Ashish Tulsian

Hi. Welcome to Restrocast. Today, my guest is Kim Thompson. Kim is the co-founder of Raw Coffee Company, one of the oldest and highest quality coffee in UAE. Kim’s journey started with being a registered nurse in New Zealand, to, working in diamond mines business to starting coffee exploration because she thought, you know how difficult it can be. Last 16 years have been about relentless effort to find that perfect coffee, to make sure that each time they deliver the best to their customers. I found her. I found her like a swimming duck where she was calm from outside. But there was a lot that is going on to make sure that the quality happens exactly the way she likes it and exactly the way she would want to deliver to her customers. I felt enriched in this conversation. I'm sure you will.

Welcome to Restrocast.

Ashish Tulsian

Kim, Welcome to Restrocast.

Kim Thompson

Thank you so much.

Ashish Tulsian

Thank you for allowing us to have a conversation with me.

Kim Thompson

Offering me the platform.

Ashish Tulsian

We know, you know, I told you, you know, while, you know, inviting you. That raw coffee was my first early discovery of a of a coffee roaster in Dubai. Yeah. First love in Dubai. I need to get some improvisation. Yeah, No, but it was. It was my first, you know, a roastery. A discovery of a roastery in Dubai. I don't know if I, you know, couldn't find any, you know, I mean, were there roasteries even then are not. But I think I went to your roastery for the first time. I stumbled upon it and I just landed there. And I was in awe and I was like, wow, this is like, this is this is beautiful. This is superb. This is huge. We'll dive into that. We'll dive into what you know, how it all happened.

Kim Thompson

Can you remember when that was?

Ashish Tulsian

I if I have to. You know, take a guess. It must be either 2017 or 18. Was it?

Kim Thompson

We started in 2007. But I'm trying to think back because we didn't have a website. No, no, no.

Ashish Tulsian

I stumbled on it. Yeah, I'll tell you. I'll tell you how I stumbled upon it. I was looking for coffee roasters. And I think I was looking for coffee roasters on Google Maps or something. I don't remember, but I do remember that I just stumbled upon it. It was. It was not a part of any recommendation. You know, I didn't have any mechanism to reach there, but I just. I just landed there. And I remember it was now it is noor bank Metro station.

Kim Thompson

Yes, but it's got a new name. Now, I don't mean what it is but yeah there's Yeah.

Ashish Tulsian

It used to be noor. Yes. Is that correct. Yeah. Yeah. So I do remember that. Yeah. And yeah.

Kim Thompson

It's in the middle of nowhere.

Ashish Tulsian

In the middle of nowhere, Absolutely. In fact, I have found both you and something called Max Z cafe.

Kim Thompson

Yes, yes, yes, yes. Right.

Ashish Tulsian

I stumbled upon both. I discovered coffee at your side and very good grilled chicken at Max Z.

Kim Thompson

I was going to say. And the grilled meats and.

Ashish Tulsian

grilled chicken. And Max Z is like, it remains one of my favorite. And both are like, quite you know.

Kim Thompson

We're in the middle. And then on the other side, this Raju omelet, if you really like the.

Ashish Tulsian

I know Raju omlet. Oh Raju omlet is there? I knew that there was one in Barsha.

Kim Thompson

Yeah, no, there’s one there too.

Ashish Tulsian

Nice. Oh you are a Raju Omelet fan?

Kim Thompson

Yeah, and I love the Chai.

Ashish Tulsian

Nice. So Kim where it all started. And I told you, you know, I. My thesis is that nobody enters restaurant or food beverage industry by choice unless they're a little insane.

Kim Thompson

Or they make a mistake.

Ashish Tulsian

They just fall into it. It's a it's a it's a trap, right? So they just. They just fall into it. That's my thesis for everyone. Tell me if I'm wrong or if not, how did it all start.

Kim Thompson

We weren’t a restaurant at the beginning, I think I ran a cafe at the Jebel Ali Sailing Club, my fam, I have three daughters and my husband and daughters, they all loved sailing and we used to spend every weekend camping and sailing down there. You could just have bare feet and you swim and it was really cool. And when they were looking for a tender for F and B, I didn't like them paying all the money, I was paying for really bad food. So I said I would do it. I had no idea what I was doing then. Luckily only 18 months, two years of doing that and the Dubai marina was being built. And I remember going and seeing this table with a 3D model of JBR and everything. They never going to do that. There's no way that's going to happen.

Ashish Tulsian

Oh you saw You saw JBR as a 3D model? Wow. What year was that?

Kim Thompson

They did it. Well, I started Raw in 2007, so it must have been the 2006. 2006. And so the sailing club was demolished. I had time, but during the running the café, I'm originally a New Zealander and we're used to having owner operated, you know, butchers, bakers, roasters, cafes, restaurants, no franchises, well very few franchises down there. So I hadn't been able to find a coffee supplier for the cafe. So it was a solution that I thought there was a gap in the market and that's why I would start doing coffee. Obviously had no idea what I was getting myself into and the only thing if I look back, I can say hand on heart is that I'm brave, but I'm also incredibly naive and I'm just lucky that I chose the right area, you know, the niche to play in of the, you know, the direct trade, the ethically sourced, the good coffee, because I didn't know how to do it. I had to learn while I was, you know, there wasn't any website to learn about roasting or anything back then. So.

Ashish Tulsian

No, but how do you how do you decide to actually start, you know, roastery when you don't.

Kim Thompson

Know what you're doing?

Ashish Tulsian

Yeah, exactly. Like, what was that like? How do I like if I want a great cup of coffee, there are other ways to do it. You'll buy coffee from somewhere. Why will you start roasting? What happened?

Kim Thompson

Everything was coming in from Europe and there were roasters, but more of the local roastery and nuts and Arabic style. And then everything was stale or in a supermarket. And I just thought, It can't be that hard, you know, you just put it in an oven and, you know, a roaster and you cook it. Yeah, it's just being naive. And then I'm really fiercely independent and I will not fail. So I spent the first 18 months of completely running around in circles trying to get emissions tests approved at the municipality in the early stages when I think they it was a it was a compliance issue, but they didn't really know how to execute it. And I remember one day going in after about four months, literally not being able to do anything and just crying, and they quickly signed it and gave it to me and was like, I should've done that four months ago.

Ashish Tulsian

Wow. So for Emissions means like even for a small roasting.

Kim Thompson

Yeah, but I mean, it's good. I think it's really good for looking at the environmental impact, but the waste that you generate from roasting is very minimal. It's carbon, and in a lot of big cities you would have to have an afterburner on your roaster if you had a big roaster or you'd be in an industrial area, whereas we use small shop roasters still actually our largest roast is only 30 kilo. So you don't need an afterburner and you just have a chimney and there's only a little bit of carbon that comes out that you can smell.

