Member Spotlight: An Interview with Marty Roe
/
By Hylan Joseph
Marty Roe is the Owner of Workbench Coffee Labs. After discovering specialty coffee sometime in 1999 and having been a technician all his life, Marty knew he was destined to make a living in the specialty coffee industry. By 2003, he and his wife, Tooti, had opened Service Call LLC, a coffee equipment repair company. A few years later, they also opened Workbench Coffee Labs, now a training facility focused on training coffee equipment repair technicians.
Hylan Joseph: First question, speak to a short history of your background.
Marty Roe: A short history. How short? I was born-
HJ: Not that far back.
MR: Well, I'll jump across a lot of them… I was born in a family of mechanics, so I was destined to fix things for a living, just simply because that's what we all did growing. Early in life, I had quite a bit of experience with HVAC because my dad owned a heating and air conditioning company. I worked with him for several years, just polishing those same skills – I don't care whether you're working on an air conditioner or an espresso machine, a valve is a valve. They kind of work the same way.
Then I spent 20 years at Kauffman Stadium with the Kansas City Royals basically doing the same thing. If it was there – technical to toilets – we were responsible for it. There wasn't anything out there I shied away from. We had a video production facility there and we kept it running, we did all the repairs, all the rebuilds, all the installs, everything. And we also took care of the toilets. You could not get a better job if you wanted to be exposed to a lot of different things.
So basically, what turned the corner that took me into coffee was The Roastery, a roasting company in Kansas City that my wife Tootie went to work for in early 2000. We started learning about specialty coffee through a coffee club that they were doing, a once-a-month meeting that the general public was invited to, long before barista jams and latte art competitions. It was more of a marketing and relationship-building thing that they did once a month. What intrigued me most was the exposure to the unique-looking equipment. It was interesting what was being done with the coffee through espresso machines, and quite frankly, commercial drip coffee. A lot of innovational stuff that was going on even then intrigued me. I knew that you had to be a little savvy on the equipment side of it, being able to turn wrenches, but it also brought forth the aspect of knowing how that coffee is responding to that.
HJ: What made you decide to take the jump and start a service company?
MR: During those coffee club gatherings and the more I learned about the coffee scene, I guess we saw a need there and I didn't know how many people out there actually had an interest in wrenches and the art of coffee. In our market here in the Midwest, there weren’t very many people doing that. The ones that were doing it either leaned heavily toward the coffee side or the equipment side, and I just felt like focusing on the two together was something that I wanted to do. It took about three years until I decided that the time was right. There was enough low-hanging fruit in the market that I could carve out enough service calls to pay the bills, and we just did it.
HJ: That's impressive. You've been in our industry for almost 25 years, where do you see our industry going in the next 5 or 10 years?
MR: Are you talking about the coffee industry as a whole or as it pertains to the technical side of it?
HJ: As a whole.
MR: I think it's obviously going to continue to grow. I think we've got a lot of growth potential across the country, and I think there's going to be a lot more innovation. We've seen a lot of changes in the last 5-to-10 years. If nothing else, in the roasting profiles that have been just incredible. When we first got into it, it seemed like everyone was locked into either doing a light roast, a medium roast, or a dark roast, and that's all they did. And this coffee was supposed to be at this temperature, that coffee was supposed to be at that temperature, and there wasn't a lot of creativity going on in the roasting world.
I don't know what happened, but all of a sudden, roasters decided that they could coax out some flavors that existed in the coffee, but it took a little bit of thought, effort, and talent development to get that done. And they've done it! We are getting coffee profiles out of the same coffee, but I give credit to the roasters themselves – they've really become artists in identifying and highlighting flavor profiles in different coffees. I don't know that I can predict what's coming on next, but I don't think anyone foresaw that roasting change. So, I think there's a lot more innovation that's yet to come.
HJ: You think the third wave really brought the industry into its own?
MR: I think the third wave actually really did make things a lot better throughout the coffee industry as we knew it into what we know of today because it brought in a lot of artistry that couldn't be done on a huge commercial scale. When you get that engine going, it's kind of hard to turn on a dime, but when you've got a coffee shop that can do some direct trade, and buy some micro-lots, and get creative with their roasting and creative with their buying, that's bringing a coffee adventure to the consumer that wouldn't have been done otherwise.
HJ: What lessons would you pass on to a technician that is new to the industry?
MR: I would say, get really familiar, absolutely-real-familiar, with the fundamentals. What we are seeing with some of the younger technicians is that they will go to classes that are brand-specific – and those aren't bad –but if you don't have the fundamentals down, if you don't know how to read a schematic, you don't know how to thoroughly understand what it's telling you when you put your multimeter on a circuit. If you don't understand those kinds of things, those skill sets that can be applied to any machine on the market, then you're really locking yourself in to being a parts changer and getting familiar with specific brands not being able to re-apply fundamentals to other machines.
If you need to take some classes on electrical flow, HVAC is a good field to get some offerings. We are focusing heavily on training at our facility, but there are plenty of other opportunities out there.
HJ: Let's talk about what classes you are teaching at your facility right now.
MR: We want to be able to fulfill a need – but also launch this with the biggest bang that we can – and the biggest need that we saw out there was for entry-level technicians that have a want or a desire to get into the field. We feel that there are probably more of them than the veteran guys. If you have a tech company, who can you lose for a day or two – or say, a whole week – to go attend a training? It's probably the one that hasn't endeared himself into the team quite yet.
What we've started off with is what we call our boot camp program, focused primarily for the young or the entry-level technicians that have that want, need, desire to do what we do, but our curriculum is focused on the fundamentals, how electricity flows, and heavy on safety. The last thing we want to do is send someone out and get them hurt because they didn't understand that if they do this one little thing they've got the potential of it blowing steam all over everywhere.
