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Ep 50 - Sheba and Marc Tormo share a coffee
92 Plays3 years ago
Presenting a soul conversation over coffee with Marc Tormo. An Aurovilian, licensed Arabica Q Grader and Founder & CEO, Coffee Ideas. More about him is at marcscoffees.com.
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Transcript
Introduction and Coffee Beginnings
00:00:02
Speaker
I'm delighted to have you in the podcast, where all stories are welcome and the masks come off. Hello, Mark.
00:00:15
Speaker
Hello. Good afternoon. So wonderful to welcome you to Coffee and Soul. And welcome to Soul Brews with Shiba. I'm so delighted to have you as a participant in this show. It's always a pleasure talking to you as a good friend back in our horrible times where we had coffee at the cafe, it brings me these fresh memories. Absolutely. So I'm very glad that we can do that still not in a present way but in a virtual way. We still can connect.
00:00:40
Speaker
I know. It's wonderful. I'm so, so, so happy to connect with you again. And I can see you're sipping your coffee. So let's do fine. And this is a Boomer Devi. Oh my goodness. Marks coffee. Amazing. In a French press. Yes, that's right. I don't know if the right, it's the right thing to do. That's a, that's very good method to group coffees at home without complicating much, much the story. So yeah.
00:01:07
Speaker
Great to see you drinking Bhumadevi in Gurekaun, makes me feel very happy. Yes, you know, I really, it's the kind of coffees that you do and your brewing skills and we'll talk about that as we go forward.
Gratitude for India
00:01:20
Speaker
So if I ask you to just hold your cup of coffee in your hands and if you can just sit back with your coffee and just relax and see what comes to your mind. What does coffee do for you? Mark the coffee man. Wow, that's a beautiful way to align yourself to the question.
00:01:38
Speaker
And I think the first thing that comes to my mind is gratitude. Quite a striking amount of gratitude I have for what India and Auroville has offered me.
00:01:49
Speaker
as a coffee lover to be able to dive in deeply into the jungles of South India all the way to Auroville and try to bring in that spark of what coffee means to me and to the rest of India and anyone who loves coffee. So without Auroville, without India, this could not happen.
Transformative Coffee Journey
00:02:15
Speaker
coming from Spain and there unfortunately we don't grow coffee so I was deprived for all these years to be able to touch the plant and smell the soil and walk in the forest.
00:02:28
Speaker
So that longing kind of being fulfilled. And so that's why I think it comes at the forefront when you ask me this question. That is amazing. Mark, in what you've said, there are just so many stories in that I don't know which thread to pull. So take me through your journey. And how did you arrive at coffee? Or first at coffee, then at all over. What brought you here? How do both these things combine for you?
00:02:57
Speaker
Yeah, I think there is a kind of sequence that things build one to each other. I think this is what happens, I think naturally when you are at age where I was 21 years old, so you become adult and some questions strike your mind. Like what is going to be the aim of my life? What I'm going to be useful for?
00:03:19
Speaker
what I'm going to be looking at so all these questions somehow are that age and so in that search I stumbled upon coffee and I think it was it was something that really changed my life completely my my direction my my aim my interest so that happened when I was young I was set around was
00:03:45
Speaker
22, 23 years old. First I came to India when I was very young, I was I think 16 and that struck court in myself very strongly at the individual level. So what made you come to India then?
First Trip to India
00:04:00
Speaker
This was just a trip that my parents came. My parents had this good habit to travel, which I think is a great habit. So along with these travels, they said, you don't come along with us. We go to India. At that stage, I didn't have a single interest about what India was at all. So it was more or less against my intuition. It was actually counterintuitive to say yes.
00:04:25
Speaker
turned to be a turning point in my life. From that moment onwards, after that trip, everything also changed inside myself. And I said, well, there is something else, another world out there, which I was not aware at all. That brought me to search about India. And in the following years, I would continue visiting this country, this time by myself. And one of these journeys, these trips, I stumbled upon Auroville, Pondicherry,
00:04:54
Speaker
again not being very much planned just going to the south and ended up here where i am now after 22 years i believe and again you know those things in life that are not expected at all but again that was what i read the dream of honorable was kind of wow that is uh that really touched me deeply the concept of some a place that could exist on that
Auroville Experiences
00:05:22
Speaker
dream
00:05:22
Speaker
But I knew I was too young. So I went back to Spain, but I dive in our six months when I was 21, so I could understand better what it was, not just two days and six months deeply diving into our real life.
