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Omaha Interview: Emily Brewer, Community Development Manager at Millwork Commons

OmahaNebraska.com Interview: Emily Brewer, Community Development Manager at Millwork Commons

Omahanebraska.com is here with…

Emily Brewer.

Tell me a little bit about yourself and how you came to be at Millwork Commons.

I am an army brat, so moved around a lot growing up… kind of fostered a love for people and new spaces early, early on. I grew up in Colorado, went to school out in Bozeman, Montana, did a year abroad my junior year, so I studied in Spain. Love to travel, love to be in new places and spaces, and ended up moving to Omaha in 2010 because my dad had taken a government job out here.

I moved to Omaha after just having visited once, ended up really liking it. Learned quickly that if I didn’t only want to hang out with my dad, that I needed to make friends and form a community. And so naturally, the best way to do that for me was by volunteering. I found some great nonprofits in the area. I joined Big Brothers Big Sisters. So I was a Big for about 6 years.

I guess I would say I cut my teeth on the Omaha scene by working in restaurants, so I feel very fortunate to have worked in some really incredible restaurants with some wonderful people over…I’d say the last decade plus. But what got me out of the service industry and into maybe a different kind of service industry was the pandemic. Like many of us, when things were shut down and there was so much uncertainty, certain jobs either had to really pivot to being remote or to change how they operated. With restaurants, it’s pretty hard to wait tables remote.

I was unfortunately laid off from both of my restaurant jobs, and I spent the next however many months trying to figure out what I could be doing, because although I have three college degrees and a minor, I hadn’t really used them since graduating. I always just thought I would figure things out. I joke that they are dinner party degrees, so they’re good for conversation. Very liberal arts focused, but I just didn’t want to teach and wasn’t sure how to use them. I just knew I wanted to go to college and I did, and then afterwards I was like, “Okay, now what?”

Aside from traveling, which again the pandemic really shut that down for a while, I was feeling pretty restless. I ended up getting a job at a medical staffing agency here in Omaha and fortunately or unfortunately, during the pandemic, those were really booming. Travel nursing was a big thing. The pay was great for those wonderful nurses and doctors at the time, and so I took a job and eventually was doing… initially my role was community outreach, because that just kind of fell in line with things I already valued and was plugged into, but I was doing it on behalf of the agency I worked for. That then pivoted to a more internal role, being very employee facing, and so I did employee onboarding, I did events planning, I helped run some of our groups, certain DEI initiatives, all sorts of things, but I really loved interacting with and being face-to-face with employees. That was important to me. I love people. Also, I called it the three C’s—internal communications, culture, and community outreach were the main hats I wore.

And then… gosh, I’ve done some copywriting, just freelance for some agencies and companies around town. I’m not sure if I should name them or not. I don’t think it’s a secret. Is that—? Well, Omaha Performing Arts was a client. Yeah, there’s just some great people I’ve met through being out there in the community.

I love networking. It’s got such a dry term, but I really just enjoyed meeting new people, and so I was very lucky when I was approached about this role here at Millwork Commons. My title is community development manager, and I’m still fairly new in this role and I am still learning. I had some really incredible predecessors. I’m actually friends with both of these gals, and so it’s been really neat to see how the role is kind of evolving as Millwork Commons and the neighborhood itself grows… as businesses and tenants start to move in and they get their footing. It’s been really cool to see how people choose to activate the space, whether it is kind of an organic, natural flow where they’re coming in and working archetype with a coworker or a friend, or if it’s a planned meeting. There are just a lot of great things happening around the neighborhood. And so my role is to find new ways to activate the space, but also, to make sure that our current tenants are happy and are able to utilize it in a way that best suits their needs, whether it’s personal or professional.

Millwork Commons was thought of and planned and took a long time to develop. Do you know a little bit of the history of that, and why this particular space?

Not as much of the concrete history as some of my colleagues would, but a big mission and goal of the neighborhood and the folks who are actively developing Millwork Commons is to really push arts, music, tech innovation, and entrepreneurship, which I know are some exciting buzzwords, but really what Millwork Commons is hoping to do is to give community members, artists, creatives, whomever a space and a platform to—I hate to keep using the same words, but to innovate and to be creative.

