Welcome to Working Towards Our Purpose, a podcast that
offers a different perspective on what a job can be. For everyone
out there that's heard that voice in the back of their head asking for something
more, it's time to listen to it. I'm your host, Gino,
and join me as I interview people who have decided to work in their
own purpose. Together, we will learn, become inspired,
and hopefully find our own path towards working in our purpose.
Joining me today is Dan Barletta, who is one of the owners and founders
of New Haven's first mobile coffee shop, the Jitterbus. If you live in New
Haven, you've probably seen the hand painted blacked out school bus around
town. The Jitter bus has been featured in the Hartford Current, yale Daily
News and News channel three something's cooking. Dan. Welcome to working
towards our purpose. How are you doing today? Good. Thanks for having me, Gina.
Yeah, I'm excited to talk to you about this. I know when I first moved
to New Haven, I remember seeing the bus around and just thinking, like, that was
such a cool idea. So I'm excited to learn more about how it happened.
So, yeah, if you want to just start by telling us a little bit about
yourself, like where you grew up and did you go to college and that sort
of thing. Sure, yeah. My name is Dan Barletta. I grew up
in West Haven, Connecticut, and I
attended Southern Connecticut State University. I
was there from 2009 on and off until
2019. College was like, a huge
just bummer to me, I guess.
I was told I had to go to college right after high school. I remember
wanting to take a year to try to think about what I want to do,
but everyone kind of told me, no, you got to go to college right away.
And it just wasn't the thing
for me. I don't know, I just didn't enjoy it. I didn't enjoy having to
go to school. Every day gave me a lot of anxiety. It wasn't that I
wasn't interested in learning, just the college setting
wasn't my favorite thing, and I did that on and
off pretty much for nine years, and it was like
a huge struggle to me. I eventually finished, I pushed through, but it was
like the biggest struggle of my life, I feel like.
Yeah, I had a similar sort of experience with college, just
feeling like you had to do it. And I remember
I was telling everybody that I wasn't going to go to college up until my
senior year when it came time to make a decision. And then I was like,
all right, I guess I'll go. Yeah, same. So what did you pick
when you went to college to study, or did you just have, like, a general
studies? Yeah, at first, I was undecided for a
long time, just kind of getting the core classes out of the way. And then
I always had an interest in psychology, so I started by
majoring in psychology, and it was all interesting,
but eventually I got to the point where I just felt like
this wasn't the career path that I was supposed to be on. And so
I ended up dropping out for a couple of years, and
during those two years of me not going to college, that's when
we pretty much started the idea for the jitter bus. So
I guess a nine year path is a little bit different than most
people. How did that look to you? Like you said, you started
the jitterbus. Did you have anything else that you were doing, like side jobs as
far as while you were going to school and taking time off? Yeah, I worked
in a bunch of cafes in New Haven. There was a couple of periods
where I was working at two at once. I was pretty much working
every day. I remember there was one year I took one day
off in July, and it was my birthday. So even though I wasn't going to
school, I was really driven to work and make money
and be able to figure things out on my own.
What led you into coffee shops? Was that just out of necessity,
or did you want to be a barista or how did you get into coffee
shops? Kind of just by chance. When I was 17,
I got my first job at Starbucks. I was still in high
school at that time, and after a month of doing that,
they fired me. They pretty much looking back on it, it's
funny because they said I wasn't cut out for the job,
and that always kind of pissed me off a little bit. But
looking back on it, I was 17. I probably was like a
lazy kid back then and just I wasn't
the right fit for them at that time. But then once I
graduated high school, I think around when I was 20, I
started applying to cafes in New Haven, and
I worked at three different cafes in New Haven, on
and off. And then my business partner Paul, who I do
the bus with, he was also a barista in different cafes in New
Haven. And he actually is the one who came up with the
idea for the bus. He brought the idea to me one day and
we kind of talked about it for a few weeks, on and off, and
eventually it just kind of all came together.
Yeah. So tell me a little bit more about the idea and where it came
from and how you got started with the idea. Sure.
So the idea came about paul
was he noticed an ice cream truck,
and he really wanted to get a coffee from it, but they obviously didn't have
coffee. So that's kind of like how the idea was born. He thought it'd
be so cool if ice cream trucks also sold coffee.