00:05:39
Speaker
I did agarvattis, I played with kids in kindergarten. I did all sorts of things just to understand what it was and a lot of reading and time by myself. That gave me the first foundation, kind of my inner self. And then what I needed was to have
00:05:58
Speaker
for my yoga, and then coffee came after that. So that's why I'm saying it, being a sequence of events. First, discover myself within myself, and then what I would do in the material world to work on this, and coffee came. I remember still very clearly that moment. I was two young Italian brothers, started a business in Barcelona, importing coffee machines.
00:06:25
Speaker
So I was looking for ideas and said, I'll talk to these people. They are actually experts in coffee. So that session, that half an hour, an hour session on brewing espresso, the way they express, it was like poetry. Literally, they're just like poets making coffee. And that stroked so strongly. From that onwards, I started my career in coffee.
Popularity of Coffee Blends
00:06:48
Speaker
That's amazing. And it's so interesting to see how it gets woven in together, you know, Auroville and coffee. And today, Mark's coffees are known everywhere, isn't it? I know that you're also brewing now in fig, in a museum, in a museum camera.
00:07:06
Speaker
absolutely yes with Manish is the one who is running that place yes yes yes very happy that finally our coffee is here in Gurgaon so it's fantastic I'm delighted because now I'm in Gurgaon at least I can access Mark's coffees much much it's very close to where I live so you can just pick that up and I'm really really happy about this tell me a little bit and remember once sitting in Mark's coffee Mark's cafe in Oroville
00:07:29
Speaker
You talked to me on the table where you have the map or map of where the coffee is grown all over, beautiful table. You talked about your visit to Chikmabu and your pilgrimage to honor Baba Bhutan. Tell us a little bit more.
00:07:45
Speaker
Well, I think as a coffee lover and being in India to visit the place where Baba Buddha implanted the seven seats was kind of an iconic location that I think everybody should just pay once at least. But funny enough, I still not able to visit the place. I mean, it's quite interesting that time I went, it was monsoon and when I arrived, they was shut. It was closed.
00:08:09
Speaker
I still didn't make the visit. I think it will come at the right time. I've been talking to people from the local villages and said, actually, Mark, if you really want to visit Baba's place, it's not in the cave that you need to go. I said, oh, that's something new. What it is. So Baba sat there and yes, he meditated over seven seats, but he planted those seats in another place.
00:08:35
Speaker
which is a nearby village in a deep inside the forest. So maybe that's the place I should one day visit and see what is there. But for me, what he did was amazing. It's a beautiful story. And I feel very inspired by someone like him. Yes. Who was Baba Buddha? And for a lot of my listeners who may not know. Well, there is many stories, but my version of the story is like he was a Sufi.
00:09:04
Speaker
He was a philosopher as practicing Sufism. So in his Pili Greenwich to Mecca, he was dancing with Sufis at night, and he observed that we were drinking that dark beverage that kept all these Sufis awake through the night. So he actually discovered coffee as a drink. And then they said, if you really want to see the coffee culture, you need to go to Al Mokha in Yemen, and there are ways
00:09:36
Speaker
and where the coffee has been exported. So he went there and then they said that he smuggled seven beans, because at that time, Yemenis were holding the monopoly of coffee around the world. It's only harboring the world that could export coffee. And they would parboil the beans before exporting, so nobody would germinate them. So how about I knew that and said, okay, I want to have seven seeds that are not being parboiled, so they're still alive.
00:10:03
Speaker
So he took seven of them and quickly went to Ching Mangalora and to Baba Houdan and that is where he decided to plan them. So more or less that is what the story is about. That's so amazing, you know, and it's actually such a romantic story, you know, it's something so powerful about the whole thing.
