A Coffee with Michael Wall from The Wall Coffee Roasters

Join us for a coffee and chat with Michael Wall to hear all about how The Wall Coffee Roasters got its start from the love of coffee. Starting with a brand new coffee roaster and some informal training the Wall has since become the community hub of Acheson. Listen to Michael's amazing journey and if you are in the area stop by!

Transcript

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Hello, everybody, and welcome to episode number four of the ABA Coffee In The Park podcast. So glad that you're joining us today, and I'm Cam Milliken, and I am joined by my co-host extraordinaire, Jennifer Herrick, who is the executive director of the Acheson Business Association. Jennifer, this is exciting. It is exciting because, Cam, do you know where we're at? We are at the Wall Coffee Roaster in the heart of beautiful downtown Acheson. That's right. So we just want to tell you that because if you hear some noise in the background, it's actually because we're recording this podcast live in the coffee shop. Coffee and conversation is what it's all about. That's right. So you might hear some coffee shop noises in the background. And if you've never been to the Wall Coffee Roasters, you need to come. But we'll talk about that in just a moment or two. Jennifer, why don't you tell us about our sponsors? We would like to thank our gold corporate sponsors for the Acheson Business Association, which include Genics, the Myshak group of companies, and Parkland County. That's right. These are important people to the Acheson Business Association because they help the ABA do what it does. But today, we are very excited because we have a very, very special guest. Jennifer, why don't you introduce our guest? Our guest today is Michael Wall, who is the owner of The Wall Coffee Roasters, which is where we record this wonderful podcast. So Michael, welcome to the podcast. Thank you. Happy to be here today. Good to have you, Michael. And thank you to everyone who's listening. Thank you for letting us do this week after week here in the coffee shop and reserving this little table in the back that you put up the nice little reserve sign for us. And we really appreciate that. And thanks for taking time to do this today. This is exciting. Oh, yeah. My pleasure. Absolutely. So why don't we start out, Michael? And why don't you tell us a little bit about who you are and your story a little bit and what you do. And we'll just kind of go with it from there. For sure. For sure. Outside of the cafe, I'm married to an awesome woman named Lorenn. And she is currently very pregnant. We have a baby girl coming in September. And then we have a one and a half year old son, Brooks, who is the life of the party right now. Brooks, he's awesome. Having a great time. He's amazing. I love little Brooks. He's the best. Yeah. And so you guys, and you in particular, give us a little bit of your journey. You were born where, you went where, you did what, where, when and why. Yeah. Not born in the heart of Acheson, although I did grow up here my kind of whole childhood, but I was born in the West End of Edmonton. Born and raised in Edmonton. Left for a bit, played a little bit of hockey. Down in Montana, a little bit of hockey down in Oklahoma. And then I went out to actually where I first met Cam way back in the day. I was out in BC. Spent some years there, going to Bible school. Did some church ministry stuff, pastoring. And then found my way back to Edmonton in 2016. And then I've been here ever since. You're done. So Michael, why coffee? Yeah, coffee, that is a wonderful question. We do get it from time to time here. Coffee is something that has always brought about connection for people. I don't know that I would have used it that way initially, or at least consciously. I think when I started out, it was the caffeine, as I think a lot of us do. But yeah, over time, realized I was interested in coffee, pursued more understanding in the world of coffee as I had different coffee experiences. And then I've learned over time that that community aspect is always the thing that has been shared throughout all those different coffee experiences along the way. When you look back at it, it was meeting someone for a cup of coffee to have an important conversation or exploring new coffees, but always with other people or wanting to tell other people about them. And so coffee always kind of brings about community, which is a really cool thing. So can you sort of pinpoint a time in your life when coffee became kind of like, did you always just like coffee when you were like little, like six years old, did you like coffee? Or like, is there a time when it kind of just jumped out at you and you thought, this is, I want to be involved in this? So when I was a little kid, I wasn't allowed to drink coffee. So I grew up going to church. We had these things called newcomers dinners, and I would sneak coffee at these newcomers dinners because my parents would be busy hanging out with adults. In church you did that? Yes, yeah, I was, yeah. So I would add like a ton of sugar and I would choke it down because it felt cool because all the old people would do that, I guess. And then I have another distinct memory of every once in a while, my dad's Tim Hortons Double Double would still be in the cup holder the next day. Right, right. He would be a little later getting to the vehicle to take me to school, and I would take a few sips of that. That always tasted pretty good to me. Yeah, so that's where it started. