Corda Coffee with Wade Preston

This episode is co-hosted by my friend and former podcast guest, Jeff Moody.

Wade Preston is Co-Founder of Prevail Coffee, a coffee brand whose mission is to roast and serve ethically sourced, sustainably grown coffee that acts as a connection point, cultivating an authentic, diverse community. Wade began his career in coffee after working with an economic development project in West Africa and seeing the impact that ethical trade practices can have on economically disadvantaged communities. Wade has become a decorated coffee professional in seven-plus years in the industry. He has won several US Coffee Championships competitions and has pioneered innovative coffee brewing techniques, garnered praise throughout the US and Australia. Wade has also leveraged his background in non-profit work and education in philosophy to craft Prevail Coffee into a thoughtful brand that has grown throughout the Southeast and has become a hub for the vibrant community emerging in downtown Montgomery. His wife, Prevail, and co-founder, Megan Preston, live in Montgomery with their daughters, Wesley Anne (6) and Amelia (2). Wade enjoys snowboarding, reading philosophy texts and indie-rock biographies in his spare time, and trying to grow up to be Wendell Berry or Fred Rogers.

Connect with Wade on Linkedin.

Transcript

Corda Coffee - Wade Preston
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Wade Preston: [00:00:00] Go find your local independent craft coffee shop. That's close to you. Support them. Find a good barista that really cares about it. And just learn something about coffee. Cause it is a wild and crazy world.

Jared Easley: welcome back to starve the doubts. I have a special guest co-host today and then. A good friend of mine. Jeff Moody. Jeff has actually been a guest on the show. So welcome back. Jeff spent a long time that we had since we've had you on the podcast anyway. So how have you been, 

Wade Preston: things are going very well. 

Jared Easley: How are you behaving?

And, uh, of course, I'm Jared. I'm one of your hosts and I'll tell you what, today. We have a real special guest. His name is Wade Preston. He's a friend of yours, Jeff. And I was hoping maybe you could kind of give everybody a heads up on what Wade's up to and then we'll get into the conversation. 

Jeff Moody: Yeah, it sounds great.

So way. I've gotten to know Wade over the past couple of years through just the [00:01:00] pleasure of having him as a neighbor. He and his family moved into our neighborhood about three doors down from us a couple of years ago. And around that same time, we had really started to love this downtown coffee shop in Montgomery called prevail union.

That's right. Dexter Avenue is right in the historic section of Montgomery. And we were hanging out there. We had actually bought some merch, both Mandy and I had some t-shirts and then Mandy was walking around with our girls one day and Wade's wife said, Hey, that's our shop. And we mainly just thought, oh, that's the place we hang out.

But in reality, it's no, that's actually the shop that they own. And so I've gotten to know Wade over that course of time. He's that? I'll let him explain a little bit more about his origins and coming to Montgomery. 

Wade Preston: Sure you want me to jump in and tell you a little bit about that 

Jared Easley: before we do that, we've got a special question for you.

We've got an icebreaker, mental head. Jeff. They hit it, hit him up with the iceberg. 

Jeff Moody: Yeah, the icebreaker is what is the best concert that you've been to? 

Wade Preston: [00:02:00] Um, I, oh man, I've been to some, I've actually been some really, really great. So probably most recently I saw a few years back, not that recently, but in my adult life, I saw Wilco play at the tabernacle in Atlanta.

The day after David Bowie died and they closed the set with a fully acoustic instrumental version of space. And I might've cried a little bit. It was great. But I also, like, I remember just like being a kid, you know, like a high school kid and like going to like, you know, the most fun I ever had at concerts was just going to like stupid local skosh shows and stuff like that, you know, absolute mayhem and just lots of.

So, yeah, but yeah, that, that Wilco show, but two, a few years back, probably top of my list right now. Well, 

Jared Easley: I know Jeff and I can relate because we went to local band shows. That's probably all we do. I could name names, but Jeff, I don't want to embarrass you so[00:03:00] 

Jeff Moody: easily. No, I named 

Jared Easley: Michael right there. So he had a band called, uh, we changed the name like five times. But it was at one point it was soft rock and Cal, and then it changed to something else. Yeah. I can't believe we used to hang out and go watch Michael Wright play all the time, but you know, Hey, there are worse things you can do in Montgomery, or at least it was back then.