Indian Coffee Culture and Market Challenges
00:10:22
Speaker
Tell me about your journey with coffee in Auroville and also your, you know,
00:10:29
Speaker
This show is really about exploring journeys, highs and lows, some defining moments. I would love to hear, and I'm sure my viewers would also love to hear a little more about you, Mark. When I came in 1997, the culture of coffee in India was very, very almost inexistent. I mean, in South India, do we have a culture of coffee? Yes, for sure, but not the type of culture I wanted to bring in.
00:10:58
Speaker
And so it was like, be a lot of, I was very patient because it lets the market and the people that they don't understand
00:11:10
Speaker
will take me some time. So I took it easy and I said okay let's at least start traveling around South India visiting coffee plantations, coffee planters. I was more prone to organic farming or biodynamic farming so I had some good friends doing organic biodynamic coffees in Kodekanal
00:11:30
Speaker
So that gave me the exposure and the opportunity to visit and stay and understand how difficult and how beautiful is coffee cultivation at the same time, if you want to do it in a sustainable manner. So that was a great learning process. And then, you know, as the year passed by, the coffee culture started to come. I remember those days with Cafe Coffee Day really helped that to bring the espresso culture and, you know, like the cafe as a third space between
00:11:58
Speaker
your home and your work, a place where you can socialize. And beyond, you know, going for a drink or a smoke, it was a place where everybody could be beyond even classes. I mean, that's kind of a neutralizing space. And that really brought the culture slowly to India. So in 2008,
00:12:17
Speaker
I said, okay, maybe it's time. Maybe it's time we start, you know, doing something by our own. And we started roasting the first batches of past coffees in 2008. Then after that, I think four years later, Blutokai started also roasting Indian coffees and they did it in a much bigger way than me. So that was very helpful because it really helped to spread out that there is something else in South Indian or instant coffee.
00:12:44
Speaker
speciality coffee here and it's a very good quality and now it's accessible for the Indian consumer. So I think then many other roasters came along and that also helped the culture to grow and we grew along with them and we didn't want to have the leading like a spearhead that I wanted the Indian companies
00:13:07
Speaker
because they are from here. But I was always at the background just observing and doing my own job, of course, you know, doing my roasting and my marketing and my brewing. Thanks to that, also it became also well known. So that is in a nutshell how we are today here.
00:13:27
Speaker
I know it's amazing and if you, and this is for all the people who are listening to this and will be looking at the podcast, hearing the podcast as well that you haven't tasted coffee unless you've had one brewed by Mark. I mean, it is really, really phenomenal. He is a master brewer.
00:13:43
Speaker
and also spends a lot of time explaining to you what this coffee is about, the temperatures, and makes you that beautiful cup of coffee using different brewing methods. So really worth it if you go for a trip down to Auroville, or now we have it right here in Fig.
00:14:04
Speaker
in Gurgaon and for the others who are international, make a trip down to just taste this coffee, this is fabulous.
Educational Aspects of Coffee
00:14:11
Speaker
What are some of the reflections that you have had in your life now? I mean, it probably isn't easy from coming from Spain into rural India, Auroville is like a little village that we call our home, all of us, but
00:14:28
Speaker
But still, I know your kids have grown up here, they've studied here, I know your wife, Matilda has done a lot of stuff in Auroville as well, so what's this journey been like? I think it's been a journey as I said, no, it's like this is a life, it's a long life endeavor, so you have already a perspective of long term.
00:14:50
Speaker
So when you have that very much in you, then you don't get through so much frustrated or you don't get impatient because you're aware of the context where you are, the challenges that that context brings along with it. But also there are a lot of advantages as well that we do have here being in a rural area. So also acknowledging that as well, running costs,
00:15:22
Speaker
So that gave us a kind of a resilience. I said, okay, we are very small, but we can survive anything, you know, we can be here in spite of whatever can happen. So even now after the COVID-19, we felt very strongly that
00:15:38
Speaker
We are still very resilient because where we are. I think that is good. But at the same time, challenges were a lot. Electricity, availability, power cuts, not accessible to good equipment. For sure, there is no knowledgeable baristas at that time. So you need to start from scratch completely.
