Guest: Chris Deferio
Company: Keys To The Shop
Role: Founder, Podcaster, Consultant • Based: Louisville, KY
Online:@keystotheshop • https://keystotheshop.com/consulting/
What they drink: A shot of espresso
FROM KEYS TO THE SHOP
Boasting more than two decades of widespread coffee experience, Chris Deferio’s impact on the coffee industry is well known. His career has taken him all over the world, training organizational management and leadership, barista skills, and latte art to folks looking to elevate their respective craft and business.
Chris launched the Keys to the Shop podcast in 2017 after noticing a need for content about leadership and management in the coffee industry. Today, the podcast has more than 900 episodes and 3 million downloads (and counting.) In conjunction with the podcast, Chris offers consulting services for coffee shop owners and has worked to help more than 80 companies accomplish their respective business goals.
“That’s a good question to always ask—What is this? What’s this for?…If you’re an operator of a business or just a person with a career, what are you doing it for? Is it serving you? And, if not, some action needs to be taken to get yourself over the hump, and take the brave step to change something, so that maybe you would do less, but you feel better. And you’re serving something that now gives life. You’re doing something that gives life to you.”
• Chris Deferio
KEY TAKEAWAYS FROM THE PODCAST
Chris is a long-time industry veteran. His role has changed, but his connection to coffee has remained constant.
Keys to the Shop is a podcast and a consulting company. Listen to that voice! That’s a true podcaster’s voice. The show is a direct result of Chris’ desire to give back to the industry in the form of education.
There are 900+ Keys To The Shop podcasts to catch up on…you better get started! Just kidding. Don’t get overwhelmed. Whatever level you’re at in the industry or whatever question you’ve got, Chris probably has a show for that. Check out the archives here: https://keystotheshop.com/all-podcasts/
Joint solitude is one of my favorite ways to spend time in my community. We’re together, but we’re staying in our own quiet space.
He mentioned his grandmother having a coffee and a cigarette as a seminal coffee memory. He isn’t the only or the first to mention a grandmother with a coffee and a cigarette on this show. I’m guessing that was the norm for a generation coming up before the great cigarette crackdown of the late ‘90s.
He was passionate but useless as a barista (his words!), but his appreciation for coffee was growing because he had the time to pay attention. What he realized was he loved being in the coffee shop and being part of that experience.
Developing a training manual is a keystone experience. It forces you to think about what information is essential, what is important, and what can be learned through experience. Most importantly, it forces you to think about how to present the skills or tools that are needed to achieve success, which also forces you to break down what has been the path to your own success.
Both the podcast and his efforts as a consultant offer Chris the opportunity to be a servant to the industry, to expand the general knowledge and success of others by sharing his knowledge and his platform enabling others to share theirs.
Success in hospitality is multi-faceted. In addition to the basics—keeping the books, serving the product, making sure people know you exist—you’re also dealing with being a human in a sea of other humans who’ve chosen to turn to you to spend their quality luxury time.
That can be a lot, especially if you’re not at the tip-top of your own mental state on a given day or time. Having a plan to take care of yourself is important. I’ve suffered burnout in most of the restaurants where I’ve had a leadership role.
I’m the last person to start jabbering about work/life balance as a true 50/50 because I have yet to achieve that sort of balance. But I have learned that if the scales are weighted to one side, generally, the work side, say 70/30, 80/20, or dang it all, 99/1, you need a plan to let your brain relax, recover, and start processing at peak performance on a regular basis. Not just because it is a healthier, probably more enjoyable, way to live, but also for the success of your business.Chris sees his role as being a throttle to ensure his consulting clients are thinking through the details to provide an experience that creates success by allowing his clients to develop relationships with their employees, customers, businesses, and themselves.
Before you compare your thing to someone else’s thing, especially if you’re comparing them based on the internet image, remember, you don’t know what it’s like in reality. You don’t know if they are making money if they’re treating their employees well, or even if they are happy. Keep your focus on making your path the right one for you.
Businesses close for all kinds of reasons. The pandemic and post-pandemic related closures weren’t always due to a lack of foundational support or really a failure of any kind, other than not preparing for a worldwide shutdown, creating the need for a longer emergency runway than most businesses or individuals account for.
The lack of transparency in the early days about the reality of the shutdowns, in particular, the anticipated length of the shutdown, also slowed the on-the-ground response at many cafes or restaurants. No one had been through anything like that in generations. But now we have.
The risk of another pandemic hasn’t gone away, and the experience of living through it may help those rising up in the industry now, by making them really consider their off-ramps, support systems, and financial needs.
I realize it isn’t a great silver lining for those whose businesses were so drastically impacted then, and have continued to be impacted by the changing expectations of the customers who also were merely trying to survive that period of time. Being a business owner or operator isn’t always easy. I’d argue it is pretty dang hard, more often than not, which is why, as we mentioned earlier, it is important to take stock of your mental state and work to keep your passion bucket full.I knew I had heard that bit about potential revenue being better than actual revenue somewhere. Warning: some blue language is used in this video.
Book recommendation from Chris Defereio: Crossing the Unknown Sea by David White
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