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, and then you just got older, and... As I got older, yeah, just realizing the caffeine benefits, I guess. Then I thought I was cooler because I could drink dark roast coffee black, and that made me more of a man or something like that. But I remember having a very specific moment. I was actually, I was with you CAM. We were at a remembrance day thing, downtown Vancouver. That's right, in downtown Vancouver. That's right. It's a cool place, it's an OG, kind of third wave coffee. It's called Revolver Coffee, downtown Vancouver. And Michael, last week when I was in Vancouver, we went, we didn't go to Revolver, but we drove right by it. Ah, there we go. Yeah. And I have a distinct memory of sipping on whatever coffee I ordered there. I can't remember what it was. And thinking, this tastes a little bit different. Yeah. And I like it. That was a cool place, Revolver. Yeah. Yeah. And we introduced you to Brian Turco. Yeah, yeah. So I got to meet a passionate, very, very passionate coffee roaster, Brian Turco. Roasts more traditional Italian, very dark roast coffee, but he's very good at it and has won a lot of awards, especially over in Europe for his coffee. He's done really well. I think he won a gold medal in Italy for some of his coffee. So yeah. So seeds were definitely planted back then, being able to tour his roasting facility, hear him talk about coffee in a passionate and exciting way. So yeah, I owe him at least something in my coffee journey for sure. Right. So then Michael, tell us a little bit about how did you go about figuring out the roasting process? Yeah, yeah. That's a great question. We did some kind of like formal education, not formal, I mean informal, but like intentional education. My wife and I went down to Minneapolis, did a training there from the company that we bought our roaster from. And it was a bit of a coffee education class as well as roasting the coffee. And then when our roaster came and we ordered in the coffee from different importers, it was trial and error. And some of those first batches of coffee, fortunately, the very first ones were sold to raise money for a charity, at a charity event. But I would get calls from people who had bought the coffee and they would say, no matter how we brew it, we're not getting any flavor out of this. And I'm going, oh, we ruined it. It just, we baked it, we roasted it way too long. And then all the flavor's gone. And so yeah, we made a lot of mistakes along the way starting out, but that trial and error, learning how to respond to what's happening in the roaster and what that coffee actually wants in terms of what's gonna highlight the flavors that are already in it. So you have to go out and buy a roaster. Yep. How do you, how do you, and where do you, like, is there a roaster store somewhere or how do you? It's not on Amazon.ca. Yeah, Amazon.ca. We'll take one roaster, please. Yeah, my journey's a little different. It's like a lot of people will start out with home roasting. They might start with a pan just on the stovetop. Really? They could start with a sheet in the oven, but yeah, usually some way you're able to heat up the beans and still move them around so they're cooking evenly. Right. Modified popcorn makers, hot air. There's a lot of different versions of home roasters. I didn't do any of that. So I just, I did a lot of research online, asked a lot of questions and landed on a company that I thought kind of was the best of all things we were looking for in terms of price, quality, and customer service. Right. And so then we were confident enough based on a lot of testimonials from happy customers. So we ordered just a one kilogram roaster right off the hop, knowing it could be overcharged, it was a little overbuilt, so we'd have a little bit of room to grow into that roaster. Maybe running one and a half kilogram charges of coffee in it. But yeah, so we just went like full send right off the get go. So where we're sitting right now, right behind us, is your, I guess your roasting room, is that what you call it? Yeah, the roasting room. The roasting room right over there. And that's where you built or put the first roaster right in there. But I see there's two roasters in there. Yes. So. Yeah, as we've grown that same company, we reached out to them to look for a bigger roaster. And then we were fortunate enough to get a roaster that had only been used for six months by a company that was growing very, very fast in the States. So it was basically on warranty, basically a brand new roaster, but we got it at a discounted price, which is really cool. Right. Really fortunate, but yeah. And so Michael, how long did you roast in this facility? And what was the pivotal moment when you thought, you know what, I'm gonna open a coffee shop in Acheson, no less. Yeah, that's a great question. In the heart of downtown Acheson, nonetheless. I guess we gotta back up, because the original goal was always a cafe. And we were like, if we open a cafe, the only way we wanna do that is if we're roasting our own coffee. So the roasting was kind of a necessity for the cafe. But we were not planning on selling, like roasting and selling coffee. I was just planning on doing it on the side, learning how to do it, and then opening the cafe. But then COVID happened. And COVID presented an opportunity for us to start selling coffee. We were doing it at a severely discounted price, because we weren't super confident in our abilities yet. And it gave us a sense of purpose. And a lot of people were doing the support local thing. And so we were able to do, yeah, roast the same. Like we'd get orders as long as they were in before noon. We would roast that same day, deliver that night. And people loved it. And then we were able to build a customer base. And then it pushed back the, also because of COVID, the opening of the cafe. But it gave us about three years of