00:15:59
Speaker
95% of my my team are from the local villagers and coffee culture is not in their culture at all. It's not something that you learn in a university or in a college. It's something that is available only with few people. So it took me longer time but I said I rather wait but our growth should be in a parallel with our inner growth as people in my team. I cannot
00:16:24
Speaker
push my team to perform at a higher level if I'm not giving them the time to acquire that knowledge. But it's amazing how adaptable my team are because they actually managed to go through all this growth in terms of personal and also professional. Now they are in a very, very, very good level and they feel very sick
00:16:52
Speaker
they know it and they practice it so it takes longer time but once you establish that I think it it really ensures that the continuity that we're not here just for for a few years we want to create an institution beyond mark
00:17:09
Speaker
It's a place where we almost worship coffee. You don't do it as a job. It's beyond getting paid. Although getting good paid is part of the equation. It's not at all what you need to have when you work with Marx. And I think we have done that and more people are coming to join our team.
00:17:30
Speaker
We have a lot of requests for interns, very serious interns because I put them, I said it's 900 hours, nine more, six hours a day. It's a tough job. You need to roll, you need to clean the tables, you need to clean the machines. So those who pass the mark, then definitely they come up with a very insightful experience of what is a specialty coffee all about.
00:17:53
Speaker
And then they can set up their own businesses as well in India, which I wish they will. So that I want Mars Coffee to become an epicenter, not only of going for a cup of coffee, but if you really generally want to learn more about what is speciality coffee, then we should offer that facility for them.
00:18:13
Speaker
Absolutely. And so this is very interesting. And this internship is possible. People can even learn to brew with you, right? I mean, even if they don't intern, but they want to do a course of brewing, you take that up, right? Am I correct in that? We do different levels of engagement. We have what we call the foundations of a specialty coffee course. It's for five days. In 24 of the packets, we are having another one.
00:18:40
Speaker
so that is the presentation and it's maximum for five people and in a week we start the journey to give a very good foundation what is speciality means something that it's difficult to grasp you can agree
00:18:58
Speaker
through theory and through practice. They will practice espresso brewing, latte art, they will experience aero press, French press, roasting coffee, cupping coffee, history, coffee, chemistry, physics, health. We try to cover very holistically what coffee can be.
00:19:17
Speaker
And then after these five days, you've got something solid in you that then you can decide, most of the interns come after these workshops. They say, wow, now I really want to do an internship. Or I want to start my own business. Or I really want to do something with you. So these engagements, we have people who did that course. We're still in touch with them. We have a good connection with them. And I follow up them. And they come and visit us again.
00:19:43
Speaker
So I think it also brings up a little bit of beyond professionalism. We share something very intimate, so that makes us really connected.
Emotional Connection to Coffee
00:19:52
Speaker
So what does a cup of coffee mean to you, Mark? What does it mean to you? You know, you speak about it almost reverentially. You said in passing, we worship coffee. What does it mean to you? What is it signified to you?
00:20:06
Speaker
I think it signifies, I see when we talk about this type of quality of coffee, I will say there's always three parts of it. One is the intelligence of what the intelligence that has been put into produce a cup of coffee. The knowledge, the processes, the methodology, the understanding.
00:20:23
Speaker
what we call more the scientific approach of coffee of course and how much devoted you are to produce a cup of coffee so that is what I when somebody brings me a cup of coffee I see wow there's a huge amount of intelligence here second I see the emotion coffee is an emotional drink
00:20:42
Speaker
and generates emotions. Emotions, from the barista point of view, when you are brewing a cup of coffee in an espresso machine, it's very emotional. You are grinding it, you are adjusting it, you see the crema coming in, the smell, colors, and the whole thing. So that emotion is something that is unique. You cannot transfer it. But that emotion is fast to the customer. So what is the customer's emotion? I'm actually able to
00:21:11
Speaker
being that emotion to you and I would like to hear what is the emotions that dream is creating into you and that brings to the third part is the conversation like you and me we're having now having a great cup of coffee alone yes I agree it's I like to have my coffee in the morning with no conversation and I still believe the spirit of coffee is the spirit of bringing people together and talking to each other and
00:21:35
Speaker
And if we can share that emotion, like sometimes I talk to my dad, this coffee really brought me back to my childhood when I first we did a coffee roastery. I mean, and it was like, I just, it's amazing how you manage to travel through time in milliseconds just because the smell is tricky and something.