Ashish Tulsian

So you want to put a small like, you know, small roastery. You need to have compliance with the emissions and.

Kim Thompson

Yes, yeah.

Ashish Tulsian

And what was that running around? You know, what, what were you trying to figure out? Like how did it start? Like if I was, I need to imagine that if I was starting a coffee roastery, like, what was your path to that?

Kim Thompson

So I think supply chain is really important. So to find the the farmers and the cooperatives that you can work with. So we spent the first I started the business in three years and my business partner joined me. So he came here from New Zealand also with his wife. He's a senior traffic controller. She's still an air traffic controller now, so she was the breadwinner for their family and I think the first five years was knowledge. So roasting was one part of it, sourcing the coffee and repetitively roasting and trying to improve the quality of the taste and understanding the science behind it. And then it was learning how to make the coffee in an espresso machine because we didn't know how to do that either. Understanding water chemistry because, you know, coffee is a lot of water. And looking at things like freshness and first in, first out and all those stock management and logistics things and we we just did it very, very slowly and we didn't really have any customers, so we had time to look at how we were doing it. And then if we did have a customer and we made some money, we put it back into buying green beans. And I think I had two originally two young Indian men who had been my dishwasher at the cafe and a Nepalese man who had been working in a production kitchen who I met and I thought was amazing, amazing young man. And I brought them and and we used to we put a three group vigor machine on our kitchen counter and Arabian ranches, and we just practiced and bought really ew coffee from the supermarket and just kept making it until we kind of were happy with how it looked and tasted. Didn't understand the intricacies of The Grinder for quite a long time. I it was a pretty good learning curve.

Ashish Tulsian

I, you know, I, I think after loving coffee for I think more than a couple of years, I discovered for the first time that beans are actually green beans, you know, before they are roasted and they pop. You know, for me, that was that was quite a discovery. And I think for the longest time I hadn't seen what a green bean looks like in real. I mean, I knew from the knowledge yeah, it's only after visiting a couple of roasteries I you know, had to when they ask somebody that, hey, can you show me actually how green is a green bean like, you know what, what does it look like to so many of you will have never seen it. 

Kim Thompson

You know, I still like taking people through the roaster and showing them through the green bean room and taking them and showing them the roasting room and the technical team. And because it's a lot of it's not like opening a bottle of wine, you know, you can buy a really good bottle of wine or anything like that. And it doesn't matter where in the world as long as you got the temperature right. And if you have to breathe it, you breathe it. But that's no you know, you don't need to train too long to do that. But I actually think baristas should be a profession. I think it's it's like a really good chef or a really good mixologist at the moment. Still, there isn't a category for a barista. It's a coffee maker. But I think the art of making a consistently good cup of coffee, there's so many variables to control. And, and, and that's from the farm, from the processing through the shipping with the temperatures. You can't ship coffee here during, you know, four months of summer, three months of summer. It should really be in a container. So there's lots of little things to control. And I am still, after 16 years, I'm still learning so much and I'm not making a lot of coffee anymore. I'm trying to run the business, you know. So if I'm I think we've just decided to sponsor Taste Abu Dhabi and Taste Dubai. And that was my first ever event 15 years ago was our first event. And we got that's when we got Gordon Ramsay's River, because there was a sommelier who understood coffee. And so that was really exciting because once he did that, then other other cafes and businesses would consider looking at us. But, yeah.

Ashish Tulsian

I think baristas are also getting mainstream because I see a lot of coffee competitions and like the catching rage.

Kim Thompson

There's a lot and I mean, you really have to have a tattoo or a piercing. Yeah.

Ashish Tulsian

Yeah. You need to look good. You need to look the part.

Kim Thompson

Yes, yes. But I mean.

Ashish Tulsian

Are you, are you qualified?

Kim Thompson

Yes, I. right. Okay. Yeah. Well think, I think we like employing people to join our team who don't know anything about coffee. So we employ them on their personalities. And I think we have something like 18 different personalities in the company and I love that.

Ashish Tulsian

Please educate us on like, what? What do you mean by they need to have a like a personality that fits?

Kim Thompson

I think it's the alignment of values. So you can tell. I mean, they're always really nervous, but they don't generally fly in to Dubai or the UAE knowing they want to work in coffee. They come to the UAE to get a job, to send their money home to their families. So maybe now it's a little bit more attractive to work in a cafe, but I would have said it would have been much more attractive to have gone and worked in a hotel with accommodation, food, transportation and a a more clear career path. But I do think it's becoming more mainstream. You never used to see Emirati owners working in a cafe proudly, and they do now. And they are. They're competing in the aeropress and the Brewers competitions and not roasting. So that's amazing because that's showing the depths of the growth of the industry. 375 roasters.

Ashish Tulsian

Oh really?

Kim Thompson

Registered roasters in the UAE.

Ashish Tulsian

In the UAE?

Kim Thompson

Yeah. So some really big guys. I would say while we are significant, we're not big by volume output and we still are supplying mostly either independent or owner operated or a small chain. We've started entering some bigger markets now, but often they're not looking necessarily for quality or fresh and we believe in that.

Ashish Tulsian

But it's very difficult, you know, in must be very difficult to sell the freshness and quality as the you know, as the pyramid for coffee, because at the end of the day, when somebody is running, you know, even if you're an independent cafe or even a chain, unless your offering also is specialty coffee or, you know, you're pivoting around coffee.

Kim Thompson

There’s a lot of cafes now that that is their IP that they are saying that they are a specialty so for that to be authentic they really should have fresh coffee because that makes it consistently possible for the people making the coffee to deliver the same experience to the customer. And, you know, it's stock management for them and cash flow for them to not having to buy in bulk if they can just get weekly deliveries, it's that's a good scenario I think.

Ashish Tulsian

Kim I’ll pull you back to you know, your your early years growing up. Tell us a little bit about that. You said you grew up in New Zealand.

Kim Thompson

I am from a middle class background. I'm the oldest. I have a sister and a brother. I grew up, first competing as a gymnast, and then I competed on horses. I really loved horses. And then I turned 15. I was told by my father that I had to consider what I was going to be doing next because he wasn't going to be financing this passion. And I wasn't good enough to go professional. And it was a very expensive sport back in New Zealand. And we also weren't on a farm, so it's not like we had a lot of access to land. So I remember one of my friends at school, there was a new girl started at school who I thought was really cool and she'd always wanted to be a nurse. So I went with her and I went and became a nurse because I really just wanted to leave home and I wanted to leave the place where I grew up. I wanted to get out of there. I wanted to earn money. I didn't want to go to university, so I did what we called back then registered General nursing, registered General and obstetrics nursing for four years traveled, with the nursing.

Ashish Tulsian

What was nursing The way to travel?