As far as the overall vision for Millwork, it’s hard to be future-thinking without reflecting on how we got here. I’m learning that it takes a lot. You see the sausage, but learning how the sausage gets made is a completely different process. It’s trying to think broadly, as far as what does Omaha as a community want? And what do they maybe need that they themselves might not even recognize? And so with the dock, which is located in the Ashton Building within the Miller Commons neighborhood, that’s a space with a state-of-the-art video wall, a great sound system, and so we allow people to use that to show art, or we partner with “KIOS at the Movies” to show documentaries and things like that. We’ve used it for our One Million Cups presentations, all kinds of things. It’s one of those things where when you get people in a room or a space together, often they are greater than the sum of their parts. By creating a vibrant hub as a way to activate a space and bring people to a neighborhood, we hope that it can exist as a legacy neighborhood, as something that you see in other cities, where there are interesting and creative things happening, but not just arts and music…where it can be a tech-focused thing.

We are so lucky to have the Nebraska Startup Academy housed here as well, in the Mastercraft Building. There are some brilliant minds at work over there, and the fact that we have a space for tech-minded folks and those who exist more in the arts and creative world is amazing. We are neighbors with Hot Shops, and that is a slew of… a community in of itself, of some really, really wonderful artists here in Omaha and they are just across the street from us right here in Millwork Commons. It’s exciting to see who are our neighbors and who is visiting this space. My goal is to be a good steward of this neighborhood and a liaison between people …

Oh, another thing that’s great to mention is Millwork Commons is working to be a very sustainable neighborhood. We have native prairie grasses out in our space that we call The Prairie. So a lot of the design of the building, it being a historic site, that meant we weren’t leveling it and rebuilding it with cheap and also very costly materials. We were working with a structure that was here, to renovate it in a way that created less of a footprint, but also paid homage to what the structures were like beforehand. So the beams you’ll see when you walk around, or the exposed brick that we’re looking at right now, it was all very deliberate, but in an effort to lessen any sort of footprint and have a more gentle environmental effect. There are very smart people who are overseeing those measures, and I’m just grateful to be in a space that prioritizes composting and recycling and leaving a smaller footprint.

Three buildings: Hello Apartments (Left), Ashton (Center) and Mastercraft (Right)

There’s a number of buildings here, and it’s grown slowly. Please tell me a little bit about each building that’s part of Millwork.

Well, there’s a teammate I would love to loop in, Jeff Slobotski and Steven Ausberg… they’ve both been with PGSA for a number of years and have feet firmly entrenched in the city planning world.

We’ve got the Hello Apartments that are just such a delight to visit. I love the branding that they’ve chosen. It’s a whimsical apartment building to live in, and I just think it’s a very cool space.

Dizzy Mule Apartments are open, and there will be retail there.

One of the things I’m always curious about and that we’ve been working on the blog is understanding how neighborhoods thrive. What helps them thrive? What helps them not thrive? And then how do they have a resurgence?

And so one of the things we learned over time was in this area Hot Shops that you mentioned earlier really had an impact on helping develop this area. And it’s interesting that you’re putting an emphasis on artists, and so were they. From what I’ve noticed with other places in other cities is that the artists take a chance, and obviously they can’t afford the fanciest place in town. They take a chance on the area and start to develop it, it starts to thrive. And then people get encouraged and excited by this, and then more development comes in.

So while in a lot of places, arts and science, arts and music and all of that are one of the first things to go, it’s one of the first things to help develop an area, which I find really fascinating.

Well said. I mean, truly, that’s a perfect way to phrase it. I think if you don’t give creatives—and you don’t just have to be an artist to be a creative, right?

Right.

You can just be someone who is passionate about something niche or something broad community wide, but I say “creatives” as kind of a broad categorization, but…

It’s innovators and entrepreneurs…they’re all creatives in some way.

Yes, exactly.