And then he told me that idea. I thought
it was interesting. And we were talking back and forth about it for a while
and then we were both kind of
overworking in cafes. Pretty much like having
a boss, all that. We knew that if we had the
opportunity to do it ourselves, that we would be able to do a good
job. So we eventually just
kept talking about it and talking about it until the point where it was all
we were talking about. And then we bought
an espresso machine online and we hooked it up
in my parents basement and started making drinks. And once
we started doing that, we were like, this is a good idea. We really wanted
to pull the trigger on it and just try to make it become a reality.
Yeah. So how did you make it into the reality? I
know in researching I read some stuff online and said that you had a
Kickstarter that helped you start the business. Can you talk to me more
about that and how that whole thing worked? Yeah. So
we quickly learned it's not cheap to convert a school bus
into a cafe. So we started a Kickstarter
project, gave out rewards for people that donated. Our
goal was 5000, and I think we
raised a little bit more than that. I think we raised around 5200.
And that was from friends, family, and even strangers that came across
the Kickstarter online thought it was a cool idea and donated to us, which was
awesome because at that time we had no following at all. We were
like just an idea still at that point. And then
every week our paychecks we threw into it. We were lucky to still be living
at home with our parents, so it was easy to kind of
throw all the money we had into it to make it become a real
thing. Yeah. So did you always have
the idea of getting a school bus or was it like kind of a food
truck idea and the school bus popped up? The name came first,
the Jitter bus. And then we looked at a couple
of different food trucks that people were selling, but they were
like in really rough shape. They were from the
1970s. We looked at this one. It had this
huge the shifter
stick, manual transmission. I'm not a mechanic at all. I
don't know anything about cars, but it was like one of those things. But it
was like huge. It was really long and it didn't go into second
gear. And we almost bought it. And I'm so glad we didn't because I feel
like we wouldn't be around anymore if we did that. But
we were on Craigslist and we found the bus we have
now relatively cheap. I think we bought it for around
3500. It only had like 130,000
miles on it, which is pretty good for a diesel engine like
that. And it was already painted black, which was
cool. It was originally like a handicap accessible school
bus. It had like a giant wheelchair ramp on it. We had to
gut all of that out of it. But yeah, we found
that in February of 2015. And then we spent all
of 2015 building out the bus and we opened
pretty much exactly one year later in February of
2016. Wow. So was it just you
and your friend Paul? How did the
partnership of you guys starting a business together look like? Was it
just like, you figuring it out as you go along? Or did you think about
write a business plan, that sort of thing? Originally it was
me, Paul, and our other friend Andrew. He has
since moved on from the business to do other things. We're still really good friends
with him, but yeah, it was originally the three of us,
and all
three of us were good at specific things. Paul was really good at because
he used to be a tattoo artist before we did this. So he did all
the design work. That's like his area of expertise. Andrew was
really good at figuring out all the licensing and things like
was like because I had been working two jobs, I was always
really good at saving my money too. So I was like the main one, throwing
in some money for it. I guess I helped fund a lot of it
and just also had a bunch of good ideas in terms
of what types of drinks we should be making and
where we should park. Originally, I thought we were going to drive around
the city, kind of like an ice cream truck in a way. But then
we learned in New Haven you have to pick a location and you can only
basically buy a license to be in that spot. And
then you can only park there. And if you want to park somewhere else, you
have to trade with other vendors. So I learned quickly
that the idea of driving around the city just wasn't going to happen because it
basically wasn't allowed. Interesting. Yeah. I bet there's
a lot of different regulations and rules that you didn't know about getting
into it. How did you first learn about that sort of thing? Was it like
talking to the town and trying to get the permits and stuff like
that? Yeah, talking to the city
and just by trial and error. Like our first day we went
out, it was a little different back then. The areas that you
could park in were kind of different than they are now. So
we parked at cross campus downtown, and that was
originally we were like, this is going to be the perfect area. We're going to
park here every day. And then on the first day, someone from the city
came and kicked us out, said, you're not allowed to vend here. So we were
quickly kind of in shock. Like, well, we've been building this
for a year and I think we actually were told that
it was okay to vend there, but they gave us the
wrong information. So we were going off this idea that
actually it wasn't going to work at all and we had to quickly
figure out, all right, well, where are we going to park now? But we found
our spot that we're in now Monday through Fridays. It's at the corner of Grove
and Hill House. We found that maybe two, three months in to
opening and we've been there ever since.
