Jittery Joe's

Athens, Georgia, home of great music, great restaurants, shopping, and the historic Georgia Theater. Oh, and I hear Athens has a school somewhere around here, too. Cute. Let's just get started. Welcome to another episode of Fast Forward. Today we're visiting Jittery Joe's, a homegrown coffee chain based out of Athens. And because these folks are the experts, let's get right to it. How do you I'm just tasting it for, I just taste it black. I just drip coffee, usually drink it black, maybe with a little bit of honey. A lot of times I'll do a French press or pour over. If I get a little crazy, I'll add some honey and cinnamon. Trust them, these folks 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. That's what I'm talking about. So tell me more about this Jittery Joe's. My name is Bob Goode. 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 kiosk 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. Pretty impressive. So what can you teach us about coffee? Coffee beans are grown between the tropics on a globe. If you look at the equator and you have the two tropics, any country that can grow at the right elevation about 4,500 feet or higher grows it because coffee is the second commodity behind oil traded in the world. Wow. That's a latte beans. That joke was weak, No arg So that joke notwithstanding, why are coffee people always so darn happy? There's caffeine in it. It's nice around that three o'clock lull to get a little caffeine boost. Most people are extremely happy in coffee shops because of the caffeine level. Okay, obviously caffeine has something to do with it, but let's get more detail on how caffeine affects the body. Anyone? Was it prepared for this? How does caffeine affect the body? Next. Caffeine doesn't actually make you more awake. It blocks the receptors that tell you're tired. Closer, but let's really get to the details. That you'd actually better asking Charlie about. Okay, Charlie, you're on. Caffeine stimulates the body by blocking the effect of adenosine, which then causes the adrenal glands to produce adrenaline, which has the effect of fight or flight on the body. So your heart rate raises, your pupils dilate, but it also affects the production of dopamine, which is a calming, pleasurable chemical. And so that might have something to do with the addictiveness of coffee if there is some calm, pleasurable feeling after drinking a cup of coffee. As you can tell, Charlie Mustard 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. Roasting coffee is the first chemistry that I've done in probably eight or nine years. Even a basic job Charlie in the back is looking at how different proteins and sugars interact with each other when he's roasting. All our recipes are formulas and percentages. X percentage of milk and X percentage of chocolate and X percentage of espresso. You have to be able to go back and forth from ounces to metric. It's not necessarily complicated math, but it's math that you need to know. 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 employees? At First off, 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's just say I have the skills, personality and love for coffee. What's the best thing about working for Jittery Joe's? The coolest thing about working for Jittery Joe's is the amount of coffee you get to drink. And after that, it's definitely all the people you get to work with. One thing that really drew me to it was it's a very good combination of science and arts. 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 different job we explore on the next episode of Fast Forward. Thank you.