roasting time before we ended up opening the cafe, which is great. So we're in a beautiful building. This is a really a nice building that has quite a unique history to it. Was this where you had always planned on opening your cafe? Or did you look at other locations? Or I guess where I'm going with this is why Acheson, of all places, when this is a business community, 10,000 people do come into the park every day, but then they all go home. They're gone. And so why here? Now, I wish I could say that I had the foresight to answer, I would have probably answered it very differently at the very beginning, but we didn't look in Acheson originally. We were looking in Spruce Grove or the west end of Edmonton. Just rent costs and different things. I'm not super entrepreneurial naturally, so I was a little bit risk adverse and the rent costs kind of scared me a bit. This building was owned by Genics. It was their sales office, my dad's company. They were letting us roast in it already, and then I had this idea kind of come to my mind. It was all a big experiment at the time. I didn't know if it would work, but yeah, my dad, Wes and Cal, the owners of Genics, they were supportive in the idea, which was cool. It kind of gave me just the freedom to create, which I'm gonna be eternally grateful for at this point, seeing that it has worked. What I've learned since being in the quote heart of Acheson is that there was a need for this. There was a need for a space for people to be able to come. And it makes sense. Whenever I grew up working here, we always had to leave the park in order to go grab food or go meet somewhere. So this kind of meets a little bit of that need. We serve some food options, very small menu, but that place for people to meet was mainly what we thought this could turn into. And so far it has. And everyone that I introduced to this place falls in love with it. So you're right, this was desperately needed in Acheson. And I think the business community has really rallied around it. And love to have it here. I know I do. Yeah, it truly has become a meeting spot, that's for sure. It's not only meetings for meetings, for business meetings, but people come, it's a bit of a destination for people to come and meet friends and that sort of thing. Michael, what's interesting is this building that we're in right now. I remember it as, well, I'm looking down the, just down the building here, down the room here. And my office used to be right down in the corner there. I work for Genics, and my office used to be right down in the corner, and this was basically our sales office, I think, is what it was. Our sales people were in here, and some other staff were in here. There was a pet turtle at one point. There was, right in the middle, there was a big pond with a pet turtle in there. I remember that, we won't get into that. But anyway, yeah, we had that pet turtle there. And people who had never seen that would never believe what it was to this. Tell us about your journey in creating this amazing space. Yeah, man, I think for me, not realizing you have the capacity to finish a project like this at the beginning, but you start and you just make a few changes and then you're kind of like, okay, well, we have to see this through. And so it took a little bit longer than maybe it would if I was gonna do it again. But I learned a lot along the way. Yeah, I think it's important for people to know you did the bulk, the majority of the renovation in this place. You did it yourself. Yeah. By yourself. You had some help in specialty areas, but for the most part, you did this all yourself. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I learned how to frame, learned how to weld, got to put a few feathers in the hat, I guess, which was fun. I like learning new things. So that part was exciting. Yeah, it was a good growth opportunity, I think, for me to be able to finish something, and look back at it, and go like, man, it's cool how something can come together. But I did not, and I have to be honest about it, I did not have the complete picture in my mind beforehand. It was just enough to keep going each step of the way. And when you see, I mean, for me, I have faith in Jesus, and I would attribute it to, man, there was a plan, and I didn't know the fullness of that plan. But now when I look back, I'm like, oh, that's what, okay, that makes sense, but he just gave me enough, I guess, courage or faith to take the next step in the journey. And it still, it blows my mind that we have a cafe that is operating, that the business community has rallied around us, that people come, that they come back after coming the first time. So I'm still kind of in awe that we get to do this and that we get to be here. Michael, what do you think was your biggest challenge kind of along this journey? What's kind of the one takeaway lesson that you learned? I think on a personal growth side of things, it was that I would take a long time, and I still do to a degree, to make decisions because I was scared. And I think it was a fear of failure. And so for me, that challenge even still comes up to this day, but I've gotten better at closing the time gap before making the decision and actually just doing the thing. So I'll give you a practical example of what that looked like. I researched how to weld for so, so, so long. And I'd already bought a welder, it was sitting there. And when I finally had the courage to just try to stick pieces of metal together, I failed. I tacked the whole first window that I made up and I went to pick it up, and none of the welds had penetrated enough, the whole thing fell apart, and I was fine. So this idea that I was afraid of doing this thing was all, in a sense, an illusion, because