So wait, I have not lived in Montgomery in many, many years. Sadly. I kind of miss home a little bit, but I don't know about you and your story and prevail and all that. So I'm hoping you can just tell me about the start of prevail coffee roasters now, quarter coffee, 

Wade Preston: and you can just. Yeah, it's a pretty typical origin story.

My wife was like seven months pregnant and we had a west African refugee living in our basement. And that's when we decided that I would quit my job and become a barista as one.

And it was a fantastic conversation to have in my father-in-law the kernel. Nope. [00:04:00] So he's actually been really fantastic to us through all of this, but yeah. So I guess that begs the question of how did we get there? So I have a philosophy degree, which is a very good way to get really good on an espresso machine.

You get a philosophy degree and drop out of grad school. You learn to make good coffee, but I was, I was working in after college. I'd been working in, in the church and then para-church nonprofits. I kind of bounced around in that world for a little while, between like parish ministry in kind of pair of church stuff.

And it was working with a really large congregation at that time, like big 10,000 member church. And which just seemed, it is kind of grading on me to be a part of something like that, big and kind of rigid and. Any sort of organization that large, it just gets bureaucratic and I'm not, I was born an entrepreneur.

I didn't figure it out till later in life, but like the bureaucracy of a thing like that. And it was a Presbyterian church to which I loved my Presbyterian roots, but man, [00:05:00] you get 10,000 Presbyterians together. You can't move anything. You're talking about, you have to make like committees to, you know, the committee to form the committee, to create the committee, to decide on the committee formation.

So, you know, I worked in that environment. It was just kind of, you know, I felt like the God office space, you know, they're like, you know, what is it you do here in working in that? I'd gotten connected to a nonprofit that I fell deeply in love with that, um, was doing development work in west Africa and spend a little time in west Africa in.

It just, it was just being on the ground and experiencing like how developing economies and cultures, like how things work out in those places was pretty transformative to me. And particularly seeing how, you know, entrepreneurship and really leveraging local economies and markets can, can make a lasting impact in places like that.

We were working with a program that did a lot of micro lending to get small businesses, started up and ended entrepreneurial education. And then [00:06:00] they were taking the, the interest paid on the micro loans and that was going straight into their local school system. And it was really cool to just see how that, that worked and starting to understand how.

From being in the nonprofit sphere, you know, most of my professional life at that point now seeing like, oh, you can do really good things in the business world. And in, you know, like participating in the market and saw how, not only can you do really good things, but in particular ways you can do better things.

I think, I think, you know, and we can talk about this, um, you know, maybe more in depth, but broad strokes. I think charity is really great at some things. And some things are actually better, you know, if you leverage the market in a good way, So had that kind of apifany my wife had that epiphany too. So we came back, we kind of talked it over, we're ready to have a kid.

And we did the opposite of what most people do. Most people are ready to have a kid and they just bought more insurance and asked for a raise at work and ready to like kind of settle in. And we were just looked up and we're like, nah, this is, you know, we, [00:07:00] maybe our kids gonna eat rice and beans for a while, but.

We're never going to be able to look at our kid and say, Hey, you know, your parents held back because you came on the scene. We wanted to kind of live, live our lives in a way that communicated that to our daughter, that like, Hey, if you have a calling, you, you follow your calling and we felt called to do this.

So yeah, we decided to do it not I did, I quit my job. I became a barista because we fell in love with the idea of coffee, because coffee on the one hand is it's a commodity crop. It's only grown. Between the 20th parallels, pretty much 99 and a half percent in developing economies. And also like on the state side, end of it, like coffee is just a, it's an arbitrary excuse for people to get together.

