What It's About
A man in California learns to roast coffee—without burning down his apartment building.
Business Model
Skills Required
Complexity
Profit Potential
Words of Wisdom
Nowhere in the description for Nextdoor does it say you’re supposed to use it to sell to your neighbors… but obviously, Marc got a little creative. I don’t think he could do it this way every week, but as a launching pad, a proof of concept experiment, it was perfect.
Fun Fact
Bedfellows Roasting Company is now currently roasting in Encinitas, California. Their site offer subscriptions, gifts, and they have wholesale and retail locations in town as well. Marc surfs most mornings and roasts all the coffee himself. He might add one or two employees in the future, but for the most part, this is his exact dream.
Notes from Chris
Episode 245
In 2015 Marc Beauregard, a musician in San Francisco, told a friend he had plans to start a coffee roasting company. His friend brought over a copy of The $100 Startup and told Marc to follow every single word of the book, to a tee. Well, he did. A lot of coffee roasters creep slowly into roasting after years behind the counter as a barista, but Marc decided that wasn't his way in. He needed to learn to roast coffee, and he wanted to immediately. His idea? Start his own Side Hustle. He would forgo the expensive rent for a top-dollar brick-and-mortar cafe downtown and open an online-based coffee subscription box. Teach people about coffee, and how to reinvent their morning ritual and thus, their day. Marc decided to research how to roast coffee at home, and this didn’t go well. He was soon setting fire alarms off throughout his building and smoking out his neighbors. What started as buying 10lb. bags online and roasting them in his bedroom, quickly blew up into a part-time Side Hustle. Marc's biggest breakthrough came when he created an account on a social media network. No, not Instagram. A more intimate site called Nextdoor, which connected him to 8,000 homes nearby. After observing the nature of the channel, he threw up a casual, subtle, neighborly post about fresh roasted coffee. By the end of the weekend, he had sold over $1,400 of coffee.
MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
- Bedfellows Roasting Company: See what's roasting over at Marc's website!
- Nextdoor: The free, private social network for your neighborhood
- How to Roast Coffee at Home | The Art of Manliness: If you're interested in roasting your own coffee beans, here's a guide to help you get started
- Fire Roasted Coffee Dreams Lead to Big Beans: When searching high and low for fresh roasted coffee leaves a father in the Yukon with an empty mug, he starts making it himself and creates a side hustle caffeinating the masses
- Saxophonist Hustles His Way to Back Injury Recovery: When a chronic back injury sidelines an Australian IT professional, he pulls out his saxophone and establishes three new sources of income
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Resources
CREATE YOUR ONLINE STORE
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GET YOUR FIRST 1,000 EMAIL SUBSCRIBERS
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Quote of the Day
Sponsors & Gratitude
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To infinity and beyond,
