Full transcripted interview with Calico Jack.
By Andrew Paduano
The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Topic 1:
Andrew -
So today I have the privilege of interviewing Calico Jack. I know you guys just recently opened in June, person at least. So what has been the journey from the very beginning. Getting into coffee, whether it was you or your husband, all the way up until now. Tell me about your story.
Charisse -
Okay, so, it started out, my husband is a three-times cancer survivor, and the second cancer, we were in downtown Cleveland. He had to do an immunotherapy and he had to have a break - a couple hour break - they had to walk and just keep himself going between 40 minutes and therapy and so forth. And so we would hit all of the local coffee shops down there and it just started to become a, what do you call? A hobby that turned into, you know, something he really enjoyed where he researched it.
And my nephew, Austin, was with us at the time because he was making a film of the immunotherapy because he was in film school. He was thinking of doing a documentary. So he was there with us. We all got involved in the coffee shops and were talking to the owners and how the coffee was and then we joined the coffee Cleveland Coffee of Roasters or whatever. The roasters got together once a month and we would just roast different coffees and learn about different things and how they were doing different things and so forth.
A lot of the coffee shops were six shooters, Rising Star, we talked to the owners of Heartwood, and Duck Rabbit, which was my husband's all time favorite coffee. There is a few others, but those were the main ones that we went to.
He's an engineer by trade, so he improvised and did all this, like mechanical stuff to a Goodwill, air popcorn popper. He just changed it with the heating coils and stuff and he started roasting coffee on a popper. It was for fun and then it started tasting so well that my family was like, “Oh, we want coffee, we want coffee!” And you know, it was just a popcorn popper. Somewhere along the way, someone he worked with gifted him a Mill City Roaster one kilo, because he knew how much he was interested in it, and he was going through cancer and, anyway, that started the whole, we decided to “let's make this a business.” And, you know, Austin and I and Chris sat down and started doing coffee business names and basically grew from there.
So it's where Calico Jack came because we went back and forth with different names, but Calico Jack is a nemesis to Blackbeard. So he’s the only pirate that had female crew - even though he wasn't nice to them - but it was a female crew. He wanted to do Calico Jack and then I was like, “Well, we don't wanna have a bad, mean pirate logo for families.” When I grew up at my grandma's, we had a Calico cat named “Calico.” So that’s how we got the cat. And then Austin came up with the logo. He created the logo, he had it sent out and I can't remember how he did it, but he's pretty much on all the social media and all of the artworks that's on all of our labels.
We came up with all the different roasts. We were originally before…I need a backtrack. Before we started roasting, we were doing cupping at home. We would get sent roasted beans from all over and we would all sit around and we learned how to do cupping. There was a downtown coffee shop right in downtown Cleveland. They used to be cupping every Saturday and we used to go down to it. And so we started doing it at home and you know we'd make a game of it. How to guess what origin, what elevation, just different things about it, and what notes you got from it. And we would see who got closest. And that was how we kind of got the coffee pallet, too. Different origins, different coffees and stuff.
Our beans at the time were Brazil, which still are Brazil. Colombia, I think we got Guatemala once, but we don't sell that here. We had Tanzenite, Tanzania, and we had Ethiopia. Every time I go to order the Peaberry, I miss it. So, it was a harder one to get. Different regions have different things happening with their crops and their farms. And just everything going on and their regions, so it just kind of depends on what's happening. But the Brazil and the Colombia seem to be very consistent. So that's why we stuck with those. And Ethiopian, of course. And so far, I haven't had a problem with Tanzania. We are gonna be doing Mexico soon though because we just got in with some local people that - her family’s from Mexico - and has a coffee farm. Chris is going to be profiling those. To get the profile of coffees, it's a different case. Kind of like wine, you know, you get the notes from it and stuff. And he pulls it at different kinds as he's roasting and then we figure out what we like the most in the taste. And that's the one that we chose. Our black pearl was our original coffee. That's our OG, I call it. It's our original coffee and still my favorite.
Andrew -
What notes does the Black Pearl have?
Charisse -
It has caramel, chocolate and walnut.
Topic 2:
Andrew -
So, what's the story of this building? Why did you guys choose this specific building?