Like it's a, it's a conduit for community. I always loved that line and Goodwill hunting, where many drivers characters trying to ask will too, on a date. And we'll Matt Damon's character says back to him, you know, she asked him, she says, you know, you're going to get together for a cup of coffee. And he says, well, why don't we get together and just eat a bunch of caramels?

[00:08:00] And, you know, she looks at him strange and he says, well, if you think about it, it's just as. It's totally true. I think that's such a powerful thing that like, as a culture, we've just decided on this arbitrary thing. And like, if you just want an excuse to get together with somebody who say, Hey, let's grab a cup of coffee and we all just kind of agree that that's a reason to be together.

And I just think that's kind of. It's a really, it is an arbitrary thing. And it's also this kind of powerful and magical thing that like, we just created a meme that coffees, the reason you get together. And, uh, so anyway, all that to say, I wanted to understand how it all worked. So I quit my job. I became a barista at a specialty coffee shop, went like it did a deep dive for a couple of years in the coffee industry, did everything from like sweeping the floors at a coffee roastery to.

You know, working the register at a cafe to managing a cafe and doing training and education things and roasting coffee, and kind of just learned the ins and outs of the industry as best I could and, you know, drinking from a fire hose for two years. And then we, we set out to do the thing [00:09:00] on her own. We, um, opened a little mom and pop coffee.

In Auburn. So college town, coffee shop and did pretty well with that and got the opportunity to create a wholesale coffee roastery off of that. And this was all in Auburn. And then. Connects with a friend of ours in Montgomery who wanted to open up a coffee shop in Montgomery. So we partnered with him.

And so he came into the business and that's been a huge blessing because he's a CPA and I'm like super right brain, like off in the clouds. My wife is like, she's not, she's a lot more like pragmatic than me, but she's definitely more on like the creative, like. Right. Brain side of things. So having our business partner Philip in with has been hugely helpful and long story short, we ended up just kind of deciding to headquarter in Montgomery, because we we'd been in a college town that was just kind of saturated with coffee.

And it was a small market and the cashflow cycle was crazy with students being in and out of school. And, you know, just down the [00:10:00] road in Montgomery, there was. You know, we had this opportunity to open up a coffee shop in probably the most like historic stretch of road in America, Dexter avenue, like our coffee shop, literally it sits between the Rosa parks bus stop and Dr.

King's church, you know, it's like three blocks down from like, you know, cottage hill where Hank Williams learned to play guitar. You know what I mean? It's just, uh, it's across the street from the building where the civil war started, like where the telegram to fire Fort Sumpter was sent. So it's just like this like super rich place.

Culturally and historically, and we couldn't pass up the opportunity to, to create a space for real community there. And we didn't know it, but that was really to everybody else. That was really stupid. Like everybody, like kind of Montgomery, you know, Montgomery, you guys know Montgomery listeners may not know is like Dexter avenue kind of was I'll call it like the rug that America swept everything under, after the civil rights.

Was like so much history happened there, but like everybody in Montgomery just kind of said, oh man, we need to just like, be polite to each other and forget [00:11:00] about that for a second. You know? And what happened is because of that, because of that lack of embracing the history and the culture, like the downtown really died and people sort of lost, you know, appreciation for that history.

So we didn't realize it, but yeah, it was, it was not like the best place to open a business for from outsider's perspective. But once we got open, it was like, Everybody got it. You know, there were people down there working and they just needed a place to be. And the shop in Montgomery has turned into this really dynamic, diverse community.

And it's been really awesome to watch it come together. And since then we have opened another shop in Atlanta and we're getting ready to open up a third shop in Birmingham now. And we also still have, I mean, we're, we're a wholesale coffee roaster, so we distribute to like whole foods and. You know, other coffee shops around the state and in Alabama and Georgia and do the wholesale kind of distribution in debit as well.

So that's how that's how [00:12:00] prevail came to be and how it got to where it is to finally meander around to the rest of the question of quarter coffee. The thing we're actually here to talk about that is something that's been stuck in the back of my head. Probably 10 years because I came from this world of like church work and I laughingly, you know, I say I'm a former professional Christian and kind of being in that world and then being in this world, I just always wanted to see, see those things bridge together and always had a heart to find thoughtful ways to engage believers and churches in this conversation of, Hey, The way that you spend your money matters and not in like the Dave Ramsey way.

