Located on East Broad Street in beautiful Downtown Athens, this coffee shop offers delicious food and beverages while also showcasing local art.
Athens, Georgia, home of great music, great restaurants, shopping, and the historic Georgia Theater. Oh, and I hear Athens has a huge and important school here too. Let's just get started. Welcome to another episode of Fast Forward Launchpad. Today we're visiting Jittery Joe's, a homegrown coffee chain based here in Athens. And one of the unique things about this place is that their employees actually get paid to drink coffee. What? You don't believe that job exists? Yes, you can get a job drinking coffee. If you work for Jittery Joe's in any aspect, you get pretty much all the free coffee you want. Well, I'm a little old Jim, so let's find out a little more about Jittery Joe's. My name is Bob Gude. This is my wife, Deborah. We're one of the two couples that own the Jittery Joe's coffee roasters. We have five full service stores here in Athens, and then there are three kiosks types of stores. And between those eight stores, there are 100 to 110 part-time employees. The most rapidly growing part of our business is our roasting operation. Through that operation, we sell in all 50 states. If you consider Athens to be part of Metro Atlanta, which I know it isn't, but if you drew the circle out that large, we would be the third largest coffee company in Metro Atlanta. Wow. That's a latte beans. That joke was weak, No arg Now let's meet the man behind the mochaccino. This is Charlie Mustard. He really knows his stuff. He'somewhat of a coffee artist. I'm a roast master. My job is to roast the coffee here at Jittery Joe's. And an artist? I'm a coffee artist. See? So tell us about your art. The way to roast coffee is very subjective, but there's a lot of science involved in it as well. Seriously? Science has given me a really good background on how to look at the coffee. There is kind of a basic formula that you use when you're roasting. There'some very specific chemical reactions that happen. We use a lot of science and a lot of technology roasting coffee and reading about the process and talking to Charlie, our roaster, about what's actually happening when you're roasting coffee. It's the first chemistry that I've done in probably eight or nine years. Even a basic job All our recipes are formulas and percentages. Ex percentage of milk and ex percentage of chocolate and ex percentage of espresso. You have to be able to go back and forth from ounces to metrics. It's not necessarily complicated math, but it's math that you need to know. If they can't do math, they're not going to last. It's just kind of that simple. Okay, I get it. What else do you look for in your employees? Something we look for is just people that are good at balancing the scientific information and the technical specs of coffee with the sort of personal relations that you have to have behind the counter. And let'say I have the skills, personality and love for coffee. What's the best thing about working for Jittery Joe's? Something that really drew me to it was it's a very good combination of science and art. Coffee is just a lot of fun, It's a great interaction with the customers and with your employees. It's fun work, fun people. I enjoy it. And maybe someday you will too. Or maybe it'll be a job we explore on the next episode of Fast Forward Launchpad.