Kim Thompson

Used to be. It was a great way to travel, actually, and I thought it was a reasonably good income. I think looking back, you know, I wish I'd been a bit more ambitious and done medicine, but that's okay. And then I backpacked around India and Tibet and Nepal, China for a year until my money ran out, went back to New Zealand, did a bit more nursing, got married, had three children, and then my husband, ex-husband Now, he had always wanted to fly. So we went from New Zealand, Australia to the Netherlands, where he flew for KLM City Hopper and then to Bahrain and here to the Emirates. To Emirates Airlines. So that's what originally brought me here.

Ashish Tulsian

And that was back when?

Kim Thompson

That is 28 years ago.

Ashish Tulsian

28 years.

Kim Thompson

We came for five years. I'm still here. One of my daughters is married here to a lovely Emirati guy. They have three boys and my younger daughter is living with me at the moment writing a book.

Ashish Tulsian

Wow. And yeah, that's, I also read that you worked, you know, with the diamond mines.

Kim Thompson

Yeah, I did. I worked at Argyle Diamond Mine. That was funny, actually. My old.

Ashish Tulsian

Was it. Was it after coming here or.

Kim Thompson

No, it was before, so I would have been 23. So I'm the old manager of the mine came through here recently. It was really funny. It came and had dinner and came, saw the roastery and he's lovely. He's 80 and he still competes on motorbikes and dirt racing and everything. He's crazy, but he was joking that I had. I did the job as his PA for a year and he had to try and do his job. After I left finding the documents and things that I filed because I had no idea what any of the mining terminology was, because I was just faking it. I wasn't even really able to type or anything like that. So I that was probably one of the best jobs I've ever done, though I really loved that job, but I wasn't very good at it.

Ashish Tulsian

It was back in New Zealand.

Kim Thompson

No, Western Australia, Argyle Diamond Mine was a very big diamond mine actually. And so it was inland from Kununurra. I used to fly in to work every day was amazing.

Ashish Tulsian

That's awesome. And then 28.

Kim Thompson

I am not wearing any diamonds. Yeah. Yeah. I think we were allowed to, we had access to wholesale 50% off diamonds, but it was at a time of my life I, I think I bought a mountain bike instead or something with the money I had.

Ashish Tulsian

How were your travels to India?

Kim Thompson

I love India, I love India. I traveled a lot through India. I really I love the food, I love the color, I love the vibrancy. I hover in and out of yoga regularly. My family, my, my girls all do without being able to explain. And I really love reading. I have some of my favorite authors are from India.

Ashish Tulsian

Tell me some.

Kim Thompson

My favorite book of all time is A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry. Have you read that? my gosh, it's amazing. It's a.

Ashish Tulsian

A Fine balance?

Kim Thompson

A fine balance. And I've just read The Covenant of Water, which I loved, and I read it on a Kindle, so I can't remember the name of the author, but he's definitely Indian. Yeah, I think a lot of the medicine and the philosophy and the the approach historically to health and how the body works and herbs and I resonate with it quite a lot actually.

Ashish Tulsian

But that is, is that is it something that you gathered from your, you know, backpacking experience across India or is it something like has grown growing over the years through reading?

Kim Thompson

I did a four year course when I realized I was a bit disillusioned with modern medicine as a nurse that I did a course in alternative medicine, herbal medicine. and I think that exposed me a lot more to homeopathy and ayurveda and I didn't really go into it deeply, but and, and also reflexology, radiology. I believe that stuff for me that’s science.

Ashish Tulsian

So you did that course like a full time course?

Kim Thompson

No I did it. What do you call it when you I, I did that in my own time. A four year course. My own time. Yeah.

Ashish Tulsian

And where was that?

Kim Thompson

I did that in Australia. But then at the end of that course, I wasn't confident enough to become a alternative practitioner in case I missed something because I and I also realized that a lot of people need to change their lifestyle and that's not what they're coming to see somebody for. They're coming for a tablet or nothing too hard, you know

Ashish Tulsian

A quick fix. 

Kim Thompson

Yes. And I think modern society, the way we live, the way we eat, the way stress all of the chemicals, I think we have to change our lifestyle. But that's a that's a much more you have to be more committed to doing that. And then I got into coffee, so I don't know.

Ashish Tulsian

That I'm actually forced to ask you what what is your opinion on you know, bad effects of caffeine the world keeps talking about?

Kim Thompson

I think life is about moderation. It's about balance. I think if you drink a cup of coffee with milk and sugar or syrup or anything like that, it's not the same as if you have an espresso or a brewed coffee. I think there are a lot of proven health benefits from having coffee, but again, I think having too much of anything is not ideal. And then it's the quality of the water. It's the quality of the coffee that you're having.

Ashish Tulsian

It's I mean.

Kim Thompson

Maybe it's the ritual of how you drink it because, you know, you have different cultures that walk and drink it over. I see you carrying, is that a coffee or is that something else in there?

Ashish Tulsian

Coffee, trust me, I wouldn't mind if it was something else, but it's coffee.

Kim Thompson

Well, I have to ask that because I am the only person in my company that drinks tea and it’s 56 people and they all drink coffee. And some of them I know, my business partner included, I can't talk to them till I've had at least two double espressos. They need to have their coffee before because I, I did. Yeah. But I sort of sneak in and I just have a breakfast tea in a mug so I'm not very refined, but I sort of sneak in feeling really embarrassed about doing it. And I sort of put my, my mug under the espresso machine and try not to get in anybody's road and get out really quickly. But they all they all drink lots more coffee than I do. I I'm only have two, maybe three, but only and if you.

Ashish Tulsian

No but you were commenting on like the way that the way I.

Kim Thompson

Do you make it last for a long period of time. Yeah. Whereas some people drink it fast and you have the Italians that stand and drink it and the French that would never have coffee with milk after certain time of the day. And you know, there's all these beautiful cultural.

Ashish Tulsian

For me I think for me I think, you know, I only have one coffee a day. I like rarely, you know.

Kim Thompson

And you have it as a pick me up because you like the taste.

Ashish Tulsian

I like the taste. I don't do it for caffeine. I don't even like I have never, you know, had a sip of coffee and said, there's so good. I mean, for me, it's it's the taste. Okay. And I love the ritual of making my own coffee and I make one 250-40 grams. Once. And I will probably drink this for like three, three and a half hours, I’ll sip it, And mostly it's going to be afternoon, like mostly after 3 p.m.. So 3 to 6 p.m. is where my coffee is working and, and that's it.

Kim Thompson

People have their like routine. We have some customers that drink the same coffee at the same time in the same chair by the same person. Yeah.

Ashish Tulsian

For that I have to be at the same place.

Kim Thompson

And others that are really experimental, which is fantastic. It is funny.