00:21:53
Speaker
what emotion of of happiness or whatever it is positive or negative whatever it is that conversation I think so these three three aspects is what I think I believe it makes that brew so special this type of coffee makes it's very difficult to find elsewhere something that is so beautiful mark yes and it is so true when you when you say all this I completely resonate
00:22:18
Speaker
with all the three aspects that you talk about.
Direct Trade Benefits
00:22:22
Speaker
You do a lot of roasting from India and of buying coffees from the South Indian state and somehow there's no middleman, right? You go directly and is that something that you've managed to do or how does that work?
00:22:38
Speaker
Well, I think that is the beauty of it because you don't do direct trade to bypass the middleman. You want to do direct trade because you want to meet the person. You want to walk the land. You want to smell the coffee. You want to see. It's a very, again, it's a very personal thing.
00:22:55
Speaker
I said it's not about how beautiful your plantation is, it's not about how much sustainable you are. Are we connecting to each other or not? There is a common threat or not, beyond all that. And that magic needs to happen.
00:23:11
Speaker
And if it doesn't happen, it doesn't happen and it's fine. You know, that's meant, it's not meant to happen, but we are clear about this first. So most of our coffees are directly traded through the plantation, through the farmer. We select a lot. We select even the part of the plantation where we want the coffee from. So we can revisit that patch of forest every year, see how it's doing. We have a connection with that. So we go back to that and also it's very consistently.
00:23:39
Speaker
So some of our coffees, for instance, like the Malabar Munzon coffees and all our coffees are being processed by different people that they grow. So in that sense, the traceability cannot be up to the farmer, but it can be up to the person who is actually mastering that process of Munzon in the coffee.
00:23:57
Speaker
And that is done sometimes through traders. But they are not all like this in Mujung Malabar precisely, yes. But the rest of the coffees that you can see in our website.
00:24:11
Speaker
the name of the coffee, the name of the plantation or the name of person who grows it. And that is definitely one of the best things specialty coffee can offer, no stressability up to the person or to the place. And that's what we do. For international coffees, we're introducing some international coffees.
00:24:29
Speaker
And after a long deliberation, we're doing that because our main objective is to promote Indian speciality of Indian fine coffees. But we wanted to have a small amount of international coffees for our audience, our customers, for them to get exposed to what other coffees around the world tastes like. So that is also, obviously I'm not going directly from the farmer in Tanzania, but I know the farm, I know where it is.
00:24:54
Speaker
And there is a person who is making that amazing job to bring this coffee to India through exports and controls and paperwork and it's very difficult to get in good quality coffee from other countries into India. So for me, they are part of the value chain and I really appreciate whether they're a middleman or not, they are doing their job and they are helping me and you to try an extraordinary coffee from Sumatra.
00:25:21
Speaker
So in that sense, it's also good for us. So more or less just to answer your question. I remember how excited you were when you heard that I'd gone to Papua New Guinea. Oh my god. Because it's coffee land, isn't it? Coffee land. Beautiful coffee, very exotic flavors. Again, I mean, we could not be able to trace directly from them, but there is an Indian fellow who brings some of these pinto coffees. And then said, yeah, yeah, we can get two kilos, three kilos. And so we appreciate that.
00:25:51
Speaker
So tell me, Mark, when the chips are down, when things are not going the way, is there something that you live by, something that always lifts you up, like a metaphor for life, you know? When I'm low, you mean? When you're low, when you're low. Oh, that's interesting. I think somehow there is in the mind, there is always places in your mind that you can access.
00:26:16
Speaker
when you have these low periods or low days either you're going through a painful process whatever it is professionally or personally there is that space where you know it will pass you know it's an assurance that you know even in nature when you see a river everything is it's moving and it is in transition and nothing is static nothing here nothing stays here forever
00:26:43
Speaker
So I try to visualize that, like, okay, that's, it's a tough moment for me. Yes, it is. You recognize this and acknowledge it. I'm going to manage that. And what it helps me is this, this thought, no, that it will pass. It will pass and just stay quiet, learn from it, but don't get overwhelmed, overwhelmed by it because that assurance that it will pass whatever matter.
