Compass Coffee

So now I'm sitting here with Harrison and Michael, the co-founders of Compass Coffee. Both join the Marines, end up deployed to Afghanistan together, and then you come back and you're And now you have 10 cafes throughout Metro DC. So how did you get here? We come at this from the point of view of Marines. We're not coffee snobs. We don't have some pedigree as baristas. We've learned it over time. So were just making coffee and sampling it with our friends and getting a lot of early feedback from people. We finally think that we've roasted a batch of coffee that we can show Cohen. He's And he's running a cafe called the Blind Dog Cafe. We have that meeting. At the time, it wasn't right for Blind Dog. He turns us down. But we become friends and we hear about Union Kitchen and we're building out our first cafe. And Cohen is starting to explain that there's products that they are making that they could sell to us when we open. It's really the beginning of our relationship with Union Kitchen is we're buying fresh baked goods from Union Kitchen. We're buying snacks. And I mean, we'd rather support local businesses with people that we know. I think about six bags of snack lens were purchased just over my shoulder within I mean, so having that supports your fellow Union Kitchen member. I think that it's just really exciting to see that through the support of all these other entrepreneurs, What's really awesome about Mike von Harrison is that they've opened 10 cafes. They do great. Customers love them. And then we sell a ton of their coffee in our own stores, but also two places At Compass, they're selling tons of products that are made here. They're actually the biggest customer of Made in DC products in Made in Union Kitchen products because they believe in creating this ecosystem It's