Ashish Tulsian

But I love espresso. I think for me the problem is that not everybody can make, you know, a good one. And I can't you know, there's a compulsion, right? So. So but if I find good espresso, I'm somebody who's going to like will sit at one place you've just.

Kim Thompson

You’ve just been to Barcelona. Did you find any good coffee up in Spain?

Ashish Tulsian

Yes, a lot of them, actually. I brought two of them for you.

Kim Thompson

Amazing.

Ashish Tulsian

Barcelona had, like, some very good coffee roasters. Yeah, Yeah.

Kim Thompson

There's a really good food scene, I think, in Barcelona.

Ashish Tulsian

Yeah really fun.

Kim Thompson

Really, really good.

Ashish Tulsian

Yeah, really fun. I think. I think just the vibe of, you know, the vibe is quite chill.

Kim Thompson

But also I think like Spain, Colombia, they really live for their friends.

Ashish Tulsian

I think a lot of Spanish.

Kim Thompson

People, the food for their music. Yeah.

Ashish Tulsian

I mean, yeah, Barcelona was I mean it's also quite sunny. So I think the way I saw action on a weekday around beach felt like a national holiday. So I don't know what was going on there. But, but people are really happy and they they're really making most of the, most of the beach.

Kim Thompson

Yeah, they do very much.

Ashish Tulsian

Kim on the coffee side. Yes. What's what's happening. You know, how how the business I mean when did you start Raw and how has business been. You know, I think give us a view from your eyes so far.

Kim Thompson

I think we started in 2007 and as I mentioned earlier, the first couple of years we were going around in circles. I have come to the realization that a business goes through different evolutions and whether that's the money coming in, because obviously every business is either providing a service or a product to a consumer and then you for an owner operator, you are often restricted by your cash flow on the on your ability to grow or scale. So we've gone through these waves of excitement when we get really good customers or when, you know, one of our team wins a barista championship or when we've found a really good partner to work with and, you know, Rwanda, Burundi or something like that. And we've gone up there and it's been this cycle and every time we grow, everything's just slightly out of reach because we need more money to buy more stock, we need more equipment, we need more people. So I measure it by my own values really, where it's always been an excitement for me when we've reached a point where we've been able to recruit someone who's really good into the company, who's got way more skills, and that brings that area of expertise. That's that's been a really exciting phase. And remembering 16 years is a long time. So we're slow. We've been very organic and both Matt and I are control freaks, so we didn't want an investor. We wanted to control the foundation of how the business was going to be. We just didn't realize it was going to take as long as it has. We're ready now to be brave now, now that we're more grown up.

Ashish Tulsian

To let go?

Kim Thompson

Yeah. And I think it's like we've had a baby that now has gone through this staggering toddler and they're ready to go to candy. So we're ready to be part of something that's a little bit more scalable and and, you know, offer the farmers that we've been buying coffee from the ability to sell us more because they're waiting for that. You know, they've they've stuck with us for quite a long time. They want to work with us.

Ashish Tulsian

But what are you saying is something really important, I want to double click on that. Because you know, the the realization and you know, what you're telling me is that letting go as an entrepreneur is tough. And especially, you know, you built it, it's your baby. You know, you you want to work a certain way and I know of you definitely have a list of things you don't want to do. You know, you don't want somebody do somebody else to fiddle with it, even though, you know, they may do it better or they may, you know, open like a different portal for you. When did this realization happen? You know, and.

Kim Thompson

Honestly, for me, I think I might have got the earlier it would be when we'd survived COVID. And that was obviously for any, you know, hospitality. For me, it was no fun. Bet you would know. We had money in the bank because we were saving to move into Saudi, but we were on the like we our toes were on the edge and we were ready and we'd got all the licenses and everything. And but we were hesitating and actually were really pleased we hadn’t. And because we were able to use that money to, you know, keep the team.

Ashish Tulsian

Sail through.

Kim Thompson

We had to change. We had to show real agility and come up with different scenarios for different eventualities. And, you know, we lost all our B2B sales pretty much overnight. So we had to be clever in getting our story out to let people know that we could deliver to their homes. And if they're making banana bread and they're doing the other things, they could learn to make coffee and you know, we did online trainings and delivered water and all that sort of dumb stuff, but that kept us going. And then people learned to make it on their own and realized that actually they could make it better than a lot of places that they were paying money for. And so that changed our breakdown of B2B, B2C. It's now we've had to work very hard to get a B2B back up where it was. And we're nearly there. But it's been a very slow slog because there's also been a lot of new players that have come into the market. Some more of a facade than a genuine threat. But noise and distraction.

Ashish Tulsian

Correct, I mean, they hurt you for for the time they sustain.

Kim Thompson

And we had to also make a strategy around that because we we should listen to what's going on. But we are actually controlling a lot of the market with quality and most of the businesses pick their pricing on us. So we just had to almost put blinkers on, have our eyes open, concentrate on what we felt was the right thing to do for our business. And we took the hard route really because we were saying, okay, but we can help you with your menu, your solutions, your water, your equipment, your training. We're not just providing you the coffee and it's all like a added into the kilo price. So we had to wait for the operators, owners to appreciate the value of those things because we're not the cheapest coffee on the market we have We have beautiful coffee. And then the other thing that's sort of unsexy is that we're consistent because, you know, there's some that might have beautiful, but, you know, they're bringing in 30 kilos and it's gone. So we are we sort of old school. We think it needs to be consistent.

Ashish Tulsian

But that that is only possible in micro lots or small lots.

Kim Thompson

No, it's, it's our whole business we base on, on that philosophy but ranging from like our lowest scoring coffee would be in 84 and that's a decaf. So you know, it's taking and the decaf is actually quite good. You might if you had all the coffees on the table, you might not be able to pick it was a decaf. So that's a really good indication of a good decaf.

Ashish Tulsian

How do you do? I have this question is for for like me personally.

Kim Thompson

Are you opening a roastery?

Ashish Tulsian

Always are always, always on the edge. How do you make like a bean decaf?

Kim Thompson

Yeah. So they grow the coffee the same way Coffee that we have. We have two coffees from Colombia that are decaffeinated. They grow the coffee, they dry the coffee the same way. So one of our coffees is a washed coffee. It goes through that whole process of being washed. And then they take it to a plant where they use a byproduct of sugarcane. So it's a acetate and they put it in a bath. It's natural. It's not chemicals. And the osmosis exchange takes out quite a few things. And one of them is caffeine. And then they dry it again, probably a big air dryer. And then we have a very.

Ashish Tulsian

From the green bean.

Kim Thompson

From the green brain. And then so they take the green bean of a we've got a villa Maria naturally processed coffee where they take they pick the cherry from the tree, they drive the cherry on a raised African drawing bed when it reaches the desired like 11 percent moisture they haul it to get the fruit off the outside and then they take it to decaffeinated. So that's a much more expensive decaf but it's that they're experimenting a lot with it and I think as I mature and learn I realize that it's okay to have decaf coffee and have decaf.