it's totally fine to fail. And I would have been able to say that, like mentally, but just in my own heart, I didn't realize how freeing it is to just be like, I can fail, I can learn, I can grow. And then, yeah, but that would be the biggest challenge, I think, was just the fear of failing. And I don't think you're alone in that. I mean, I think that's pretty much human nature for a lot of people. It's that risk of failure, right? Yeah, and I think the beauty of entrepreneurship is the willingness to take risks, to take risks, and you were willing to take a lot of risks to make this happen. And you didn't let things, well, I'm not gonna say discourage you, but you didn't stop because something failed or you didn't give up because something didn't go. No, and then I had a welder who was working for Genics who changed some settings on my machine. Like someone came alongside me and was like, hey, and I could have just done that right from the get go. But it was good. I think I needed to learn that lesson, that I can try this on my own, I can fail, and then someone else can come help me out and then we can eventually succeed. Yeah, this is truly a remarkable space. It really is. You've transformed this into something very incredible and you should be very proud of that because it really is a remarkable space. So why don't you talk a little bit about what you built this space, why? I know you, I know you well enough to know that it wasn't just building a coffee shop. You wanted this to be something other than, of course, coffee, but something even more than that. Yeah, yeah. Originally, so I guess the genesis of the idea of a coffee shop started when I spent a year working at Hope Mission. I was around marginalized people there and I felt like I wanted to do something that would help out in some way. And I didn't know fully what that would look like. It worked out that we were able to partner with an addiction recovery center at the very beginning of us roasting coffee. So there's that immediate kind of direction to purpose, to making a difference or helping out in some way. But I always wanted a cafe space. I think it comes down to that idea of community and people being able to gather in a place where they feel at peace. And when we were designing this place, that was specifically, like I remember actually praying those things. Like, God, if we build a cafe, would people feel at peace and would they feel at home when they come in there? And if we fail at everything else, would we at least succeed in that? And the intention, I think, maybe it's this. I didn't know fully what would end up happening in that I just had that. Like, people feeling at peace, people feeling at home, who knows if they'll even come. And then what I've discovered as people have been coming is that people are lonely. A lot of people are very lonely. And it's not because they don't have great jobs, it's not because they don't have great families. There could be a multiplicity of reasons for why, but at the end of the day, they're feeling very lonely and isolated. And having a space where people can come, feel safe, get to know other people, have people ask them questions about their life, it becomes a place where people feel less lonely, where they feel seen. And I think that's what's inspiring me now. I don't know if I would have been able to be like, that's the goal when I opened this cafe, but yeah, I wanted it to be meaningful in some way beyond just serving people coffee. And I think that speaks volumes. When we talk about the Acheson business community, it's more than that. It's a true community. And like you said, people are looking for that connection. And I think this place really does that for them. So I think that's amazing. Yeah, and we've talked about that a lot in different venues in that how in the business community, life is hectic, like life moves pretty fast sometimes. And you're right, to have a space where you can kind of come and just sort of, I liken it to this, when I walk in here, you take a deep breath and there is a sense of relaxation. You can sit down, there's no pressure, it's a calming environment. And it is a great place to have conversation and to build a relationship. It really is, not only for business meetings, but for friends and people like that. It's just a wonderful space to be able to connect, like really connect with people. And I think that's fantastic. That's fantastic. Yeah, yeah. And you've done a good job of that. So what's kind of, I'm sure you've, now you've been up and running how long? You've been here? Yeah, just over a year and a half. So October will be two years. Right, so is it too early to start wondering what's next? And I know you have some plans for the future, but what do you think about when you think about next steps now? Yeah, I think for right now, this is it. And just continuing to work at being better at what we're doing here. I think we do a good job. I think we can do a better job. And so just figuring out the business side of things, leaning into that more, and continuing to try to maintain quality customer service, all that stuff. But yeah, I think this is actually it for a little bit here. Okay, so there's a lot of business people listening to this. You've done some pretty unique things here. We've done some pretty unique things with the Acheson Business Association, and you. Things like, what do you call that? Cupping? Oh yeah, coffee tasting. Coffee tasting, yeah. And so there's people listening who may think, okay, we've done some events here, which is kind of cool to do that. For those who are listening, what else, what can you do here? What can happen here? Yeah, so we offer coffee tastings, cupping. That's the obnoxious slurping coffee