00:27:09
Speaker
And I think that is one of my tricks to overcome difficult situations.
00:27:14
Speaker
Absolutely. Thank you so much for sharing that. That's very powerful. Can you speak a little bit about the gifts you received that shaped who you are, Mark?
Coffee and Meditation
00:27:24
Speaker
Gifts? It's when somebody comes to the cafe and just said, yes, I love your coffee. I mean, it's so delicious. Or when people said, you know, I meditate over your coffee. And I said, what? I said, yeah. I hear people, I said, how are you? What are the emotions that my coffee triggers into you? That's what I ask.
00:27:43
Speaker
some someone said a good customer said you know in the morning i just prepared my french fries and i have your coffee next to me and i meditate and maybe 15 minutes i just take a sip of it and i love it and some other people feel that that action of brewing coffee in the morning
00:28:01
Speaker
knowing what you bring, of course, not any anonymous coffee, but you know from where it comes from and the whole story, right? It really makes the whole awakening a bit more conscious. That is one of the gifts that I really appreciate because then I said, okay, I'm doing the job I wanted to do, like create that emotion. That's beautiful.
Family Involvement in Coffee Business
00:28:23
Speaker
That's beautiful. And your family also works with you, right? In the cafe oftentimes.
00:28:29
Speaker
Yeah, I think I never wanted to push my family to follow my passion or my profession. I wanted to be very clear about that. But somehow it's percolating down.
00:28:41
Speaker
Like coffee. Yeah, I think my wife now is actually fully in charge of the cafe store. I'm actually stepping out from that role after all these years. She's picking up and she's more than ready to do that. And my son has completed his specialty coffee training program in Buffalo. So he's by his age is quite an achievement.
00:29:08
Speaker
certification and he's completely in love with coffee. He said, I love it. He hires me. I want to continue. I said, great. You know, now it's maybe time for you to go somewhere else and work in another company, not in
00:29:21
Speaker
in our company because that will be very different. So get experience outside and when you are ready to come back, you know, please come and join us again. My daughter is, grinds her coffee every morning by hand. And she has her own idol press. In fact, she's the one who handles all my Instagram handles on the websites, you know, design and offers and content writing.
00:29:49
Speaker
So every month we have our own meetings on this. So yes, coffee definitely has played a very, very important role in my family. And my sister as well is running a coffee shop, a store with my mom back in Barcelona. So it's something that was not in my family before. It's something that my sister and myself started from scratch and seems like we are creating something that the next generations may be taking it over.
00:30:18
Speaker
That's amazing. It almost seems to be that instead of blood, coffee flows in your veins. It's there and it's almost there in the DNA. It's amazing. I don't know. It's quite amazing how deeply connected I am with this plant.
00:30:35
Speaker
Yeah, if I was to ask you to, you know, people just starting out or a younger mark or some people who are trying to do something different in their life and starting on their journeys, what would you tell them?
Social and Ecological Impact of Coffee
00:30:51
Speaker
What's the input you would give them? What's the advice? That's a very good question. I think if anybody want, I mean, think in today's reality, what we are facing, if you are a little bit conscious about the state of affairs of our planet, the state of affairs of our economy, in terms of social ecologically and economically speaking,
00:31:15
Speaker
I think coffee plays a huge role. I mean, as you know, it's the second worldwide commodity traded just after petrol. So the impact that coffee has in all these three aspects is humongous. So if you're a change maker, if you really want to do things to create change,
00:31:38
Speaker
not because you're driven by a threat. I always tell my friends, I want to open a coffee shop, said why? There are millions of coffee shops. Why you're going to bring new? Why you're going to do something different? Because if you're doing that cafe, because that's the hip thing to do, don't do it. Just don't do it. It needs to be really deeper than that.
00:32:00
Speaker
Because if you're really sincere of doing something with coffee, the potentiality and the opportunities that you have are amazing. To really bring in those values you believe in. Sustainability, socially responsible businesses, traceability, all these things you can bring it along with your brand, whatever you do. It's a very holistic product.