Charisse -
We were doing a wholesale for grocery stores and coffee shops and then online subscriptions. That's how things started to progress for us. So we just did everything through the Internet and wholesale. And then one of the coffee shops that took over was Lakeshore Coffee and they were here last year. We were asked to do a coffee shop by the landlords because we are friends with them. And we weren’t in the position at the time. We were just like, “No, it's not what we want to do right now.” We weren’t sure we wanted a brick and mortar shop and so we offered it to Lakeshore. Because they were in handover and they were looking for another shop. They took over and things happened within the year with family, she got pregnant and they got busy. It was a hike for her to drive with the baby over to here, so she decided she was not gonna be here anymore. She offered it to us and we took over. We jumped on. Well, I said no three times to them and we jumped on it because they thought, “Well, we should try it.” And the rest is history. We opened June 9th and it's been really, really good. I’m impressed. We’re actually getting the roaster in within the week here now.
The building is like 140 or 160 years old. Austin knows the history on it, but it's had many different hands over the years. Tea rooms, a dentist for many years, and then the sister's tea room was the main place. And then Lakeshore Coffee took over just over a year, and now we have it. Upstairs is an apartment. We try to make it very comfortable, very homey for everybody and modern as best as we could. It's all a new experience for us too.
We used to own a business years ago - my husband and I - we were video store owners. When the old mom and pop video stores were around, we had that for like 20 years. So we were familiar with being business owners. That was our big event. And we really want to get this again. You think that it's fun - well it is, we love the customers and everything - but your time is definitely your busiest.
Topic 3
Andrew -
The main point of the article I'm writing is to try to get your average everyday person to get into tasting coffee, because you know how a lot of the mainstream places like Starbucks, Dunkin, even some other mom and pop places, they just use basic coffee and they they infuse it with, you know, a bunch of sugar and other flavors. You guys do that too, but people don't pay attention to this specific taste of the bean. So we want to get people to get more into that and we want people to realize how you can get all kinds of different flavors from different beans and how the different roasts - and even the different ways that you farm it - all affect the flavor. So, can you just briefly walk through the process of getting specialty coffee in general from the farm to the cup. And explain why it's so important to pay attention to finding someplace that really pays attention to their flavors.
Charisse -
Well, a perfect example is we have this Rwanda that we just started roasting, and we don't have a group. We're gonna be selling at the shop during special days because it's very expensive. But it's a woman-owned, small lot, completely organic farm. So you know that there's special attention to it.
It comes from a cherry, you know, the coffee bean looks like a cherry. Once they remove all of that and there is the bean inside, they have to wash it. There's special, different ways of washing it and - I am not the technical person for this one - so I apologize. And then they go through a drying process and then once it goes through, there's different ways of drying it too. I can't remember all of them. But the main thing you want is where it's from. Your Columbias are definitely going to be more chocolatey, more nutty, more caramel. Your Brazil - because of the region - is going to have a more nutty taste to it. Where our Tanzania, that has kind of like a black current to it. So the regions is where you get the notes. What the weather's like there, how the farming is doing it. And then of course how it's bagged and brought over to us. And then we get green beans and then we have to roast it and try to pull those notes from those regions. And usually you get what they say because it's from the farm. Ethiopian is more floral. We also get citrus out of a lot of them too. And it's also how you roast it. If you roast dark, you're gonna get real caramel-chocolatey, but it's gonna be dark. And there's a misconception. The light roast has more caffeine than dark roast. Our espresso is light roast. We do a blend of our two lightest roasts, and that's what seems to be liked by more people. Where Starbucks, they do the real dark roast. They have a Blonde roast, but that is still dark.
Andrew -
How would you convince someone who, you know, just regularly gets coffee and doesn't really know about the different profiles of the beans, to start seeking out places that tell you the specific profiles?
Charisse -
Well, we get people in here all the time and they're like, “I don't know what I want.” We start with the basic - the Colombia, which is our house - because everybody seems to like the medium roast. And that has the caramels, the chocolate, and the nut to it. The best way to do it is not to add sugars and let them start tasting the coffee and enjoying the coffee. Cream's okay to add to it a little bit, you’ll still get some of the notes, but it depends on how much you're adding to it. So our big thing is to choose local, small companies because you know that they're reaching out to the small-batch farms and the micro farms and microlots and stuff. And you know they're trying to do that. And I mean, kudos to Starbucks, they started out like that and they just grew, you know. They know their coffee. It's just they're a dark roast.