Awesome. So can you tell me a little bit more about the first year
in business and like you alluded to there's some challenges that you had to overcome
and that sort of thing? Were you still working at your
cafe jobs at the time and kind of doing it part time until
you realized it was enough to catch on or how did that transition
work? We did yeah, we worked part time at our cafe
jobs and part time on the bus and
we did that for about two years until we quit
our actual jobs to do this full time. What were some of the
things that you learned in the first year and things that you had to overcome?
I'm sure the idea had to evolve as you put it into
practice. Yeah, there was a lot.
I would say our biggest challenge was
wintertime because all of our equipment has water in it,
all of our pipes have water in it. We didn't have a garage to park
the bus and so all this stuff was exposed to the cold of the
winter. And we had read online that if you let
an espresso machine freeze, then it's basically
going to break and there's no repairing it. So we were always really nervous about
that. We were trying to figure out ways to keep it warm in
there without that happening. And there was one
winter, I believe it was our first winter, we were running a
space heater in the bus just to keep it warm overnight. Someone forgot
to plug it in and everything froze. The espresso
machine, the inside of it basically exploded. So did our
coffee brewer. So that was tough because those are our two
main pieces of equipment and they're super
expensive. Espresso machine could be anywhere between
5000 or more sometimes. So that was a huge hit
for us. But it taught
us the winter is serious. Like you got to be on top of
keeping things warm and it's something to really pay attention to
otherwise it could totally happen again. Yeah, that's something I wouldn't
even ever think about, but totally makes sense that you
winterize all kinds of equipment, but your bus you're using every day, but at
night things freeze and yeah, that seems like a big learning lesson.
So did you have to go and buy like a new espresso machine? After that.
We did, yeah. It was
one we still have it today. It's been years now that we've had
it. We found it in New York City. This guy was selling it at
that time. We only had, I think, $5,000 in our bank
account. And that's how much he was selling it for. No, I'm sorry. He was
selling the espresso machine for $5,000, and we only had
4500 in our bank account. So we were like, all right, great. What
are we going to do? And so we went down there to buy it with
only $4,500, hoping that he would just knock off
$500 for us, and thankfully he did. But we
were worried the whole ride down that it was just like we were going to
be driving there for no reason, basically, and he was going to turn us away.
But he was a cool guy and he gave us a nice deal on it.
Nice. That's awesome. I'm glad it worked out. Yeah.
So when you first started and you're out
there selling coffee, how did you get people to first know what the bus
was all about? Did you do any sort of marketing or
getting yourself out there? What did that look like? It was definitely
hard in the beginning because we didn't have as much artwork on the
bus at that time. So it was really just a black school
bus with a menu. It said the Jitter bus on it at least,
but it looked a little sketchy, I'm not going to lie. It was kind of
like, what is this thing that they're selling food out of? I don't know if
I want to walk up to it. I totally understood that it
was a weird thing to see at first, and
I would basically stand outside of it and just hand out samples of
coffee, trying to get people to come up to us, and that helped a lot.
Also, we had an Instagram and we know trying to be
active on that, to try to spread the word and word
of mouth, really, that was like the best way that people found out about us.
We had a lot of friends in New Haven, so that helped. We told
them, they told their friends, and it kind of just spread as time went
on. Yeah, I guess it is kind of a new idea that people
aren't really familiar with, so you kind of have to educate people
that it's basically a coffee shop on a bus, because just walking by
people at first wouldn't really understand that. So I guess
nowadays people know who you are, they see the bus and they
know that it's you guys. Do you do anything nowadays as far as
continuing to spread the message or do anything with
marketing or social media? Yeah, we're pretty active on social
media, mostly Instagram, a little bit of Facebook.
My fiance tells me I really need to get a
just like I haven't gotten into TikTok yet.
I feel like I'm finally too old for certain social media platforms,
and I could be wrong, I don't know, but she's always telling me we got
to get a TikTok and that it's going to help us out a lot.
Yeah, I feel you there as far as being too old to get on TikTok,
but I certainly see the value of it, I guess.