00:32:24
Speaker
Because it's just one product. When you drink a cup of coffee, it's nothing else than that. It's just that roasted seed. It's not mixed with milk, or you buy a jam, or you buy so many other products in that product. But when you drink coffee, it's just water, and that's it.
00:32:42
Speaker
nothing else that's very powerful because you can you can tell the story of that thing you can really actually travel back and see what happens is giving that that traceability back to where it is that i would recommend yes please go we need a lot of coffee entrepreneurs in this country in the world that have that approach because if i am able to offer you a cup of coffee that is conscious
00:33:06
Speaker
that is done well, taking care of all these aspects and you can actually check by yourself that this is not just an Instagram post that is real. I think that it's a beautiful way to enter.
00:33:17
Speaker
That's very powerful. Yeah. And it's so true. It's so true, Mark. And I'm sure as you say this, you'll be inspiring many people to really look at that cup of coffee and some people who are entrepreneurs to see what can I do with it and how do I clarify my own beliefs about this? So I think that is, Mark, each one of us has a unique gift to offer humankind.
Inspiring Coffee Communities
00:33:41
Speaker
I believe each one is unique and bring something very special.
00:33:44
Speaker
what is your gift? I think this is the gift I give my coffee my passion for coffee that is something that you cannot even learn in books you know it's it's when you talk when you smell when you
00:33:56
Speaker
that I think are being gifted to be a channel between that plant and society. I'm very grateful to be gifted by that coffee spirit. The coffee spirit, I think that is so, yeah, that's so true. Conversations like these Mark, what is the value of a conversation like this? Like a, like a soul brew between you and me. What do you think is the value? I think today's in
00:34:23
Speaker
whatever in the media, there is a lot of stuff. But to really find good content is difficult. I mean, we want to spend some time, yes, listening to podcasts, of course. It's a beautiful thing to do because you close your eyes and you just listen. It's very relaxing. And I do a lot of, I like to listen to podcasts.
00:34:46
Speaker
And I love this medium. I'm so happy when I stumbled upon a good podcast. I said, wow, that was half an hour of being extremely useful. Half an hour I learned things, this person inspired me, or I came to know facts that they didn't know, or it make me that half an hour actually very pleasant. So the value of this type of interaction that we're having right now is about that, that you've got some free time and you want to listen to something meaningful, something that
00:35:20
Speaker
And I think these interviews that you're doing to me that fulfills that need. So thank you, Mark.
Invitation to Explore Coffee World
00:35:28
Speaker
I mean, it's what you say is so true about creating spaces such as these where the content makes a difference. And thank you so much for spending this time with me. Before we close out, is there anything else you'd like to say?
00:35:44
Speaker
Well, I think first of all, thank you for inviting me to this podcast. Really appreciate, again, talking to you. Always a pleasure. And yes, it's an open invitation to anybody who's listening to this podcast. I can be reached. You can come and visit us in Oregon in the cache. I'm sure you can put our email address there in the podcast so people can reach us. And yes, it's a way to connect to the wider audience. Thank you.
00:36:12
Speaker
Certainly. Is there anything else the audience can do for you? Is there a requirement you have? I think if you are really generally interested about coffee and learn about more, I think that would be that podcast that can trigger that interest in you. So I would be already very happy that that had happened.
00:36:30
Speaker
And my offering is that yes, I reach out here, I live here. I'm a very reachable person, as you know. I walk around and I love to interact with people. So again, as an open invitation to anyone who wants to explore the world of speciality coffee, that podcast can be the first entry.
00:36:48
Speaker
Fabulous. Thank you so much, Mark. And I will definitely be putting out your website and your email address on both the videocast as well as the podcast. So it will be available on YouTube. It will also be available on a podcast, Soul Brews, which and anybody who needs to understand deeper about coffee and experience coffee with Mark more than welcome to go and give it a shot. I mean, you will not be disappointed.
00:37:14
Speaker
Mark, thank you so much for this wonderful conversation. I've thoroughly enjoyed speaking with you again. You take care. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you for your time and attention and for being a part of Soul Brews with Shiva. Until next week, keep the coffee swirling.