Ashish Tulsian

I am actually, you know what I'm looking for? You know, decaf coffee for, for a while. Because there are times when I actually want to have a second cup.

Kim Thompson

Yes.

Ashish Tulsian

And I'm like.

Kim Thompson

And you don't want to.

Ashish Tulsian

I don't know. Yeah. Because, because after that, I mean, it also gets to you, right? So Yeah. And I can see that. Okay. My sleep cycle gets messed up.

Kim Thompson

But I think there are some people that doesn't affect the caffeine doesn't affect them the same way. Like, you can't say it affects everybody the same way. I don't have caffeine the first part of the day because I feel like it drops my blood sugar, makes me feel a little unwell. But if I've had food and I can drink as much coffee as I would like. But there are some people that feel that caffeine really makes them anxious. It's not something like, Yeah, yeah, yeah. But yeah, there's really good decaffeinated coffee available now. I can send some to you if you like so that you can try it tomorrow. But we used to be a little arrogant and think, you know, why would you have decaf? It's like, why would you have non-alcohol beer.

Ashish Tulsian

As an entrepreneur when you feel you know, what is what is the most.

Kim Thompson

Difficult? It was after COVID, and I think it was knowing that we didn't want to be the Nokia of specialty coffee. We have to keep innovating, we have to keep moving forward. And it's to do what we want to do is going to cost a lot of money. And we've grown organically without an investor to this point. But to do what we want to do, we need to use our knowledge, our timing, our very strong supply chain. And we need we know this time we need a decent budget for marketing.

Ashish Tulsian

What is it that you want to do?

Kim Thompson

Scale in two different markets? We have we have an amazing cold brew that we have a business idea for that we really want to do. Cold brew is huge in America and North America huge. And I mean the weather here, there's people playing with it, but none of them have got a very good product and we've got the product, But we just need to commit to we need a new team, we need a another warehouse bottling line. So that's exciting.

Ashish Tulsian

That's a that's a heavy CapEx.

Kim Thompson

Yes, it is. It is. And you know, to enter a new market to do it properly, we need to be there. You can't do it from here. So that's another you know, it's like you can't teeter on the edge.

Ashish Tulsian

And What what does that let go look like. Like in what spheres you still want to make sure that okay, no I'm still going to hold the control and what part of the business you have realized that, okay, you know, maybe I'm good at this, but I need to let go. I need to, you know, allow other people to.

Kim Thompson

I've just been doing with a really wonderful woman, my Gallup, you know, profiling, just to confirm what I already knew. But it's good to look at it and see.

Ashish Tulsian

How how how perfect was it?

Kim Thompson

I'm 98% perfect. And I think the little bit where, there were three questions where as I was trying to answer them, my laptop got a bit, did some stupid stuff. So it's so accurate. It's ridiculous. I'm really into people, I'm really into connections. I'm really into developing a team communication. I hate networking. I didn't used to like doing this type of thing. I love the sourcing of the green beans and I love the travel. I love forming the relationships with the the farmers and the producers. I like the responsibility.

Ashish Tulsian

That that comes from the people part, right? The people in relationships.

Kim Thompson

Yeah. You can tell a lot from a community about how good the coffee is going to be if it's tidy, if it's if the women look, if the women look happy and joining in and feel like they can join in when you're there, if they if they have a voice, because, you know, 90% of the labor is women, but they often don't have access to the finance. So to go there you get to see the health of the woman, health of the children and all the really good coffee comes from pretty poor countries and it's a pretty important export or commodity for them. So I really love going to origin I haven't been to of a farm or made a co-operative that's unhealthy where the coffee's good.

Ashish Tulsian

Wow that's a that's some insight.

Kim Thompson

And a lot of a lot of the next generation, the younger men and women. It's a big ask for them to continue growing coffee. So we really need to make sure we understand their challenges and try and get finance to them, not just the one time we buy the coffee, but maybe we commit, you know, pre-commitment sales. I'm really looking forward to some of you clever guys coming up with some type of, you know, provenance, which only helps us access finance but helps them with this because I think that's going to come. I have a feeling that will this sort of farm gate visibility and with values being added and stuff is going to come at some stage with soybeans.

Ashish Tulsian

I agree with you. It should. It should. Because the way the way it's, you know, growing all over the world.

Kim Thompson

And you don't need all these people in the middle.

Ashish Tulsian

I think all the other although, you know, the supply chain and the middlemen and I think this like there's a layers of, you know, middlemen in the in the coffee business. I think that's largely also because world has been doing a lot of commercial blends, you know, gathering coffee from literally all over the planet, just mixing them up and, you know, selling them, you know, a Dark or the darkest roast to get into the espresso machine. I think that has just created so many layers of middlemen who basically, you know, neither understand coffee, not understand the you know, the end use.

Kim Thompson

You know, the farmer has maybe never tried their product and they and specialty like you can go to the set we've been to the same farm when the Nestlé buyers are there in Ethiopia. We've literally been on the same little tiny plane going and we thought we were so lucky, like getting on the plane with them and they’re buying hundreds of containers and we're only buying two, but we pay so much more money and they they care about a customer, a consumer like us, because, you know, the price per pound or per kilo that we're paying is significant compared to those great big volume sales that they make. But it's coming from one farm and it might be coming from one hill, but it's the the care the farmer takes when picking their crop, you know, and if we think it's been hard on our end of the if and be saying it was really tough for the farmers going through COVID because you know you know buyers weren't buying.

Ashish Tulsian

And it has a shelf life like it’ll go bad they can’t store it for long.

Kim Thompson

And they they help each other pick it's quite a community thing And so they move around picking and they were not able to to move.

Ashish Tulsian

You know. So I you know, you know, when you're talking about, you know, how farmers are taking care of their crops and how the community is, I met this guy last year in Goa in India. You know, he is doing he's running a coffee lab where he's just testing coffee, you know, on various parameters. And he's also, you know, running his own grocery. I was asking him about one coffee, which like just blew my mind away, like very, very good coffee. And I was like, okay, where's this from? And he's like, well, this is a tribal coffee. He said, Well, there are places in India where farmers are not really coffee farmers, but they are adjacent to, you know, the coffee fields and there's a lot of wild coffee that just grows around their farms and they harvest it.

Kim Thompson

There's quite a lot he's taking out of India now.

Ashish Tulsian

Right? And historically there was no buyer, you know, of that. So most of that coffee used to get bought by the lowest value commercial lots. He said, One day I tried that coffee and I was like, Wow, well, what happened here? So he said that I started working with these farmers and he said, You have to you have to see why this coffee's great. He said that farmer talks to the plant, so they're talking the plant there. They're saying, Hey, come on, don't don't go this way.