And I know tons of businesses are using it, so maybe we'll
have to dive into it one day and figure out what it's all about.
So I also wanted to ask you about the
pandemic and how you guys got through the pandemic because obviously you're
an in person business, not necessarily brick and mortar, but food truck
style business. How did you guys handle the pandemic and were you shut
down at the beginning of it? Yeah, the pandemic was tough. There was a ban
on food trucks in New Haven from I think it was
March to June of 2020. So during that time, we
were just not allowed to vend that. And also we
didn't really want to vend because it was very early on. We didn't know
how bad things were going to get. It was almost like, is it too
risky for us to even work right now? It was just so
confusing at that time. So during those months where we couldn't
vend, it was a bummer. But we were kind of like, let's at least just
take this time and make sure try to figure out what's going on before we
can open again. And so we couldn't vend, but instead
we sold bags of coffee beans and we did
delivery. We pretty much drove around New Haven every day, dropping off
bags of beans to people that wanted to buy them, like at their
house or their apartment, and we would do
online payments. So it was no contact. And
it wasn't as good as just being open as normal, but it
helped get us through time where we couldn't vend at all.
It allowed us to still be able to pay ourselves, which was huge because at
first I was worried, how are we going to pay our bills,
our rent, all that? But we were lucky to be able to figure it out,
to make just enough to stay afloat. And then once things
opened in June, we were out there again
vending, but there was a lot less people around. There was
no students around because everything was remote. And the people
that were walking around, a lot of them, they
probably didn't really want to stop because they weren't ready
for things being open like that. And
it was tough. But looking back on it,
going through it, it was really scary and I wasn't sure what was going to
happen. But looking back on it, I'm pretty proud about how
we pulled through it and came out stronger in the
end. Yeah, that's awesome. I mean, you completely kind
of changed your business model to react to what was
happening in real time. And I think a lot of businesses didn't really do that
or think about that. Did you guys sit down and brainstorm ideas of,
hey, what can we do during this time? Because I think that's a really
good idea of you guys delivering beans to people's doors. Yeah, definitely.
And before we shut down, we had like a
ton of milk, like whole milk, skim milk, soy, almond,
oat, and it was sitting in our refrigerator and it was all going to go
bad. So we sold all that stuff off too. We had some
merch that we sold at discounted prices.
We pretty much sold off everything that we had to sell. And it worked.
I mean, we pulled through and it was such just a
weird time not knowing what was going to happen. It's still a little weird,
but nowhere near as weird as it was. But
it was tough in the beginning. Yeah. And how long did it take for people
to come back to the capacity at which they did before the
Pandemic? I mean, it must have been like months and months of people slowly starting
to come back. Yeah, I would say that whole summer was pretty
slow. And then in the fall, the
students didn't come back. So that was another huge hit
because we get a lot of our business from students and
with them not being there, it's so
much slower without the even the summers now are really
slow, but we expect that in the summertime. But for the
fall to come and then no students were around. It was kind of like it
was daunting. It was like, this is not really working right now. But
eventually the students came back and when they did,
it was like everything exploded. We were doing
so much more in sales than before the Pandemic.
So once things really opened up, students came back to school.
We noticed like a huge increase in business which was such a relief
because we had gone months or at least a year of just
wondering are we going to bounce back from this and get back
to what we were doing before? The.
Know that's I think also an interesting point you bring up about New Haven is
like it's so student based and SummerTimes are lighter for a lot
of businesses. Do you guys kind of plan for that? Do you have
summer hours or how do you deal with the changes of
students being here and not students being here? Sometimes
we take on more events. We usually do a couple of weddings in the
summertime. There's like other work events
that businesses will hire us for to come and serve
at their office or whatever the place is to serve the
staff. That helps out a lot. We also take the summertime, though, as
like it's slower, but it's kind of like a little bit of
a break for us because when the students are here, there are days
we have a line from the minute we open till we close
and it's great. It's good to
be doing so well, but in the summertime when it's
slower, it really is like a break for us too. Right now on the bus,
it's me and Paul and we'll close a little
bit early on some days when it's slow or we'll take a few days off
and go somewhere. So it's like a good balance, I would say.
Yeah. And then you guys also do the farmers market in Worcester Square
on Saturdays. How's that for you guys, business
wise? Because I noticed there's always like a line, it seems, from opening to close.
