-to-consumer sales would make me think that that is your focus right now. If you were spending a ton of money to be in retail, if you were really going gung-ho on a majority of your revenue coming from retail, I'd say, okay, well, that sounds like you're going to need an additional flow of capital, additional infusion of capital. But again, I mean, if most of your sales are coming from direct to consumer, it feels like there's still a long way to go in that channel.
[00:27:59] Matt Roberts: Oh man. I mean, there's not only retail, but there is food service. There's benefits to serving our product from the behind the counter of a cafe. We can eliminate that long line and deliver even more consistency when you think about food service. So we've barely scratched the surface. Retail is, is the next channel we want to pursue. We want to focus on marketing to the end customer and focus our education on the end customer, not B2B, but yeah, retail is going to be the next challenge. We have a lot of runway with D2C and you can't be flat footed with retail. So we are in, you know, Whole Foods in the Northeast. We, we have some Sprout stores with the freezer in the coffee aisle that I mentioned, which is really going to be a big part of our strategy. It's your, it's a company for It is our freezer. We dub it the Fresh Pet model because they're the first ones to have proven out this model. You're of course familiar with Fresh Pet. And obviously John over at Once Upon a Farm has taken that model and built out a hybrid model, which I think will work for us because we are seeing success in the freezer aisle. But when we put a freezer in the coffee aisle, we become a top selling coffee brand. overnight, and there's a return in it for the retailers. So we're focused right now on bringing more retailers into this model to prove out the numbers, which has been extremely strong to date.
[00:29:22] Ray Latif: You know, what's so interesting about you, Matt, is like you're incredibly well-spoken, articulate, and intelligent about what you do, whether it's the coffee, the financials, just like the global perspective that you have is pretty impressive. How did you educate yourself as a leader, as an operator of this business?
[00:29:41] Matt Roberts: Yeah, well, I've been a student for the last 10 years, and I've been lucky enough to surround myself with people who are really at the forefront of specialty coffee. So I think when you read all these books from other entrepreneurs, there's only one thing that's consistent, right? And that's grit. Actually, the beautiful part about entrepreneurship is everyone can have their own style, right? Right? Everyone says, oh, you got to do it this way. You got to do it that way. It's like, no, take the paintbrush. And as long as you have grit, you can get the job done. Now, grit is learning from your failures. It's adapting. It's looking back every six months and thinking, okay, how can I get a bit better? at this. And when you don't have to make the mistakes on your own, and you can learn from someone with the wisdom, that's incredible. And you can avoid a lot of those mistakes. So I think the secret sauce at Cometeer was really going and learning from people right off the bat, learning from people who have made the mistakes before. I would say one really unique thing about our story is that I founded the company with three engineers, three technical co-founders that were in their 50s and 60s. And George Howell was in his 60s. So, you know, I was 22, 23 years old, out of college with like all the hustle in the world and a credit card. And I was able to partner with all of these coffee professionals and engineers And they taught me so, so much. And I kept that mindset throughout the years. When I even hire people and have direct reports, I like to learn just as much from them as they learned from me about our brand and everything. So even though, you know, there's this stereotype that if you're an entrepreneur, you gotta, you gotta be young. I know it's Mark Zuckerberg out there saying younger people are smarter. That's not always the case. There's outliers. And sometimes you can be 22 and found a company with guys in their sixties. And even though you might be, you know, donkey and truck out there raising capital in Silicon Valley, it can work. And I learned a lot from my co-founders and from our early employees who had had a longer lifespan in the, in the working world than I had at the time.
[00:31:49] Ray Latif: This might sound counterintuitive, but we've had a lot of folks emailing us about books that they should read about entrepreneurship. They were like, you know, what would you recommend reading? Who, what founder would you recommend learning more about? You sound like you read a lot of books about entrepreneurship and leadership. Which ones would you recommend to our audience?
[00:32:08] Matt Roberts: I'm more of a podcast guy. All day, all day. All day. Yeah. Yes. But yeah, mostly podcast founders podcast is incredible. Obviously, you know how it's made. There's some great stories, some of the more generic ones, but when I am, you know, on the bike or on the treadmill, trying to change the oil. I actually try to listen to podcasts. I know it's multitasking, but you know, there's a lot of history to pick up and whether you're, you're learning from someone you've hired or someone you're working with, or you're learning through history, you know, you can learn and avoid certain mistakes and pick up pattern recognition without, you know, being in the trenches yourself and learning from others who have been there.
[00:32:51] Ray Latif: I gotta tell you, I was so excited for you to be able to come to the office. And for some reason, I really thought that you were based in Gloucester. I'm like, eh, it's kind of a long trip, but it's great to hear that you're based in Boston and you're like, I don't know, what is it? Three miles away, four miles away, essentially?
[00:33:05] Matt Roberts: Well, on the highway it feels like that. It was 15 minutes.
[00:33:07] Ray Latif: Yeah, there you go. So this is good. So anytime you want to come by and help introduce us to some new coffee, you know, you have a willing group of folks to do so with. So thank you so much for coming out, Matt. I really appreciate it. This has been a really great conversation and I'm even more pleased that you're here because I learned a lot about coffee that I didn't know until just now.
[00:33:29] Matt Roberts: I love that. Well, that's, that's part of our job is the education. And for those of you who get bored by that, still, all you need to do is just like peel back a lid, melt and enjoy, and you don't need to know what goes into it to enjoy a great cup. So I will be back with more stories, Comeeter Coffee. And, uh, yeah, thanks for having me, Ray. Really appreciate it.
[00:33:52] Ray Latif: That brings us to the end of this episode of Taste Radio. Thank you so much for listening. Taste Radio is a production of BevNET.com, Incorporated. Our audio engineer for Taste Radio is Joe Cracci. Our technical director is Joshua Pratt, and our video editor is Ryan Galang. Our social marketing manager is Amanda Smerlinski, and our designer is Amanda Huang. Just a reminder, if you like what you hear on Taste Radio, please share the podcast with friends and colleagues. And, of course, we would love it if you could review us on the Apple Podcasts app or your listening platform of choice. Check us out on Instagram. Our handle is bevnettasteradio. As always, for questions, comments, ideas for future podcasts, please send us an email to ask at Taste Radio.com. On behalf of the entire Taste Radio team, thank you for listening, and we'll talk to you next time.
[00:34:42] Matt Roberts: you