Kim Thompson

You must be the perfect soil, the perfect rain, the perfect sunshine, the shade, and probably a really old varietal because it's like that's something that we.

Ashish Tulsian

I was surprised by the volumes. This guy this guy is like he has I think if I remember correctly, he's talked about some 500 families, like in the same geographical spread they are harvesting 3.5 tonnes for him. Fantastic. Which is, which is massive because collectively. Because when he said that it's, it's wild coffee, I was like okay I'm not single origin. He said there's no need to be.

Kim Thompson

That’s very labor intensive and probably like snakes on the Ground when they're picking you go.

Ashish Tulsian

And for them and for them he, you know that that money is actually bonus because it's wild coffee. It's not even the cash crop, it's a, it's a side crop for them.

Kim Thompson

So a lot of the varietals of coffee came out of Ethiopia. So Yemen is somewhere that cultivated coffee for the first time. But a lot of the heirloom varieties scientifically can be proved genetically that they've come from Ethiopia and they still have wild coffee here and coffee growing in different parts of Ethiopia.

Ashish Tulsian

Yemeni coffee It's interesting that you said that. How do you get coffee from Yemen given, you know, the zone? And, you know.

Kim Thompson

So we went we went I've been to Yemen a couple of times and it's it was so beautiful. And it's like going back, you know, 100 years and all of the beautiful houses on top of the hills. And it's very dramatic scenery, very harsh farming. I think.

Ashish Tulsian

Now, like are you talking about the recent?

Kim Thompson

It's it's terribly tragic now. You know, at the moment we are so we have a friend, Garfield Kerr, who's actually the World Specialty Coffee Association Board. He's here he lives here in Dubai, and he has invested in a a processing plant, in Sana. And his dream is to try and help the Yemeni farmers to process their coffee and then get these samples tidied up really nicely and get it out to the market to help him grow, because that's where he's identified he could add the most value. So we kind of lucky we have an in, but it's a very challenging market to try and get coffee out of.

Ashish Tulsian

Our first Yemeni coffee I tried was from your house.

Kim Thompson

Yeah. So Garfield has a business called Mocha 1450. So the port, that coffee. Coffee. First left Yemen is the port of Mocha in the year 1450. So he has a business here in the UAE, he's to two locations, one on Al Wasl road and one on the Palm and we source coffee through connections with Garfield. Very good. It's very unique tasting coffee, amazing history.

Ashish Tulsian

A very delicate I mean I think.

Kim Thompson

Yeah and it's got a if it's a clean, natural fermented coffee it has sort of almost like wine like flavors, I think maybe 13, 12, 13 years ago, we used to get coffee from Yemen that honestly just tasted like wild strawberries. It was amazing. But it's like.

Ashish Tulsian

But I've heard that. I mean, is that true or not? I've heard that supply chain because of War stricken zone and you know, all that is going on I've heard that supply chain, you know, from Yemen at times smells of, you know, what do you call explosives or, you know, not really.

Kim Thompson

I think that's a story. I think it depends how they've stored the coffee, because they often store it in the ground floor of their houses, once they have picked it and dried it. And then if maybe they had oil or a generator or something like that, there could be contamination.

Ashish Tulsian

I heard that the trucks, you know, at times that aren't able to transport, you know, the stuff through the regular supply chains and they basically put it on a like a military truck or something..

Kim Thompson

I think sometimes, ours has come by bus and a rice sack, you know, so there's a little bit of a risk. You know, most coffee now comes in grain pro plastic bags, which would keep out any pollutants or anything nasty. They don't have anything. So there's there's a risk. But I would love to see it one day get back to what it showed potential to do. And I think, you know, we've realized it's not just the the farm, the soil, the type of coffee that's growing, it's the producer. That's a huge part of the equation that is a business that is trustworthy to the farmer that pays them, you know, because the farmer can't pay for that processing because they don't have any money left, because they only have that crop once a year. So then there needs to be a really good reason then.

Ashish Tulsian

When I tasted Yemeni coffee I was like, okay, this can probably compete with, Panama, Geisha, you know.

Kim Thompson

Well, you have to remember here too, that there's a strong emotional connection to the coffee from Yemen because they've all grown up with their, Honestly here, all the grandmothers, they were bringing the green beans in and hand roasting them in the kitchen and making their own coffee. And it was either Ethiopian or Yemeni coffee here. Here in the UAE. Yep. Yep. It all came from here. But I think that that that connection in to Yemen is real. With regards to that lovely respect they have. That coffee originated in the, you know, the Arabian Gulf. It did lift the world up through the Ottoman Empire from here, not here. Our neighbor.

Ashish Tulsian

Yeah. Yeah. How's the business of coffee? You know, where do you see the business of coffee going? And you said 375 registered roasters alone in UAE. I can totally see that you know, coffee's kind of blooming all over the world. You know, I can talk about for example, India.

Kim Thompson

yes.

Ashish Tulsian

I like literally I can tell you three years back as COVID hit, I really had to search coffee roasters in India and I found three. In three years, I think if you search right now, I don't know how many that will be, but I can tell you they'll be way too many. Yeah. And all of them just bloomed right in front of me. I can tell you that. I spent a lot of time in U.S. North Americans drink, coffee a little differently. Specialty coffee is Still catching up. But it blows my mind that you know a country. They drink a lot like for the for the kind of coffee consumption that market has and the and the penetration of good quality specialty coffee You know, when I see that it's like it's like too big a gap and. That gap I don't know if it's an opportunity or not, looks like an opportunity. And you know, Europe, I think has been like Europe, always consistent, like it has both parts quite, quite in equal proportion. How do you look at coffee business? What's what's the opportunity?

Kim Thompson

I think here the market is saturated. I think that a lot of the people that are involved in coffee, it's a passion project, it's a it's a wave. And you see that all around the world. Actually, what happens in London or Hamburg or Austria or Melbourne or New Zealand or San Francisco, it's going to happen here. It's a wave. So I think we know we're not unique. We caught up fast because I think we used to say we're good five years behind Melbourne, we're not anymore. There's a lot of really good coffee here and there's a lot of really good baristas. People find their tribe, their community, where they want to go.

Ashish Tulsian

But if an entrepreneur comes to you, if I come to you and say, Hey, I want to enter a coffee business, not not, let's say in UAE alone, but I just want to enter a coffee business. What is going to be your advice to me? What are the things that you will ask me to do, the dos and don'ts?