Even programmers. Yes, your language can be zeros and ones, or it can be watercolors or anything in between, but we want to give people a space. I think neighborhoods that folks are drawn to often have a center in creative arts because it scratches a lot of itches as far as aesthetics: you know, sight, smell, sound, touch, just an overall feeling, and not to get too hippy dippy, but I do think there’s kind of a palpable sense when, like, the energy of a space is more active. I mean, think about someone playing a show to a room of five versus a room of 200… even if it’s so silent in either scenario you could hear pin drop, there’s still this kind of electric shared energy.

And so neighborhoods that thrive. There’s some really cool ones in St. Louis, and there’s art-heavy districts in other cities…Denver. There’s tons of great pockets of neighborhoods, and I want to learn from them and emulate certain programming to give artists and creatives… entrepreneurs… a chance here. I think that there is also some grace in that there is room for things to fail first time around or maybe not get off the ground in the way we would have hoped or anticipated, but it’s just pilot programming, some of it, seeing, “Do people respond better to events at this time of day or that time of day? What about doing something over the lunch hour versus what about doing something after work?” You know, unfortunately, based on different work schedules, personal demands, family responsibilities, things like that, we can never find the perfect thing at the perfect time, but hopefully as I settle more into this role I can get creative myself and offer sort of a diverse range of things at different times, so that there are accessible programs for people who are interested.

And I’m very open and I very much encourage ideas from the community. For example, I met with someone who wanted to potentially host a bonsai workshop… the art of these trees. The Japanese art of pruning and growing and shaping these plants. But we talked about “Would that be something better suited to do in the dock for visibility?” And you know, it’s exciting to have people walk through and kind of be like, “Oh, what are you doing there?” Or I met with someone at Kross Strain, Sarah, who runs their programming… we talked about doing a Beers and Bonsai event. So people who sign up for this workshop, they get the materials, and then they can hang out and socialize and have a beverage if they’d like, but really, is that another fun way to activate a space within Millwork in partnership with one of our tenants? So yeah, I’m constantly floored by the really cool requests or ideas that people have shared. And again, if I had an unlimited budget, I would just say yes to everything, but until, you know… we’re a society that just trades in services and goods, I do have to keep in mind that I can’t say yes to everything.

I know that there’s the dock here at the Ashton, and … Hello Apartments. Dizzy Mule is relatively new.

We have incredible tenants here [Ashton] , and I hope shining a light on them and supporting them just makes room for other really great tenants, too. You’re not going to see a chain restaurant or anything like that. There’s a reason we have Archetype Coffee here instead of Starbucks, or, Dolomiti for pizza or Heirloom and Clean Slate… Kros Strain, a local brewery. We want to support local businesses, and having them in Millwork Commons is really a treat and I’d say a benefit to those who live in the area or who are visiting. We’re so close to the airport. When I do airport runs, I always …love making a stop and coming in and sitting down at Dolomiti and grabbing pizza with whoever I just picked up and kind of making that a welcome to the neighborhood.

Entrance to Coneflower Creamery in the Ashton building

Coneflower Ice Cream … Oh my gosh. Amazing. They have the nicest staff, they give you as many samples as you want, and they never make you feel guilty about asking for a seventh, but I love bringing people by here to grab a coffee at Archetype or take a spin through Heirloom and just grab … hostess gifts over at Heirloom because they have just great little local products: candles, honey, things like that, in addition to really good food. They just have … cards or chocolates, something I can just take a lap through and be like, “Okay, I didn’t know I needed this, but it’s coming with me.”

(Learn more about the Coneflower Creamery here:
https://coneflowercreamery.com
https://www.omahanebraska.com/blog/omaha-interview-brian-langbehn-and-katie-arant-chapman-of-coneflower-creamery-part-one
https://www.omahanebraska.com/blog/omaha-interview-brian-langbehn-and-katie-arant-chapman-of-coneflower-creamery-part-two)

Painting in the background, center with the side of the large screen on the right and white modern table in the foreground

There’s great artwork inside and outside here.