I mean, and that's great. I'm not knocking this isn't me, that when Dave Ramsey on the bus, but in the way, like the way, what you spend your money on, where your money goes, when you spend money on a thing you're investing into. And that system may or may not be a redemptive kingdom oriented [00:13:00] system. Like it could be a destructive system, you know, and something that is not part of the kingdom.

And I think that we spend time and money on these systems that we don't even realize are, you know, at minimum non redemptive systems, non kingdom oriented system. And, uh, systems that have the tendency to cause exploitation and just bad things that we don't really want to be about, but we don't know cause the, the supply chain and the market is sort of cloudy and you know, all we see is a pretty package.

I've always had this heart to be able to like, have that honest conversation with believers in what churches and say, Hey, like how you spend your money matters. And it affects people on the ground. And if you, if you buy a product like coffee that is ethically sourced and sustainably grown, and it comes from my friends, people I know.

Then I can show you the impact it makes on the ground and we can have a community and we can bridge that gap and you can know where this comes from and you can know the person behind it, or you can just like throw [00:14:00] dollars, you know, get it a little cheaper and it's not as good. And it just goes to some faceless thing that is likely not a very wholesome if you will system behind it.

So that's the purpose behind quarter and quarter. It comes from the Latin word heart, which. And there's the old church liturgy of the Sursum Corda of, you know, that we say before community. And if we lift up our hearts, we listen to much to the Lord, you know? And so it's a matter of like creating something that connects hearts together, not just like transactional, you know, trading coffee or product for money.

Right. So, uh, yeah. And to kind of come full circle to, uh, to Jeff, I was having a conversation with Jeff and just the moaning, the fact that I've always been like sitting on this idea and really wanted to connect with. And do it just never had anybody to kind of help me out with it. And Jeff was like, that's an awesome idea.

Let's do that. So, um, Here we are. So thanks for coming to my Ted talk. I'll be done now.[00:15:00] 

Hey Wade, 

Jeff Moody: could you tell us a bit about the coffee farms that we're working with? And Courtney, you mentioned that these are your friends and the importance of that connection. So talk to us a little bit about. 

Wade Preston: Yeah. So we source coffee from Incorta, you know, as a brand we're roasting it. And we selected, we had prevailed, roasting it, and we select the things for the quarter brand that like, we just feel like we have super, we love the relationships we have there, longstanding relationships.

And they're, they're people that we want to introduce others to the people that matter to us in a real big way. And one of those is the a shipper's family in Guatemala. So in the Santa Rosa department, I've known the shipper's family for years. The oldest daughter of the shippers family actually lives in the U S now.

And she lives in Montgomery now. And my kids like, think that she is their aunt. They call [00:16:00] her Tia. She's one of these people, you know, and you're like 15 and you like, realize like, oh, that person's not really my relative. Parents just have always called them aunt or uncle, like she's that person for my kids.

So, and John and Regina, the parents and Daniella Polina sister, like they come up and hang out with us all the time and we just have a great relationship and we bought coffee from them year after year, help run some state side logistics for the small importing company that, um, Pauline and her sister. I started up to help sell more of their dad's coffee in the states.

And yeah, I mean, these are, these are people we break bread with all the time. We love the shippers family. And then not too far from Guatemala is Costa Rica where we work with the farmers project, Costa Rica and my friend, Mary Anella Marinello is doing awesome work down there. She has, uh, uh, this project, like I said, called the farmers project, which is what we would think of as a.

That's kind of, it's not really a coffee co-op, those are kind of a different thing, but for all [00:17:00] intents and purposes, it's what we would think of as a, co-op basically a group of independent farmers in Costa Rica that pool their resources together to get all of their coffees processed and export, prepped, and sent off to the U S and, uh, we were in Marinella and our friend Marcos and Marcella Oviedo down there too.