Kim Thompson

I’ve written Quite a few blogs on this, I think understanding the market, looking at the existing players to see what they're good at, what they're really good at, because they will all have something hopefully that they're good at. We look at things like the, you know, the competition. I think you need to have you need to have a showroom or some way people can come and experience what you're doing. So that's accessibility. Even if you're like, we're in the middle of an industrial zone, but it's still accessible because it's close to Sheikh Zayed road. Yeah, I think knowing where you want to fit into that existing part of the segment of the market, whether you want to supply the hotels and volume or you want to start your own cafe chain or you want to have a truck or you want to do events, you need to have a you can't do everything well. So you'd need to know where you wanted to to go into it. I think you're you're already doing F&B restaurants so that you already know how to operate. So that's exciting for us to know someone that's already an operator because I think there's a lot of people that will get into F&B that have no experience and it's really hard, you know.

Ashish Tulsian

But that's that's most of the people, that's most of the people in there for me.

Kim Thompson

I think it makes sense if you're already in F&B it adds another revenue stream to control. Back to my control thing, to control your own quality of your coffee, the the opportunities of cold brew or pods or there's so many different market segments that you can look at. When we went through that Endeavor organization I was talking to you about earlier on the first time we tried the local selection, we we didn't get through because we.

Ashish Tulsian

Talk about it. I mean, if again, if we can explain that endeavour.

Kim Thompson

Yeah so Endeavor is an organization that I really love the an SME accelerator, global platform that go into emerging markets and they recognize a genuine true economy needs to have a SMEs and then they provide a network of mentors to help you whether it's logistics, marketing any part of your business. And for me it was I was late to start my journey and in business it was a revelation that these men and woman could give me advice on my coffee business without them knowing anything about coffee.

Ashish Tulsian

Yeah, that's.

Kim Thompson

Because it's not really about the product that I can do that I can do the product. Yeah, but it was about everything else. Yeah. And they can still do it. You know, we meet them every quarter and, you know, I've come out of some of those meetings pretty shaken because of Immediately we were going to try and cheat, you know, to get an outcome that we wanted. They could tell straight away and they're like, no, no, you need to be doing that or whatever it might be. And it's been really very giving us a frame to work within, always pushing us, always challenging that status quo. You know, when you get comfy sometimes you've maybe you've got something going on with your family and other little distractions. It's like, come on, you've focused, you've a lot of people depending on you and you know, it's really good. You know.

Ashish Tulsian

It's surprising how the mechanics of running a business, you know, can be, you know, like so transferable, you know, so, so similar, irrespective of the business that you are running. Like the.

Kim Thompson

And I, I wasn't aware of that. But that's so true. Same rules.

Ashish Tulsian

Yeah.

Kim Thompson

And for me, I like to pick and choose like I do in a lot of things in my life where I take the bits out of that that resonate with me that I like. So I really believe, you know, the development of the team.

Ashish Tulsian

How much, how much of your, how much of your entrepreneurial ego got challenged by, you know, folks at endeavor.

Kim Thompson

A lot a lot and nearly not getting through and it all came down to my my area that I'm I kind of control and that scalability was fallible because of human error. You know you think about coffee, it's very late. I know you can have robots now and I know you can automate the roasting. Yeah, but I don't believe the area of our industry that we play in is ever going to to accept that as a status quo because it's about connection. It's about that transfer, that communication happens between like we’re out, I've realized my job I think is to source the coffee, roast the coffee and then communicate the story to the consumer and control all the little things that go on. And, you know, that's it's hard controlling all the little things. But if ever any customer gets to feel connected to where the coffee comes from and they and they trust us because they have to trust that we're not greenwashing or because that goes on a lot and industry that if they if they can trust us, I think that's what's made our business so strong. And we didn't know anything about ESG when we started. I didn't even know what it meant. So the first time I'm in a meeting and they're talking about ESG, I think about going back in and try to figure it out, and trying to learn about and go, we do that. I didn't even know what ESG was.

Ashish Tulsian

Are you getting are you getting some ESG compliances or certifications?

Kim Thompson

So we're looking at it. I think, we're looking at it. We actually looking at B Corp. I think B Corp feels to us like it's something that it feels like that's what we should be doing now.

Ashish Tulsian

I think I think what you said, you know, is really, you know, great that that the story of where is this, you know, been coming from you know, there was this harvested, the community where it is coming from. And you know, bringing that story to the end user can be, you know, one company that did it beautifully well is this shoe brand called Birds.

Ashish Tulsian

But yeah, have you heard of them?

Kim Thompson

I have.

Ashish Tulsian

I know the domain name goes by Allbirds.

Kim Thompson

I thought, you know, say Patagonia because that’s an incredible brand.

Ashish Tulsian

That too, you know I actually should say about Patagonia because Allbirds did a Patagonia that that's what I believe right Yeah but but I think yeah very similar to that.

Kim Thompson

One one thing that's real with anything like if you bought good shoes from birds or Patagonia or you bought a good mescal or whatever it is, If you've done that and you pay a similar amount of money for something that's not good, you're never going to buy the not good.

Ashish Tulsian

But for me, as it's an.

Kim Thompson

Evolution of you as a customer to, understanding the value of.

Ashish Tulsian

No, that's true. But I think I think it's also the story that makes you, you know, present to the quality. For example, you know, I remember my experience as a consumer, why I said birds and then Patagonia, obviously, because, you know, I bought Patagonia and not buying the story for me, it was already popular. Birds as a brand got built in front of me.

Ashish Tulsian

So for me as a consumer, to experience that brand and the product and the story was actually firsthand, right? So I remember two things that they did. Well, in fact, that's that's a that's an idea as well. If you if you think about implementing. So when you go to a Bird store, they had this wall which basically talked about where was that wool coming from and then they I mean they basically have the deconstructed shoe.

Kim Thompson

Okay.

Ashish Tulsian

Right on the wall. So each piece that has gone into the shoes, you know, stuck on the wall saying, okay, these are the materials used, you know, in this shoe. Now, the coolest thing for me was that because their contents you're talking about merino wool, you know, through all their communication. As soon as I bought the first pair, they sent me a bill, you know, on the email and on the email there was a link which said, You want to see you want to say hi to the sheep?

Kim Thompson

Yeah.

Ashish Tulsian

And I clicked on it and and it asked me, do it, ask me to put a hashtag number. And I was like, wow. And I'm a tech guy. I mean, I my mind was blowing that like, Wow, how did they do that? I mean, it was a gimmick, but it was it was a cute one because as soon as I put that number, it it opened a page which had a video of a lot of sheep going and it said, This is your sheep. And I was like, wow. And so then they said, Wait, no, this is your, you know, I was like, you got me.

Kim Thompson

Well, I think I believe the Dairy Board now does that with the cows that they they have a chip of some kind so that they can record where the milk comes from. So I was going to say that maybe they. But then they got you. So. Yeah, yeah, they got I'm pretty gullible for sure. So I was, I was going to believe that.