Yes. And one we’re currently working with Amplify Arts to do…it hasn’t been posted yet, but we’ll be doing a call for art and so on. Our video wall in the dock, that, you know we’ve got unless it’s being utilized for something else, we’ve got… and I wish I knew how many artists we had featured in there, but before I started here, they had done a call for art with local artists, and they either created new work, or could submit something existing that they had, and it was selected by a team of people. Again, we are very lucky to be working with Amplify Arts because they’ve got a wonderful pipeline for all of this. But again, we have just different visuals on display, just all the time on that video wall. And so we just thought it would be nice to refresh it. It’s been there for over a year now and just to give other artists a chance to submit some of their work and have it be seen by fresh eyes, and so as far as how they’ll do a call for art for those outside public spaces, we’ve worked with some other great local artists. I personally don’t know how folks are tapped or how that’s curated. Typically we will work with an unbiased organization so that they can help us with an art selection. But so it doesn’t fall to Paul and Annette [Smith], who are art collectors and very generous philanthropists in their own right, but so that everyone has a chance to have their art get seen.

Sounds like another good story there.

And again, not just artists and creatives in that sense, but the Nebraska Startup Academy, housed in the Mastercraft building. Charlie Cuddy and John Grange and Alyssa Cave. They are movers and shakers in that world, and they are so giving of their time and energy and just advice. They hold VC, venture capitalist, office hours after the weekly Wednesday One Million Cups meeting for people who just want to talk through things or ask questions. So they’re helping develop young entrepreneurs and those in the tech world just as much as an arts grant from Nebraska Arts Council or Amplify Arts, is doing. It’s really amazing that Millwork Commons is kind of a space where those worlds are intersecting and supporting each other, and hopefully thriving and just creating pathways for more.

That’s what I was thinking, too. How cool that is.
…
Was there a question you would have liked me to ask?

How can we support our tenants? How can community members support our tenants? And the nonprofits housed here.

Heartland Bike Share is another tenant that comes to mind. And they are just doing such great work to make E-bikes accessible to anyone in the community. You don’t need a special license, anything like that. We want to make public transportation as accessible as possible. We’ve got United Way housed here, Habitat for Humanity.

So ways to support the goings on in Millwork Commons: to follow us on our socials. Even to engage with some of those posts helps generate more eyes on the happenings, which in turn helps bring more attention to what is going on, and it’s just got a ripple effect. Coming down to Miller Commons, maybe carpooling with friends or family and just visiting some of our restaurants and shops or popping by the Hot Shops and seeing what they’re doing and asking if you can have a tour. Engaging with the people. In our surrounding neighborhood is a wonderful way to support us, and that’s what I want to emphasize to anyone listening to or reading this: that we want to build a neighborhood that is good for Omaha and that gives back to the community as much as possible. And so by folks who visit Omaha or who live here and come to see us and spend some time here, that’s the very best way you in turn can support us and then we can just continue this way of giving back and giving a platform to folks down the road.

Thank you.

Yeah. Thank you. I really, really appreciate it. So yeah, even you being so flexible with time this morning was… you’re a gracious interviewer and a lovely person.

Thank you.

I’ve seen you roll with quite a few punches. And shout out to, on the record, to our wonderful property management team, Mark with Colliers, and Bluestone Group. We’re grateful for them, too. Mark keeps the wheels on and then some, so I don’t know what I would do without some of these folks who operate behind the scenes. I think the takeaway is that I am lucky and grateful to be here.

Millwork Commons Social Media:

https://www.facebook.com/millworkcommons
https://www.instagram.com/millworkcommons
https://www.linkedin.com/company/millwork-commons
https://x.com/millworkcommons

Website:
https://millworkcommons.com

Shout out to Archetype Coffee for the great coffee and service we had!

Oatmilk capuccino with a beautiful heart-shaped flower design in a ceramic yellow cup on a blue saucer on a wooden table surface

Catch our interview here with Isiah Sheese, owner and founder of Archetype Coffee:
Omaha Interview: Isaiah Sheese of Archetype Coffee
https://www.omahanebraska.com/blog/omaha-interview-isaiah-sheese-of-archetype-coffee

Omaha Interview: Isaiah Sheese of Archetype Coffee

OmahaNebraska.com Interview with Isaiah Sheese, owner and founder of Archetype Coffee

Isiah Sheese, preparing cappuccino at Archetype Coffee in Millwork Commons

You’ve won a lot of awards! Your coffee is fantastic! Tell me a little bit about your journey to this point and then about all the cool things…

Where am I supposed to start?