Now with us too, is we don't add any additives to our coffee, but most of our syrups are house-made. They’re made with natural products, organic sugar, cane sugar. Our pumpkin sauces are made with pumpkin puree…It's not this “additive.” A lot of those coffee houses do the same thing. That's the stuff you wanna seek out. I hated coffee 12 years ago. I was a hot chocolate, tea drinker. Hated it. I could never drink it my whole life. I started going to specialty coffee shops, and they're like, “Oh my gosh, I couldn't drink espresso and like Starbucks espresso, ough, made me gag.” We’d go to places like Duck Rabbit and Six Shooter and they’re like, “Try this espresso.” And I'm like, “Oh my gosh. This tastes amazing. This is so creamy.” There's a big difference with, you know, small roasters, compared to big. I started to just try the different origins of the coffees. Every one of them has a different taste because they roast different, but there's always that floral. The Columbias always have, you know, a certain taste, but it's still different. So it's fun to go to the different shops. When you change your palate and just not add all of the junk to it, you really get some really good notes to your coffee. And it’s the quality of the other stuff we use. We use Hartzler’s milk. So lattes taste way better. It just makes a big difference. Even their skim milk, when you heat it up, it tastes extremely well.
Topic 4
Andrew -
For someone who's, you know, kind of clueless about this stuff, what do you recommend they ask their barista when they go into a specialty coffee shop.
Charisse -
What I would ask is what their espresso is. Is it a lighter, darker roast? If they're looking for a espresso. If they're looking for coffees or pour overs - pour overs give the most notes - I would recommend going in and getting a pour over or chemex. For example, “Which one of your coffees has more of a milk chocolate, caramel taste that I might get that I would really like.” If there's something they don't like about coffee, they need to let the barista know. So the barista can say, “Well, don't get this one.” People have asked, “Ok, I wanna light roast but I don't want citrus. I don't like that citrus, acidic,” and we'll say well, then you want our Sailor’s Delight. Because our Mother Pearl…there’s citrus in it, it's a Columbia. So you want the Brazil, which is very nutty and smooth. There's differences in those, but they're both light roasts. So they need to know what they're looking for in taste. nd then ask, you know, the barista what they recommend. What they don't like helps us know what to not serve them. So I guess that's the best way to put it.
Topic 5
Andrew -
What would you say is the most rewarding part of running a coffee shop?
Charisse -
The customer and the crew.
I love our crew. It's like a family. We are family, of course, but we’ve had other people that we've hired and they're like family too. Our customers are like family.
I didn't know going into it, because I used to work at another coffee shop. The baristas remembered us and they were so friendly and we got to be friends with them. We used to buy our beans from Six Shooters because we couldn't buy them when we first started, and we weren't that big, so we would, you know, get on their pallet of beans. So we got to be friends with the people at Six Shooter. That's the thing, and then we became like regulars there. We have our regulars and we meet the most interesting people that are passing through Mentor now. I didn't realize how many people just passed through.
And they seek out local coffee shops. They don't wanna go to the big chains. So we come up and they and we're like, “Wow, this is amazing.” They have the most interesting stories. So, I just love the stories and just serving people is the best part for me.
I would say my husband probably would say he loved the roasting part. That's his thing, he loves to roast, and he loves teach it and talk about it, which he's gonna start having classes for that.
And then my nephew is probably a mix of both of us. He loves work with the people, he loves the stories, and he loves learning. He's like a mix of both of us when it comes to, you know, he loves the roasting. He has the greatest talent when it comes to making the syrups and stuff. It's amazing the stuff he comes up with. So yeah, so I think he enjoys doing that the most, too. Coming up with different recipes that go with the coffees that people really like. And trying to keep it healthy or at least as wholesome as possible.
Cause coffee truly is wholesome. It's a bean, and it's, you know, it does have caffeine. We do have a decaf, but there's nothing bad in coffee until you add crap. Which we try not to do, so.
Topic 6
Andrew -
What is the most challenging aspect of running a coffee shop?
Charisse -
The bills. There's no rhyme or reason to how busy we're gonna be or how slow we're gonna be. So, we ran out of milk today. I had to go clean out two Heinen’s to get our Hartzler milk because our delivery is coming tomorrow. We were busier than we thought, you know. So that's been kind of…it's like you never know. It’s new, we just started in June, so I think the first part is getting our routine down. Knowing what to order, what not to order, how much and so forth. That's kind of the hardest part, is getting all of that situated. Because…it can be real slow and it can be super busy. Like today they were so busy. I walked in and I’m like, “What the heck? It’s a Tuesday!” And usually Tuesdays are not busy, so it’s not a super consistent except for Saturdays and Sundays. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday are always our busiest. That's when we have at least three to four people working. Just making sure we have enough supplies. That's the hardest part for me. And making sure all the bills are paid. It's like, “Ohhh!”