There's always a huge line there too. Yeah, the farmers market. The
Worcester Square farmers market is huge for us. It's
our absolute busiest day of the week, every week for the entire
year. Even in the wintertime when it's cold, we always have a huge
line out there. And we started doing the farmers
market maybe a year into being open and it's
just been so great. We love City Seed and that market has
really helped us spread the word about us,
because with students where we park at our normal spot, a lot of
the know they're great, but eventually they graduate and they leave and we never see
them again. But when we're at the market, we're really showcasing
who we are and what we sell to the community of New Haven, the
people that live there, especially all the people that live in Worcester Square. So it's
nice to be able to offer what we have to
people who live in New Haven as well. Yeah, definitely.
It's definitely like a whole different target market than college
students. How did you first get into farmers market? Because I know
City Seed is a little bit restrictive at that farmers market because it's such a
big one and there's certain requirements you have to meet. Was that a challenge
to get into the market? Not really. I mean, at
first we found out about the farmers market and we're like, well, this is
cool, we should totally park here. And we found out you have to
apply and then wait for them to approve it.
And we were kind of like, I don't want to do all that. So
we'll park a little bit down the street and people will walk
over to us. And we were doing that for a little bit and then
probably wasn't the best way to go about it, but we had
that mindset where it's like, we're a mobile cafe, no one's going to stop us
from parking a little bit down the street. We'll just do that. But then eventually
someone from Citizen came over and at first I thought they were going to be
kind of mad, like, what are you guys doing? But they were like, this is
great. You guys should really apply, be a part of the market. We did,
and we've been doing it ever since, which is about
seven years now. Wow, so you bring up seven
years. You guys have been a cafe bus for the past seven
years? Yes, we opened in
February of 2016. Wow, that's certainly a long
time to be in business. Did you ever think at the original
idea that you guys be in business for this long?
Not really, no.
I didn't think I would do it full time. I thought it would always be
a part time kind of thing. I always thought that I'd have to go and
find a job somewhere else, do that full time, and this kind of would
be a secondary thing. That was how it originally felt. But then
once we started doing this full time and it just started to
grow and grow, it became more apparent that we
enjoyed doing this. It's tough, it's hard, but we love working
for ourselves and putting out our own product, and it makes it
worth it. At the end of the day, for us.
When you did make that transition to be full time, did it
feel like, risky or scary or did it all make sense
and you're like, yeah, if we do this more time, we'll be able to cover
ourselves, no problem. I imagine it was somewhat of a risk, right?
It was definitely a risk. It was definitely scary because my
actual job, I thought of it as a safety net. I
thought if something happens at the bus, it's not working out, at
least I have my job to fall back onto. So once I left
that, it was kind of like, all right, I'm all in now. Everything has to
work. There's no going back. Right. And was that
job like a cafe job that you had, or was it. A
I worked I was working at Maison Matisse, downtown New
Haven, which was a really cool cafe.
It was actually sad when I quit that place because I had been there
for, I think, about three years, and the staff was always very cool.
It was an enjoyable place to work, so it was tough
to lose that safety net. But it was also
definitely necessary for me to grow the
business to what it is today. It would have been a lot harder
to do if I was still working part time.
Yeah, it's definitely something I've noticed, like trying to do two things at
once or be in two places at once. You can only devote so much energy
to one thing. Exactly. So I think when you kind of go all in on
something, it even gives you more of a pressure
to force it to be successful because it's the only thing that you have.
So do you guys have any plans, like future plans, as
far as expanding or maybe getting a physical location
one day? Or is the bus the way it is? How
you envision it? We have plans to
open a storefront, brick and mortar location. It's currently in the
works. We're trying to figure out all the logistics behind that.
But yeah, I think that's our plan to get a storefront. Still
do the bus, but have like a home base where we could
basically a storefront that'll allow us to do more than what we're doing now because
right now the bus, we park it we used to park it in
Paul's backyard. He moved out of there. So now it's parked in my
driveway. And it's nice having it at my
house, but it's tough because I have to store
everything at my house and I live in New Haven,
but it's kind of far from our location, so we have to drive in and
out every day. But yeah, we're trying to get a storefront location that'll
basically work as a home base and
it's going to be a lot of work, but we're totally up for it.