I left it really open, so wherever you want.

I started drinking coffee as a little kid, maybe five and six. I don’t know. That’s where it all began, probably. I’ve been in the industry… I think this year is probably my 20th or 21st year. Just kind of started…had a friend in Tulsa that opened this shop, and she asked if I’d help. So it’s kind of like the old-school Mom-and-Pop shop where you have blenders and 30 syrups, and, you know, change the art out once a month. I just kind of started out like that. Then when I was in Tulsa, there was a roastery there that was doing really good things. I had a lot of interest in diving into more serious coffee, so I ended up working for that company, which is called Double Shot Coffee Company. Their, like, claim to fame was they were sued by Starbucks and won…

Wow.

…because of the name. And so that was kind of like their claim to fame. But anyways, after working at the roastery, he eventually took me on a trip to Colombia and then it was just kind of like a slippery slope into falling in love with, like, the whole coffee industry. From there it was… I did coffee in Tulsa for probably, like, seven, eight years, and then I was in Milwaukee working at Anodyne Coffee Roasters for two years. I was their quality control cupper. So basically, like, everything we roasted, everything that went out, I tasted everything. So lots of slurping. And then their wholesale trainer. And then when we were getting ready to move from Milwaukee to Omaha it was just kind of like that pivotal point of “What am I going to do?” You know, I’m getting a little bit older. And so it’s like either chase your dreams and take the jump in opening a business, or, you know, change careers.

So the last, like, six months that I was in Milwaukee, I took a small business plan writing course. And so at the end of your six months, you come out with, like, a business plan. So when I moved to Omaha, I just kind of hit the ground running. Yeah. So we’ve been here eleven years, and Archetype just turned ten in May.

How did you decide to make the jump? That’s a hard part for a lot of entrepreneurs.

It was just like—how old am I now? I turned 43. When I got here, I was, like, 30. It was just kind of one of those, like, either chase your dream or go do something else. You know. And so I think I’m still young and dumb enough to, like… I also don’t have children, so, you know, like, the risk—yes, the risk was big, but it also wasn’t gonna affect anyone except for myself. And my wife has her own career separate from mine, so it wasn’t going to really affect her. So it was just kind of like do it, you know, give it a chance, and if it works, awesome. If it doesn’t, well, at least you tried it. So I think for me it was just like… I think the potential benefits far outweighed the risk for me. I think so many people have these dreams and they never give it a shot, you know? And so like I said, I think I’m dumb enough just to step out on the water and see if I walk or if I sink.

It takes a lot of courage to make that jump.

Yeah, absolutely. But I don’t think you want to live life with “what ifs.” You know what I mean? Like, you don’t want to be on your deathbed thinking about “What if I did that?” or “What if I would have done that?”

I know a lot of people like that and I’m always trying to encourage them because the older people I know with the “what ifs” are miserable.

They’re miserable.

And even if you tried it and you found out it wasn’t what you thought it would be…You tried it, right?

Yeah. That’s a good story. Yeah, it’s a great memory.

Some people do something that they wanted to do and they find out, whoa, there’s all these other things I never knew about. I don’t like this.

Yeah.

But they did it, so there’s no regret.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So I mean, I was kind of the same deal. I definitely did not want to have that regret of, like… Man, you know, what if I never would have done that, so…

You have huge experience in the coffee industry.

Yeah.

What are the things to you that make that perfect cup or that perfect bean?

Oh. That’s a deep dive. Coffee is one of those things. It’s like it’s a recipe. So you have to have good water, you need to have, obviously, good coffee. So getting good coffee is making sure you’re sourcing quality green, then you’re roasting it well, then you have to have a good grinder. And then it’s understanding what each variable does, so your brew ratio, your temperature, your grind size, the time… so, like, the water contact time and then agitation so you just kind of have to master all of those things. Put it together and you have a great cup every time.

That sounds like a good equation.

Yeah.

What do you like about Omaha and why Omaha?