Ashish Tulsian

No, I almost trust me, I borderline believed it while it was happening, but it was very cool like that that stayed with me. And, you know, of course Patagonia did that same playbook, right? So they did it, you know, early years. I'm sure early customers of Patagonia had the same emotion, which I have.

Kim Thompson

Yeah, It's nice when you found a find a brand like that.

Ashish Tulsian

Yeah. So, yeah. Mescal, coffee. I think a lot of these where community and the farmers can be talking about can be can be a you know, very interesting idea.

Kim Thompson

Yeah. And I think probably what we've gone through with like a pandemic and thing, it makes you want to be connected with your family. It once you make it to to be connected and maybe go back to there's a lot of new bread companies that are in town companies is there's lot more smaller industries that are starting whose products are a lot better than the big guys. You know, they're buying good ingredients. And I like to think that there's a shift coming in.

Ashish Tulsian

What do you do for your own mental health? Do you want to talk about that? You know, or not not a good idea?

Kim Thompson

I don't want my children to hear this.

Ashish Tulsian

OK then we'll keep it offline.

Kim Thompson

I think my my daughter said to me last night because I was a bit stressed last night, I I'm very I have a small business that brings in beautiful products from Palestine. So I am I travel there quite regularly. I was back there last month. I have a lot of friends there, so I don't think my mental health is great at the moment. I'm really sad and a bit depleted by humanity, if I'm honest, but I know I need to do yoga. I know I need to not be on social media.

Ashish Tulsian

Why not?

Kim Thompson

Because it doesn't make me feel good, Does all the yoga makes me feel good. Not the social media. I mean, the yoga makes it makes me feel really good. I have a trainer that I see that I haven't seen for a few weeks because I had a cold. I have a big rescue dog that I walk and I love walking and I live out near Al Barari, which is the really green part of Dubai. So we go on big walks. I think week I did a hike inRas Al Khaimah during the weekend, which I love. I feel like I've got a reasonable work life balance, but I also feel I'm really lucky that I don't have young children, I have my grandchildren, but I can come in and love them and then, you know, leave them. Have a lot of time to dedicate to work, which I'm enjoying. I get a lot of purpose from.

Ashish Tulsian

What's keeping you excited every morning?

Kim Thompson

The opportunity of growth. I think learning. I love learning. I love a challenge. And I now my business is I'm not in that stage where you don't know if it's going to make it. That was a little bit. I like taking risks. I'm really good at taking risks, so I can feel that we're at a stage that's really exciting and I'm I might have to lose a bit of control and that stage, but I'm I'm kind of ready for that too, because there's a few other things I'm interested in. I want to build another house. I built a beautiful house in Bali about ten years ago.

Ashish Tulsian

In Bali?

Kim Thompson

In a place called Mast just outside of Ubud.

Ashish Tulsian

And how often you are there?

Kim Thompson

I actually haven't been there for a couple of years, but I have people that rent the house at the moment and looking after the garden and everything. It's really beautiful, but it's if I've had holidays, I've tended to go to Ibiza or one of the other places, you know, I'm lucky enough to travel. I'm very, very privileged. So the world's a small place.

Ashish Tulsian

Awesome. But that was that was that was a great chat. Kim.

Kim Thompson

Thank you for asking me. It's really nice to meet you.

Ashish Tulsian

And so much, so much to learn about coffee. I'm you know, I I'm actually I was thinking that. Okay, I need to ask you for a Yemeni coffee. I need to ask you for the cold brew. And I and I was just making a menu of all the things that you were telling me.

Kim Thompson

Are you here tomorrow morning. When do you fly out?

Ashish Tulsian

I will be. Yeah, I'm here.

Kim Thompson

I can get a delivery to the hotel.

Ashish Tulsian

I'll come over, I'll visit. I don't know if you there or not, but.

Kim Thompson

No I am. But I can. I can also deliver in case you're busy. Super. Or in case you have a big night.

Ashish Tulsian

I mean that always so now that. That that is great. I'm, I'm sure that a lot of people who will watch this, you know, are going to actually reach out to you to know more about coffee business.

Kim Thompson

You know, it's been it's been a wonderful journey. It's been a very happy phase of my life, actually. And it's very satisfying and to still be learning. And I would encourage any person to be brave and start a company. F&B? Do your homework first and maybe have three times the budget that you thought you were going to need. But, you know, or maybe it takes three times as long.

Ashish Tulsian

It's funny, you said three times, right? I'll tell you. So I invest in a like I invest in tech companies, startups, right. So and I generally tell I generally ask startup founders. I'm like, okay, what's your need? Like, what do you think? They said, X. And I’ll say, All right, okay, just multiply by three and in like, And they'll be like, Wow, why three? So my answer to that is you, you know that one X for really doing what your what your plan the second x because the first x will fail miserably. The second x is to improve on the first x and the third is the question. If the second fails, because there is a high chance that after the first x is gone, you'll be left with a lot of knowledge of don’ts but still no dos. If the second x is gone, you may be left with a lot of do's and don'ts, but no money to actually put that to use. So the third x you keep, you know, there so that once, once you are done with do's and don'ts, probably not only you'll survive but you can thrive on it.

Kim Thompson

I met some really amazing entrepreneurs in Istanbul, you know, a month or so ago, and nearly all of them had a similar like failure journey, but they took away really good knowledge. Yeah, maybe it was just timing. You know, the product was still good, but maybe a timing just wasn't quite right or yet quite a few of them didn't have the cash to take it to that next stage or but it was really interesting and they were all really philosophical about it. You know, you had to do that to get there, you know.

Ashish Tulsian

But but you know what? I think in my entrepreneurial journey, I think what I have learned is and I made peace with it many years back, that cash is always going to be low because ambition is going to grow. So the so you know, how much cash you have and how.

Kim Thompson

I might put that on my epitaph.

Ashish Tulsian

I mean, because because I because I when I look back, I mean, there was a point in my journey, I think back in 2014, 15, this is when this realization I just made peace with it because because there was a point that I realized what the hell, cash is never enough. And and I was sitting on 50 x of what I had let’s say seven years before that, so I was like, what is happening Is the inflation just getting like growing faster than my cash reserves? And then I realized, no, it's not the cash, it's the size of my ambition. It's probably, you know, the quality at which I want to do a certain thing. It's the things that I'm you know my threshold of compromise with something, it's continuous, is rising. Right. And, you know, I just couldn't do things cheaper, like year on year. So I made peace with it. I was like, okay, this is how the life is going to be.

Kim Thompson

You go into it with your eyes open. If you're starting something new though, after you've done other things.

Ashish Tulsian

Yeah, cash is still low, Awareness is high.

Kim Thompson

But you made the decision.

Ashish Tulsian

Yeah. True that. Okay, on that note. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks a lot.