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Hey Eric! Hey, how's it going? Good, how's it going? It's going great. Are you ready for this Q&A session? I think so, yeah. So I'm going to make some noise at the screen. Okay, I'm good. Alright, so I'm just going to dive in Eric. Yeah, sure. So where were you born and raised? I was born and raised in Southeast Warren in Michigan, so in Metro Detroit. So you're in Michigan. Yeah, I am. And that means that how old is, We founded Hyperion in 2015, so we're going into our sixth year right now. Congrats. Yeah, thank you. How about, can you describe Hyperion in three words? I don't know the three words, but I would say that what we try to shoot for is caring about farmers. I think that's three words. Yes, that's perfect. Describe your relationship with your business partner in three words. Balance, empathy, and I guess partnership. Yes, nice. How about the culture of your team? Can you describe it short and sweet? Yeah, I think the culture that we're trying to foster is people who really care about the coffee that we're serving and care about the producers as well and being able to convey that to customers as well. Is there anything that you look for specifically when you're hiring? I think what we look for is folks who aren't just looking for a job. I know it's weird in the economy right now because there's a lot of people looking for jobs, but we don't want to just hire a warm body. We want to hire somebody who will invest into themselves and invest into our company. No, I get that. We're always looking for a fit too. So, switching gears, what do you think it takes to own your own business? I think what I've learned it takes is a lot of time and a lot of energy. Yes. Yeah, I've noticed that more time than energy, but time and energy. Yes. What is the most challenging part of small business life? I feel It is 100% complete involvement by yourself at all times. So, whether it's an employee calling you with questions about whatever the coffee of the day is or if there's a leak in a building or in my case, if I do service and maintenance, it's a call at five in the morning to go check somebody's espresso machine. It's all hands on deck all the time. Totally and always on your mind. Absolutely. How about the most rewarding aspect of the job? I think the most rewarding aspect for me is when I get to visit the producers and have them realize the amount of energy that we're putting in on our side in order to represent their coffee over just trying to create a blend or something If you could give yourself advice to your younger self when you first started out, what would it be? I would say make more time for yourself and not just the business at all times. It's real easy when you're starting up a business to just completely lose yourself and throw everything into it. Not to say that I did this explicitly, but it can become your personality and it can take over your life. If you don't make time for yourself, then it's a very easy trip to fall into. I 100% feel that. So switching gears again, more about the coffee bar setup here. Is there anything you would have changed to this coffee bar setup? I know that When we designed this bar initially, our goal was to start offering coffee service. We retrofitted a building from 1850 with no pl The health department signed off on it, so it's all legit, but it would have been really great to invest the extra money in order to do in-floor pl So it would give us more freedom with where we can move things and ultimately not be tied to More flexibility? Yeah, I wish we would have thought about that a little bit more. Something you would have saved money on? I don'think that there's anything. I really feel to my core that if you're going to make an investment in the quality and have that be your focus, then money is something you can always make back. I know with a lot of our accounts that we help open up, I always tell them, sure, you could buy a cheaper espresso machine and then grow into needing a bigger and better espresso machine. But if you make the investment on the front end and buy a really great espresso machine, you're not going to have to fight the quality battle forward and you'll be ready for whatever comes. Yeah, and it might kick you in the butt that breaks down later. Exactly, yeah. Anything you would have spent more money on? I'm a pretty crafty guy, so I'm always looking for a deal no matter what. And since I do espresso machine repair, I also build all, we've built all the countertops in here and we've built all of our tables in our cafe and all of our shelving. And the only stuff that we didn't do ourselves is what we had to put out to contractors for making the city happy and everything else. So I tend to be really hands-on and try to save the most money and be real about what my expectations are going into something. A dream piece of equipment or something you wish you could upgrade? I think right now all of our baristas are itching to get new grinders. They really love the grinders that we have. It's the Malconig E65S, they are fantastic grinders. But there's a new model that came out where they have scales built into the actual portafilter holders. So it's really awesome to have baristas that really want to be focused on the quality and not have to worry about winging out every single shot, every single time. They want the quality to be there right from the go so they can focus on other aspects of the quality. And so I think right now that's what everybody has their minds set on. Eric, last couple questions. Coffee, tea or espresso? Espresso. Espresso? Yeah, I really love espresso. Is it your current favorite coffee drink or something that you would recommend at Hyperion? Yeah, right now we have the Col It is really fantastic when I, that's actually what I was just dialing in. And on the nose it smells just I really love a dynamic coffee Sounds so good. You'll have to try that. Last question, Eric. What are you looking forward to the most in 2021? Some kind of normalcy. Everybody that I know of has already started offering indoor seating. And we just felt for our employees and our customer safety that we didn't want to offer indoor seating yet. So it would be really nice for more people, especially food service workers, to get vaccinated or at least have a priority with the government so that we can start offering that service again and have some kind of normalcy for both our customers and our employees. All right, well good luck this coming. You're Eric. Thanks for doing this. You're awesome. Yeah, thank you so much.