Well, why Omaha was because my wife got a job here, so that’s how we ended up in Omaha. But I’d say Omaha is just one of those Midwestern cities that has a great community. You know, I’ve always grown up in the Midwest, and so I definitely have… there’s a little bit of the charm to the Midwest that the coasts don’t have. I think it’s like if you’re in the Midwest, you’re choosing to be there. Like, the coasts are… You know, you have New York, L.A., San Francisco, Portland, Oregon, and then, like, the fly-over country. But it’s a great community of people, very passionate and hard workers. And so I think probably what I love about Omaha the most is just the people. Yeah.

I fell in love with it, too, for the people. The joke is it certainly wasn’t the weather.

No. Yeah. I mean, I think my two biggest beefs have always been the winters are brutal, and if you’re going to have that brutal of the winter, your summer should be pretty nice, and we have just as hot of summer as everyone else.

We used to joke that there’s two seasons: too hot and too cold.

It’s true. And then there is just like the airport is… flying in and out of Omaha is tricky, but yeah.

What kind of awards and things have you done? I know that list is pretty long.

Yeah. So I’m the 2023 U.S. Barista Champion [United States Coffee Championships], and then I ended up finishing fourth at Worlds [World of Coffee] in Athens, so I’ve competed for nine years, and out of the nine years I’ve placed top six in every qualifier, with the exception of one, and then before winning the U.S. Barista Championship, I’d come in fifth in the U.S., I’d come in eighth in the U.S., I’d come in 12th in the U.S. So, yeah… so lots of grinding it out, figuring out the competition, and understanding the game.

I took two years off to judge as well. So in 2021 there was a lottery to compete because of COVID still, and so I wasn’t able to compete. But since I’d judged previously, I was able to judge, so I went to Boston for the finals and I judged quarterfinals and semifinals just to gain more experience and understanding of… you know, constantly learning the competition and figuring it out, which ultimately ended up helping me win.

What’s your favorite coffee? If you could pick one or a couple that you have.

Favorite coffee? I don’t know. The way that we buy coffee is we buy it seasonally. Throughout the year you get different coffees, so usually it’s just like whatever’s fresh, whatever’s new. It’s kind of like I get tired of drinking the same things over and over again, and the same profile. The romance of coffee is each year is going to be different, even if you’re buying from the same farm, depending on how much rain they have and depending on… yeah, the drying. Like, all those things affect it. And so for me, like, we have… our fresh crop Ethiopian coffees just arrived. So after I leave here, I’ll go cup those and see how they taste, and if they’re great then we’ll bring them in. We also have fresh crop Costa Rica coming in and fresh crop Mexico.

I don’t know. I enjoy drinking a wide variety of different origins, but I would say during competition season, drinking competition coffee, there’s nothing like it. They’re very rare coffees, they’re usually really expensive and we usually get a very small amount of them. And so anytime I get a chance to drink those coffees, it’s otherworldly for sure.

What other locations do you have and where? Also, are you in other places?

In Omaha, we have three locations. We’ve got the Blackstone location at 40th and Farnam. That was our first, and that one turned 10 in May. Our second location where we now have our roastery training lab is at 13th and William, basically. It’s catty-corner from where the Bohemian Cafe used to be. So that’s where our training lab, roastery, and cafe is, and that one turns 6 in August, so that one turns 6 next month, which is crazy to think. And then our third one is the Millwork location, and that one turns 3 in October. And then we have others that serve our coffee, and Via Farina, Dolomiti and we have wholesale customers, like, outside of Omaha. On our website, we sell all over the world. I mean, we’ve shipped it everywhere. We have people that have subscriptions, and they get coffee once a month from us or twice a month. Yeah, all kinds of fun stuff.

What’s new on the horizon?

We’re getting ready to launch our new website, which is going to be incredible. When you open a business… I opened Archetype because I wanted to make coffee and be a part of the community and those things. And then all of a sudden you have to have a brand, and you have to start making T-shirts and hats, and now you need to have a website, and now you need to have Instagram and all the things. And so I think… being very naïve, I wasn’t thinking about those things. When we launched our website, it’s a very modest website. It doesn’t really represent who we are as a coffee company. But when your passion is focusing on coffee and people, you kind of push those other things to the side. And so we haven’t focused on that a long time, but now that we have kind of like a global recognition, we need the website to match our branding. So we’ve been working really hard on that, trying to get it up and going.