We focus on the fundamentals that can be applied to any piece of equipment out there – whether it's coffee or not – but we always try to tie it at up the tail end, “How does this skillset that we taught you apply to the coffee world?” But I would say 90% of our class on the boot camp is not coffee.
We've broken that class down into three different classes: first hydraulics, then schematic reading and electrical flow, and the third one is kind of a rotating deal – we started getting brand-specific on that – but we don't start getting brand-specific until we feel that you've got the tools in your toolbox – or the competencies, if you will – to start applying basics to each one of these classes.
HJ: Thank you for doing that. What's the funniest service call you've ever been on?
MR: We got into one at a McDonald's – not to throw rocks at them – but that manager called and he was frustrated with the machine because it wasn't doing what he wanted it to do. From the sound of it, I felt like we could fix that over the phone but he basically said that he didn't have time for that, he needed a technician. Some of these McDonald's are out there a ways, and it was a six-hour drive for me to go to where he was. So, I go, and it was definitely what I thought it was. It took me longer to walk in from the truck than it did to fix it. He saw me walk in, and he saw me make the first drink, and it was just a couple minutes. He said, “It's not doing what it was doing?” I said, “Oh yeah, it was, but I took care of it and here's what it was.” Oh, he was mad. I tried to talk to him over the phone. I understand his frustration.
HJ: What is your customer service philosophy?
MR: Basically, if I were to boil that down to policies, we can get involved with ourselves and our own wants and needs, but really, truly what we have to strive to be is a partner for whoever that customer is. Try to see things from their viewpoint and partner up with them, whatever we can do to make their day better in regards to what services we offer. That's really it. Whatever it takes within our abilities to partner up with them and get them beyond whatever that issue is.
HJ: What are your top five go-to tools for performing service?
MR: An honorable mention that just cannot be forgotten is a Leatherman, or a multi-tool like that. That's a given. That's been on my belt so long that it's really kind of a part of me. I don't know how many calls I ran that that was the only tool that I needed.
Number five is a multi-screwdriver, the one that has multi-tips on it. Obviously, you've got to have a screwdriver to get a lot of the panels off and things like that, so you can't hardly get by without a screwdriver. If you were to utilize one of the multi-tips, you can start getting into a lot of the screw heads, whether it's Torx or Phillips or straight blade or whatever.
Number four would be crescent wrenches or an adjustable wrench. Reason for that is, well, I carry a couple of small ones for the smaller fittings that are easy to get into places, but you just about can't hardly get by without having at least one larger one that can get on like a 22 mm or 24 mm because, occasionally, you'll run into those that needs that larger mouth on it. I'd say 90% of everything we do is like a 6-inch crescent, it's probably plenty big for the majority of what we do. I always say two of those because so many of our fittings that we deal with are inset into a boiler or something like that and you start cranking on it. Unless you've got ahold of the fitting itself and then the nut that you're trying to loosen together, the risk of snapping those fittings in half are pretty good. So those wrenches need to come in pairs.
Number three is your cell phone. I have some datasheets in my phone. If I don't, Google is a great thing. The manufacturers have gotten a lot better over the years of having resources available to you to help you figure out what a part is and what a part does. Having that accessible through your phone while you are standing in front of the machine working on it is invaluable. So, I say a phone is a great, great tool.
Number two is a multimeter. If it's electrical, you really can't put those wires together and see it spark to see if it's got power. You just can't do that. So, you have to have a multimeter to be able to diagnose anything electrical. If I don't have tools and I'm going to go work on anything, more times than not I will go buy a cheap multimeter. You just can't mimic that. The information that it tells you can't really be done any other way. You can MacGyver some other stuff, but not the information that the multimeter is going to give you.
The number one tool is your brain. That's my number one tool. Here's what drew me to that, and it drew me to it years ago. When I went to work for the Royals Kauffman Stadium I was young, I had something to prove, and so I bought all the Snap-On tools that you could get. I had a toolbox that you had to push around and had a workbench on top of it. I had more invested in my tools than I had in most of my cars. After having worked there for not too long, and while working on something I had never seen before, beating my head against the wall trying to figure it out, some gray-haired coworker come up there without any tools at all, scratched his head a little bit, looked over the blueprints, whispered in my ear what the problem was, and walked away. I realized that maybe a whole bunch of shiny tools isn't as important as honing your knowledge. It was a huge, huge lesson to learn. So, I'd say the number one tool you bring to the issue is your ability to analyze and make it work in your head.
HJ: It's funny no one has ever actually said that as a tool.
MR: It's the number one tool.
HJ: Okay, so last question. What is your playlist when you are working at a shop?
MR: If I'm working with other people, I have such a wide range of listening interests that I let them pick. It doesn't matter. But if it's me, I don't know if you want artists or not, but basically, I've got three categories that are top of my list and that is old country, and I'm talking Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, things like that. K.D. Lang, Lyle Lovett, Waylon Jennings.
Bluegrass is the other category. So, you've got guys like obviously Bill Monroe, Allison Krauss, Earl Scruggs, Ricky Skaggs, Bela Fleck. I love that.
Third category that I could easily fall into is basically ’70s serious rock. Heavy guitar. Like Steve Vai, Eric Clapton, Buddy Guy, those kinds of things. Like serious rock 'n roll. Old country, bluegrass, ‘70s rock.
HJ: I love old country. Somebody turned me on to you to an old Country artist named Margaret Lewis, you should check her out. Thanks for your time.
MR: Absolutely.