Nice, that's awesome. So you'll have a coffee shop and then also the
school bus to work out of. So yeah, I'm sure
that brings up a whole new list of things that you've never
done before or have to learn how to do. What's that been like as far
as how to go about getting a storefront and leasing a
place? Have you learned from anybody? Have you gotten help from anybody
as far as how to go about that? Yeah, so
we found help with this guy. His name is Mark
Hales. They basically help
small businesses start up in New Haven. They help them
find ways for funding and just they have a
bunch of people, they have someone who's good at accounting, you could talk to
them. They have someone else that they're good at team
building, so you could talk to them about how to hire the staff and keep
them happy. And it's been such a huge help to
us. And anyone starting a business in New Haven, I feel
like they should totally use them because there's no way to know everything.
And it's just great to have an
organization that helps make all this make
sense because at first it doesn't make sense. It's really daunting. And
I could totally see why someone would have the idea for a
business. They start to get into it and then they realize this is so much
confusing work. I don't think I'm going to pull the trigger on this anymore. I
think I'm just going to work my safe nine to five job
and just be happy with that. So it's
totally important to ask questions and find help in this stuff,
for sure. Yeah, that's definitely some good
advice. And something that I've always struggled with is asking for help
and even knowing where to go to ask for help.
But I've noticed that networking and meeting people is, for me, the best
thing to just get information from people who have done things
similar before. How did you go about finding this guy? You said his
name is Mark Hale? Mark Hales. Yeah. Mark Hales. They're
like a consulting business that you're kind of hiring on or how does it
work? We found him through we
were trying to get a business loan from our bank and
they referred us to this guy. They said he's huge help
and he'll be able to answer basically any question you have, which
he has been able to do that. So let's see. I
have it here. It's the SBDC. I forget what that
acronym stands for. But oh, Small Business Development Center. There we
go. Yeah, you got they're
just they're really great. They've helped us out so much.
Nice. That's awesome. I'm glad that they're helping. You
mean, what does it even look like for real estate in New Haven? I mean,
there's so much new construction going up. I know even just in Worcester Square,
there's tons of new brand new retail space.
I imagine that's way different than the older stuff that's been around
and locations probably affect the
price of things. Do you guys have any idea where you want to be
or where it's possible to be? Definitely
downtown area. I think we're leaning towards Wisher Square area where
the farmers market is. That's just such a good spot. There's some
coffee spots down there, but there's not very many downtown. There's like one on
every block, so it'd be nice to be somewhere where there's a little
bit less coffee, which is hard to do. I mean, we're in New Haven, and
there's so many cafes in New Haven. But I think
worcestershire square area. We actually looked in one of
those huge condo buildings that they put up
recently. We looked there, they had a retail
space available, but it was like the price they wanted
for rent. It was too crazy for us. There was no way we were going
to comfortably sign that at lease and pay it every month. So we
passed on that. We looked at a couple of other places. It's
definitely high, the rent is high, that's for sure. But
I think just the cost of doing this,
it's not easy. It's not going to be cheap, but it's
doable. And you got to have the confidence. There's people
doing it now, they're making it work. And I feel like that we'll be able
to as well. Yeah, I think that's a good attitude to go
into it. I think it's really easy to just get overwhelmed by things.
And I know for my business, I've always tried to keep overhead
at zero just because it seems less risky that way, because
it's like, oh, well, I don't have anything into it, so it's just my
time sort of thing and maybe a little bit here and there. But I think
that also kind of limits you to where you can go and what you can
do. Definitely. So, yeah, that's I think a good
perspective to have is just other people are doing it so we can
figure it out too. Right, so you said something before.