That’s hard because you can’t wear all your hats forever.

That’s the other thing I’d say about being a small business owner is like, when do you pass off a hat? Because if you’re not doing it, you’re paying someone to do it until you get to a certain growth point. It’s like you need to keep doing all the things. And so I think the other part is trying to figure out the balance. But yeah, so the website will hopefully be launching in August is our goal. So that’s kind of like the next big thing on the horizon, and then we’d like to turn the training lab into kind of like a tasting lab where we could do events, whether it’s weekly or monthly, whether we’re doing trainings or whether we’re showcasing a lot of our competition coffees or the stuff that we end up doing on a competition stage that really isn’t conducive in a cafe setting. We’ll try to offer more of those opportunities for the public to buy tickets and come and sit through a presentation. And try to expose Omaha to some of those crazier coffees that we can’t just put on the shelf and try to sell.

And you’ve been a great sponsor for One Million Cups with the coffee.

Oh, yeah, yeah. One Million Cups is a super cool event. Once again, they’re helping… I think giving people the impetus and opportunity to network with other people that have taken the risk of entrepreneurship, and so I think it’s a cool organization, just to see how they are trying to continue to foster that and pass it towards the younger generation to do it, take a risk.

What’s the worst that can happen? Nothing too terrible, right? So yeah, One Million Cups has done a great job in advocating for entrepreneurship and helping people network and make connections. I think that’s a huge thing, and it’s also a great support group.

Entrepreneurship can be a lonely road sometimes, so it’s nice if you have those people that have walked down that same journey and risk, and go to share those war stories and hopefully encourage each other. And yeah, it’s a great organization.

What are your next plans?

This next year, I’m taking some time to focus on competition. The goal is to win in the U.S. again and then give World’s another shot. Usually you don’t win the World in the first year. It would be interesting to see the statistics and find out if anyone has ever won World the first year. I think there might only be a couple. It usually takes a couple of times. My goal is to kind of treat this competition season almost more like a job. So I’ll be stepping back from some of my leadership at Archetype, not doing all the day-to-day or working behind the machine like I do and give me the opportunity to focus on competition. I’ll leave for Colombia on Sunday to work with the farmer that I competed with and came in fourth with at World’s.

Tell me a little bit about the competitive organization.

It’s all under the SCA, which is the Specialty Coffee Association. In the recent championship, whoever wins each country represents their country at World’s. And World’s changes locations every year. So I was just in South Korea in April, helping last year’s U.S. champion, and so this upcoming World in 2025 will be in Milan. But yeah, you have 15 minutes. You’re serving 4 judges. You have two technical judges and a head judge. You serve them each a single espresso, a single milk drink, and then you create a signature beverage and then they judge you on coffee knowledge, bar management, taste, accuracy, waste, and you’re serving these 12 drinks all while giving basically like a coffee Ted Talk. Yeah. So it’s kind of a tricky competition. It’s multifaceted, being able to execute the drinks to perfection while also eloquently coming up with the talk, connecting the whole story from start to finish.

It certainly sounds tough.

It’s tricky. Yeah, like I said, it took me 9 years to win the U.S. The hardest countries to win are the United States, Australia, Canada, Japan, China. Those are probably the toughest countries to win. And so yeah, the competition is really high, and yeah, it’s a very tricky competition.

Thank you very much.

Oat milk cappuccino with beautiful heart flower foam design in pink cup with blue saucer on wood table

Isiah made the coffee pictured above. It was the best cappuccino I have ever had!

Archetype Coffee has three great locations to serve you that perfect cup of coffee!

Archetype Coffee -The Blackstone District
3926 Farnam St.
Omaha, NE 68131

Archetype Coffee-Little Bohemia
1419 S. 13th St.
Omaha, NE 68108

Archetype Coffee-Ashton at Millwork Commons
1229 Millwork Ave, Suite 101
Omaha, NE 68102

Website:
https://drinkarchetype.com/