And source some really excellent coffees from them. And again, these are people I talk to you regularly. People have looked at the, and shaking hands with and know, and love very much and, uh, have had, you know, I kind of interject here and say that. We get in these, these ruts where we're like, oh, like our thinking is like, okay, we're here in the U S the big rich us to like, do the right thing and like help the people in the developing, you know, smaller economies that are poor or whatever.

And, but the reality is, is like, I haven't been helped out so much. Bye bye. Our producers, like it's such a two-way street and I'm, I don't want [00:18:00] to say that just in like a, oh, you know, like the. You know, condescending. Oh, you know, they teach me so much more than I teach them, you know, short-term mission trip talk.

Like, I mean, like literally I've had times where we've just been like kind of upside down in cashflow and stuff and I've had to go to. You know, a farmer and because I know them, well say, Hey, can we work something out here because I want to make sure you get paid well, and I don't have the money right now, but we can, we as friends on the table and sort of how to do this and like have difficult conversations and like I've been blessed by them.

And that way, like it's totally a two way relationship. So anyway, Guatemala, Costa Rica, and then Rwanda is the other origin that we have the quarter brand in. It's a really interesting project in Rwanda. My friend, Sarah started a nonprofit in Rwanda years ago called the Kula project and Kula projects I think is up to like 52 staff people now.

And. Of the 52, I think [00:19:00] 49 are native Rwandan. So basically the white folks just do the fundraising now is pretty much a natively run project, which is amazing. And mostly women led, they do a lot of entrepreneurial education, particularly of women in rural Rwanda and coffee, just as become a big part of what they do.

There's great coffee grown in Rwanda and the Stokes have small farms and small coffee businesses. And Kula opened up a wet mill a few years ago and we helped them start importing their coffee from Rwanda. And we've had a really long standing relationship with them and basically have been kind of with them every step of the way as they have started down this path of, um, of growing and exporting coffee.

So, um, The shippers and Guatemala, the farmers project in Costa Rica and the Kula project and Rwanda, our coffees that we sell in the quarter brand. So Wade, you, 

Jared Easley: you kind of touched on this, but I got two part question here. Can you just maybe get us a little bit more on what is the key focus [00:20:00] of Corta and then who are you calling on 

Wade Preston: and why?

I would say the key focus of course, is to help. We want to show people a better way to interact with. That's the biggest thing is like, we just, we want to give people a roadmap, a plan. However you want to put that on how to interact in the market in a, a real sustainable and kind of transcendent way. You know, the market is full of a lot of transactional relationships, you know, think about Verizon wireless or at, and T or Comcast or whoever these people are that have your cell phone or your internet.

That's a transactional relationship. You give them money. They give you the. You don't call up at and T and you're like, Hey Jared, how are things going at at and T headquarters? Hadn't talked to you in a while. Like you call them up and you say, Hey, my phone's not working. Can you get it to work? And they say, okay, we'll get right on it.

Or, Hey, my Bill's wrong. Can you fix that? That's the only time he ever talked to these people, it's a transcendent, it's a transactional [00:21:00] relationship. It's like putting gas in your car. You know, you just pay at the pump, leave. And those are fun. I mean, it's, you know, I don't need to know the guy who runs the water board in my area or anything.

I just need to know the water's turned on, but in the broader picture, I think our lives are enriched. I think the world's a better place. The. Are able to have a transcendent relationships. So we're able to know where our stuff comes from. And we're able to know that we are in a relationship that goes beyond just dollars and cents, because if the relationship is just about dollars and cents, that means that there's, there's someone trying to like leverage the dollars towards their end of, uh, So, what we want to create with Corda is an opportunity for people to really connect with the folks that are growing their coffee.

And maybe even the folks that are roasting their coffee, which would be us and be a part of a community and connect. And also understand that like, coffee is better when it's [00:22:00] grown by people who care when it's not just like grown like row cops and nail with fertilizer and pesticides and grown in the hot, hot sun.