Are you the finance guy for Jitterbus? Are you the one
kind of like crunching numbers and stuff? Yeah. So
what's the perspective of that on the business? I imagine
seeing actual numbers and projections and stuff, it could go either way,
give you confidence that you guys can do this or you can look at
those numbers and be like, wow, it's a lot of money, and be daunted
by it. Yeah. It's funny because
I've never been a math guy at all. This kind
of just fell into my lap as not my responsibility,
but it's like I'm good at figuring this stuff out for the
business and it's been great,
honestly, because the numbers have been very positive. So
we've increased our revenue every year since
we've opened. So just seeing that graph go up, it
makes it a lot easier to work with. If it was the other way around,
I would probably be losing it and freaking out. But
everything's been good, so it makes it easy to work with that
stuff. Yeah, definitely. That's always a good thing
when the graphs trend upwards. Yeah. So, yeah, I
did want to ask you too about do you guys have other employees that
you hire for working on the bus or is it just. The
two of you right now? Just the two of us. I think once we
eventually get this cafe space going, that's when we'll have to hire people
for sure. And
it's weird to think we're going to be somebody's bosses because we don't think of
ourselves that way, but it's definitely like a whole mindset we
got to get into. We got to be able to manage people. We want to
create an enjoyable place to work because we worked at
places that we have enjoyed and we worked at places that we didn't enjoy
and it's easy to see
what's the word I'm looking for? The company culture.
Yeah, exactly. There have been places I worked where just
the management was just so bad and no one wanted to be there and it
was so obvious. And once it's like that, the product really suffers
because nobody cares. And the places I've worked where it was
enjoyable and everyone was getting along, the product was way
better, if that goes without saying. But it seems like a
thing that some places just don't understand. They
don't treat their staff right and they expect everything to work well anyway,
and I don't understand that, but that's
definitely not the type of place we're trying to be. We definitely
want to make a place that's enjoyable to work and people
want to come in and work with us and that's going to be
like a huge thing for us, just making
sure everyone's happy at the end of the day, it is work. You got
to show up and all that, but we want it to be a place that
you want to come to. Yeah, that's a
good point. I've got a couple more questions for you. As we're coming to the
end of our time, I did want to ask you about
the word success, and what does success mean to you? Because I think
it can mean many different things for many different people. But just curious to
see what it means to you. Success to me.
For me, success was I was talking about this a little bit
earlier with college. I just didn't enjoy it, didn't have a
good time. And I felt at that time that I was
setting myself up for failure and I was just
really worried about the future. I didn't know what I wanted to do. I wasn't
sure what I was going to amount to or
anything like that. And I really found my success
with the bus by. And it's not about
making money to me. To me, it's about being happy with what you're
doing and building the bus, getting it up and running and
then seeing it grow. To me, that's my
success. Being from a place where I felt
really just I felt like I wasn't
going anywhere and it was sad. I really struggled with
it. And then we built the bus, got it up and running,
and I saw how well it was doing and how it
was making people happy, which was making me happy, and
just being able to figure something out on my own and
enjoy what I do for work. That was basically how I
felt like I was becoming successful. And
it pulled me out of that weird funk that I was in where I felt
like, I don't like going to college, and because of that, I'm not
going to amount to anything. And it showed me that
you can do other things. You don't need to go to college. I
finished college, but Paul, my partner, didn't go to college, and
we worked the same job and we're just as happy.
And it's definitely
been an experience being able to build something
and have it work and have people enjoy
it. To me, that's my success, I would say, yeah.
No, I think you put that well and articulated that well. I think it
seems like it's given you a purpose, like a greater purpose purpose, for
sure. Whereas I think, at least in my experience,
going to college, getting the job you're supposed to, that was the thing that was
missing for me. I wasn't connected to
the job at all. I was just doing it and eventually
questioning, why am I doing this? I don't like doing this, why am I here?
It's draining to think to do that for the next 30, 40 years,
something that you don't really enjoy. Everyone has
to work and make money and all that.
And I'm not one of those people that think there are bad jobs. I
think if you're working and you have a job, it is what it
is. But I also think that you really
should be doing something you enjoy, and I feel like a lot of people kind
of miss out on that, and it's tough, but you really got to take
risks in order to be happy with what you do.
I agree. Well said. So thanks for joining
me on this podcast. I really appreciate your time. If people want to
find out more about you, where can they do that? We have a website
right now, thejitterbus.com it's still in the works. You could go
there. There's not much there right now, but we're working on it. Also,
Instagram, our Instagram handle is Jitterbus Coffee,
and you can find us on Facebook as well. Those are the two main
places to find us. All right, well, thanks so much, Dan,
and look forward to what the Jitterbus has in the future and
possibly a future physical location. Awesome. Thanks, Gina. Thanks,
Dan. Thanks for tuning in and listening to Working
towards our purpose. If you like this episode, please share it
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