There's so much behind the scenes like I had three days off in a row. I did have to go pick one thing up for work, but Monday and Tuesday I’ve been doing nothing but work, even though they’re my days off. And then Austin has Sunday, Monday and Thursday off and pretty much two of those days he's nothing but work too. So it's like our days off are just away from the barista part; we have to do behind the scenes stuff. And so then Chris works as an engineer by trade and then he's roasting evenings and weekends.
There's good that comes out of it, you know, you feel good about it, especially serving people. If you're a server, you feel good about that. But yeah, you have to be committed. That was one of the reasons why it took me so long say yes. I was, “Like do I wanna do this again?”
Topic 7
Andrew -
So what do you guys have in store for the future of this place?
Charisse -
Well, like I had said, we're getting a roster in within the week, and then we are hoping to upgrade to a bigger roaster, because we have been so busy, which will be more efficient with time. Because, right now a lot of our time goes to roasting. My husband roasts, and then I'll roast when he can’t, and now Austin will be able to help us, but then a bigger roaster will just cut that time down. But our goal is definitely have more music, more events here. We were gonna do some yoga, we were gonna do music, we were gonna do game nights and we're gonna have art. National Coffee day, we're having music and art here. And then my husband wants to do cupping and roasting classes here. So there's a lot we want in the future. It's just getting it all together, you know.
And using local people, like we just joined up with Richard’s Maple Farms. They’re like 100 years old, in Chardon. So we’re gonna be using their maple syrup. I would like to get their fresh farm eggs, so you can have hard boiled eggs here. There's a lady two streets over that we’re going to use her sourdough; little sourdough buns. And we're gonna put those with the soup. We're trying to incorporate more local businesses. So, we are supporting local business and advertising for them too.
Topic 8
Andrew -
Do you have anything else you like to tell everyone; to tell the students of Cleveland State reading this article?
Charisse -
Yeah, if you know you want to do business and you have an idea, if you want to get into business or into coffee in any way, don't hesitate to ask your local roasters. Your local coffee shops. Local people that are family owned and operated. Those people are dedicated.
I want everybody to like to be inspired to do their own thing. Like, we have two workers here, Andrew and Hannah. Andrew wants to learn how to roast. Hannah, which we hired her, she's thinking about doing her own business someday. My goal is that they open their own business, hopefully open their own coffee shop, that would be wonderful. And I’m hoping Andrew gets roasting down and he can move on and go get his own roaster and do something. Whether it's franchising or doing his own thing, I’m for it. I just want to encourage people to follow their dreams, you know. It’s scary, and it is a lot of work, but if you have a dream go after it.
Also, if you don't like coffee, give it a try. Give it a couple tries prior, and if you don't like the coffee try the teas. Because we do all natural teas and most coffee shops do the same thing. Like there's other things besides coffee that coffee shops usually do. They're usually supporting some sort of organic tea or something. I didn't like coffee and now I do. I can't go a day without it now.
Andrew -
From my perspective, you're kind of like in the heart of the suburbs. Because Mentor is like the center of a lot of the Cleveland suburbs. So you're in a perfect location. It's right on the main street. There’s all kinds of, you know, grocery stores and local businesses, so you're like right in the heart of everything. I think your location is very great.
Charisse -
Yeah, weren't sure how it was gonna be, but so far we've been very blessed. Like I said, people just look us up and they get right off the freeway. We've had people from everywhere. Oh, my gosh, it's crazy. Just all over the country that have just come here. And we've only been open so long. It's like, “Oh my gosh, you know, I'm just passing through and we looked you up and blah, blah,” I'm like, “Oh my goodness!” And so it's kind of fun.
And Mentor is amazing, they are so supportive. I was so nervous because of all the chains, how they would be. And they're just like…they were just ready for this. That's all they want is local, small business. I didn't realize how much Mentor actually encourages small businesses. People that come here send us to other small businesses, which is wonderful. I'm like, “Oh, I didn't know about that! ”
Especially this community right here, this historical community, because we get a lot of people on foot. Families walk in because there's a lot of new families in this area and a lot of people walk and ride their bike. We had Cleveland Heights and Richmond Heights - two guys wrote their bicycles - cycled out here today. They were here for a couple hours, just breaking. And they looked us up and I'm like, “Oh my gosh!” They were doing a 30 some mile ride.
Andrew -
Thank you guys so much for having me and having us being able to interview for this. Because you guys are a very great, you know, local business up and running. I figured this would be a great chance to get people to know your story and get you some more exposure!