But instead when it's shade Grove, I mean, John shippers and Guatemala, he's been, his family has been growing coffee for four generations. Like this guy has four generations deep on understanding the botany of growing coffee and caring for the land and using like traditional regenerative soil techniques to get the most out of the product.

And it shows in the cup, it is a better product. It is better. Anyone who's like really tasted good high-end specialty coffee compared to just like, you know, whatever Starbucks, Dunkin donuts Folgers, like we'll, we'll attest the fact that it's just a better product in a general. So to me, that whole thing, just, it beats on this drama of a transcendent experience.

And that's what we want quarter to be is like creating a transcendent experience with people and connecting them to where their coffee came from. And honestly, what we want that to be too. [00:23:00] Just kind of a foot in the door to the larger conversation, you know, it you'll drive yourself mad if you think about this all the time, but to start being a little more aware of it as like, okay, well, where does, where does my t-shirt come from?

Was it stitched together in a sweat shop somewhere? Or was it sourced ethically and like made by somebody who cares, you know, Can I ask him those questions because, uh, you know, in the Christian world, we've kind of gone by this thing of like, okay, you spend 90% on yourself and you give 10% to the church and, and like that, then you're good.

Like that that's kingdom economics, but like what's the net benefit. If that 90% is going towards like, systems that are keeping people in oppressive. Situations and generational poverty, like, are you really doing something for the kingdom? If you're 90% is locking people unknowingly? I don't mean to like guilt trip people into, you know, cause yeah, it's just the way our markets are designed.

They're designed to be unclear [00:24:00] so that people can be exploited, but you know, that's the deal and that's, that's the big picture for Cortez just slowly kind of introducing a really difficult conversation, to be honest, but one, this. And one that people I think really care about once they're connected to the person on the other side,

wait, could you talk a 

Jeff Moody: little bit more about the types of, you mentioned that the sort of the dark, the things that grow in the darkness and the coffee industry, could you talk a little bit about what's happening in the coffee industry that these farms are working again? 

Wade Preston: Yeah. I mean, the first you kind of just look at it historically in the global coffee trade, like since forever, I mean, you're going back to like the 14th century or something like the global coffee trade is, has been predicated on slavery.

That's where it started. No free people were picking. [00:25:00] Yeah, it's just, hasn't been the case for, you know, centuries. So you, you have a product that is actually pretty expensive and labor heavy to produce. It's way more expensive to make a cup of coffee than it is a bottle of wine. It's just a labor intensive process all the way through and that, so that you have a false bottom in the market that's been created by slave labor, centuries of slavery.

And so the consumer expectation is, is a low price point. That's the first problem, but it's also a very, it's a high volume product. So 85% of people, you know, in America anyway, drink coffee regularly. Most traded commodities in the world. Coffee is so there's an economic driver to like get as much of it out for as cheap as possible.

And what happens is it's hard to move the needle on that price that was originally built on slave labor, even though now. Slave labor though. It [00:26:00] exists. Isn't the default anymore. So even when there's not slave labor, there's still really terrible working conditions and really, really, really low wages. And there actually still is quite a bit on the commercial level of coffee farming.

There's quite a bit of slave labor too, because you have. You know, migrant pickers that come in and, you know, a big company, I'm not going to say any names because I don't want anybody getting sued, but big companies that you know of, and you've heard of big companies. Mike Ron was far bucks, but you know, they'd been popped on slave labor, not because they are going down to Brazil and like putting people in slavery, but because there's not full transparency in the supply chain and they don't know.

So they, they hand it over to some large Vicenta in Brazil, that then goes and contracts out, essentially a coyote for the migrant picking that happens once a year for a month and a half, two months. And then that coyote may or may not be taking the money that they pay [00:27:00] him and distributing it. To the people who were coming to pick.

So yeah, I mean, I guess I can say that about Starbucks is that that's documented. It may have happened. I think 2019, they got paused the last time they got popped for slave labor, but it happens and the pickers are the ones that get the worst of it, but it's not even that great. Even up to like, You know, landowning farmers because they're at the whim of this global coffee market.

That's always trying to like get in a race to the bottom. So if they're not in, you know, kind of relationships with roasters like myself or other folks around the world, they're actually doing really great work and are committed to the work that's going on on the ground level. If farmers are not in those types of relationships and they're just reliant on moving coffee in the global coffee more.

Price volatility will completely wreck things. I mean, I've seen, I've been in the coffee industry for over a decade now, and I've seen plenty of times where coffee will be sold and it will be considered [00:28:00] fair trade. It'll be be labeled fair trade and it'll be sold for less than the cost of production. So the farmer will be taking a loss on it and it'll have a fair trade sticker on it.

So yeah, it things get, get kind of. In the, uh, the global coffee supply chain. And we think the only way to, to fix it is to be. As transparent as possible and just kind of show our work. I tell people all the time, you know, our bags don't have Fairtrade stickers on them because it just, I don't believe in those, those labeling things, because I've seen, I've seen how many of them work and how many of them fail.

But if you, uh, you know, if you speak Spanish, I will give you the number of the person who grew it and you can call them and you can ask them any questions you want about how much their cost of production is and what I paid for it. And, you know, we'll have the whole conversation because I've got nothing to hide.

Jared Easley: So why do this as a business instead of a non-profit? 

Wade Preston: Well, probably the first answer is I'm inpatient and have to move fast and I can't wait around for a board to [00:29:00] make decisions. That's probably the most honest answer, but beyond that, I think the real reason. It really is the whole, you know, teach a man to fish paradigm charities.

Fantastic. For a lot of reasons when I'm talking about the time that I spent in west Africa and kind of getting introduced to that, the book when helping hurts was really transformative to me and kind of understanding the ways that like, you know, even like, you know, with the best intended charities can sometimes really do some, some damage, you know, not intended.

So it kind of made me realize that charity is really good at things that are like simple problems. You know, if you have a village in some remote part of the world that doesn't have access to clean water, you can raise 15, $20,000. You can dig a well and they have water. And like that's a great use case for charity.

You raise the money, you dig the well, the problem is pretty much solved. Do you need a little bit of maintenance on the well, and that's [00:30:00] it, but problems like generational poverty. That's not something you can. Rollup donors and write checks for like, it has to be operationally self-sustaining you have to, you know, you, you're not just giving people shoes, you have to create a shoe factory, you know?

So I think I'm of the opinion that businesses, the best way to solve those kinds of problems. And, you know, business works best in the for-profit sphere. I mean, we're a for-profit company, but I mean, we are pretty much re-invest everything that we have right back into the company. So it almost operates like a nonprofit at the end of the day, because we just are set on growing and helping as many people and growing our footprint and delivering value for kind of all of our stakeholders, meaning our farmers or vendors or customers, our communities, like we just reinvesting cause we want to add value.

And as that value goes up, I mean, the value of our company goes up with it and that's our philosophy and that's the way we work. So yeah, that's what we're kind of committed [00:31:00] to this like, quote unquote for-profit. We can do those things. We can leverage the entirety of the financial system to like we, that's a huge thing that we have here in, you know, economically developed Western world.

We have access to like sophisticated financial tools, like, you know, low interest rate lending and insurance and. Investment capital and all sorts of, you know, crowdfunding, like there's so many instruments that we have access to, to create leverage in a market and build scale that you are really tricky to use when you're a nonprofit and the incentives just don't really line up.

So yeah, that's kind of long short of it. We think we can, we can do more good and build a larger footprint, more efficiently for what we do as a for-profit. But of course there are great use cases for charity and I'm fully behind them. Ours is just, we're trying to solve a wicked problem here and businesses, the way that we 

Jeff Moody: do, I think there's a tendency to, for [00:32:00] all of us had been involved in churches for a long time.

And one of the. The downsides of what we see when we have a passenger to reach out to people or to help people is we don't know what we're doing. And there's a real tendency to get really excited and amped up and raise money for we're going to go to Guatemala and we're going to do VBS. So we're going to build a building and then we leave.

And rather than empowering the people that are already there and so engaging in. This type of marketplace engaging in the economy in this way is really putting the emphasis on the people that live in Guatemala to build themselves and buy in that way. Our money going into there is supporting an economy and an industry that has a chance to do good and to really pull people out of poverty rather than.

The unfortunately what ends up being the patronizing approach of, Hey, we're going to run down here and we're going to do a couple of good things and then see you later without a lot of discussion about what [00:33:00] happens after we leave. And that's a hard and long process for anybody to be involved in much less over the course of, as Wade mentioned, we're talking about generations of poverty and even slavery.

Like how do you have an influence on that once a week? Our once a year for a week, or, and let's say you've got a great program where you go for 10 years, how are you really impacting that versus the almost, I hate to say it like this and that, and I don't hate to say it, but it sounds weird is that idea of it can be as simple as the coffee that.

By knowing that your growers and who's growing your coffee and what they're doing for the people that live in Guatemala or Costa Rica or Wanda, you could know that that money is going to supporting the development of sustainable economies for these people. 

Wade Preston: You know, I 

Jared Easley: hate to start to wrap this up.

Wait, I've really enjoyed this, but we will do that. But look forward to chatting some more, but, uh, as we do wrap up, what is the best place for listeners to connect with [00:34:00] you on. Or to check out quarter 

Wade Preston: so-and-so quarter coffee.com and on all the social media things, you can find code Corda coffee, and yeah, you can hop online and subscribe.

You can, you know, get coffee since you get coffee sent to you on a regular basis. And it's, you know, Just not even worry about it, just turn your brain off. You don't have to pick up coffee at the grocery store anymore. It just shows up in your door and you know, it came from a great place and this delicious coffee, so yeah.

To coffee.com all the social media channels and yeah, 

Jared Easley: and we always like to close out with a final thoughts. Do you have any final 

Wade Preston: thoughts for. My final thought would be this. And it's probably something I haven't said enough of is go find your local independent, like craft coffee shop. That's close to you.

Support them, find a good barista that really cares about it. And just learn something about coffee. Cause it is a [00:35:00] wild and crazy. I like stumbled through this wardrobe into Narnia about coffee 10 years ago and had no idea how much was going on behind the scenes. And, uh, it has absolutely blown me away, just that as a product that I enjoy and the people behind it.

And yeah, it's a close with this, this, this little story. If you'll indulge me. I remember the first time that I had like a really good cup of coffee and it's like 12, 15 years ago. And it was this Ethiopia good chef. And, um, a friend of mine brewed it and a chem exper like hand brewed it. And I had it and it was like, you know, it was like, we're kind of bright and citrus-y, and it was sweet.

And it was like different than any coffee I've ever had. It just blew me away. And I was like, oh my gosh, like, they have been lying to me my whole life about what coffee could be. Like, I thought that it tasted like the bottom of an Ash tray. And even then I managed to enjoy it, but this is amazing in it, like mess with my head a little bit to where I was like, okay, what else are they hiding for?[00:36:00] 

You know, and I remember going to, uh, like it was such a profound experience to me that went to home Depot to buy some paint from my house, like later that week. And I remember like looking at the paint swatches and like the Behr paint and the Glidden paint and all the, you know, the different brands of paint.

I remember looking and being like, I wonder where they keep the good pig.

Surely there must be an equivalent to this in everything. And, uh, it's, it's really just coffee, like the difference between mediocre coffee and really great coffee is so huge and the price difference really isn't that much. So, anyway, that's my final thought. Like I, let go get a great cup of coffee that like changes your perspective on the world.

Jared Easley: Well, I'm inspired and will do so. Thank you so much for your time. Congratulations with Corta and everything else with you and your family. Jeff, thank you for joining me today. I really appreciate it. We got to do this. 

Jeff Moody: Yeah, 

Wade Preston: it sounds great. Jared's anytime. Excellent. Awesome. Well, thank you guys so much.[00:37:00] .