with a spoon. Although, the way that we do it, it doesn't need to be done pretentiously. It can be approachable and fun. But you gotta like the slurping thing. Absolutely. I like that. That's good. At least we're not swishing it around here. No, it's not wine tasting or anything. It's not wine tasting, no. Yeah, so there's that. There's roasting classes. There's just overall space, rentals. We reserve the boardroom table if people want to have meetings that they're okay having in a somewhat public environment. We've had a lot of people reserve that table to do their meetings. That doesn't cost anything. But yeah, after hours, rentals and roasting classes, coffee tastings. We've done pour over coffee extraction classes. Groups of two to maybe 20 at the most. If it's a space rental, 40's definitely pushing it. 30's comfortable. Yeah, yeah, we've done some events in here that have been wonderful for the Acheson Business Association. People love coming to this space for our events. Oh, they do. They love it. And that's actually kind of how Coffee In The Park was birthed. It was, because initially we started out before the podcast with just, we called it Coffee In The Park, and it was truly a place for people to come and network and feel relaxed and get to know one another and build that community. And then from that, you and I had conversations and we thought, wouldn't this be great for a podcast? Yeah, and that's why we do it. Here at The Wall Coffee Roasters in the heart of beautiful downtown Acheson. 27717 Acheson Road. That's right. And so if you haven't ever been to The Wall Coffee Roaster, I'm telling you, get in your car right now, come down here while it closes. No, you've got some time. What are your hours? Your hours are? Yes, we do 7 a.m. until 4 p.m. during the week, and then Saturdays 9 a.m. until 3 p.m. Okay, I want to talk about that for a sec, because that blows me away. Like I mentioned earlier, we're a business park. 10,000 people come into the park Monday to Friday. On Saturday and Sunday, 10 people come into the park. Well, maybe a few more, but nowhere near. I've come here on a Saturday, and this place has been packed. And that amazes me. And it doesn't look like it's necessarily business people. It looks like people have made it a destination point, from Edmonton or The Grove or somewhere else, not from Acheson. And I think that's phenomenal. Yeah, like you said, it blows my mind too. I often will say to my wife, Lorenn, I'll be like, I can't believe this. Like it's wild. But yeah, people are willing to drive from everywhere. Edmonton, Spruce, Stony, surrounding areas to come gather here on Saturdays, which is very humbling, but also very exciting at the same time. You know, I want to go back a little bit to when we talked about community and you talked about roasting coffee and you know, addictions recovery. Michael, I know that you and Lorenn are very supportive of giving back to the community. In fact, they won the Acheson Business Award, Community Award last year at our Business Awards Gala. So can you share a little bit more about why you feel so passionate and maybe about some of the causes that are close to your heart that you give back to with your coffee roasting? Yeah, yeah, it's hard for me to talk about this without talking about my faith, but like the example that we have in Jesus, the historical Jesus is you have God choosing to incarnate himself and become human, but not just to like show himself off and be like, I'm God or something. It's like he entered into the suffering and the pain and the hurt and the decay of people's lives. And there's this pathway there in my faith where it's like, okay, well, it's not okay to just be okay, but watch other people suffer and not do something about it. And so there's that aspect of it. And then there's just the human, I think the human side of it. If you did move faith to the side for a second, it's like a lot of us are, we're doing well. And there's people around us who are suffering and it's not even their fault. So what started at Hope Mission in me was, I would do interviews for people who were trying to get into addiction recovery. And this is all anecdotal. I don't have the statistics in front of me, but what I would notice was the average age of these guys, when I would interview them, when they started using drugs or alcohol, was 11 years old. Like that's not their fault. Maybe it's systemic or maybe it's generational, but that's not their fault. And so we're left trying to help them maybe pick up the pieces a little bit in some way. But I think for us, if we can do anything that's of meaning, it would be if anyone is just has a little bit of help along the way and we can be a part of that in some way. It's like, that's meaningful to us. That's fulfilling more than more than being successful. Like if the doors of this place closed in two years time or a year's time, like I'd be like, it's okay. We're all right. We did something meaningful along the way. We learned some things along the way. Yeah. You know, I'm gonna say it because I wanna say it and because it's important. So for full transparency, Michael, I've known you all your life. I've known your family all my life, most of my life. And you and I had the opportunity and the privilege of working together in Vancouver. And we spent a lot of time in the downtown East side in Vancouver. And I watched you in action. And so I know that of what you speak is true. And it just didn't sort of happen when you opened your coffee shop, that your life has really in many ways for a long time been dedicated to just working with marginalized, hurting people. And I admire that in you. I think that's fantastic. And I think you're doing a great job of that here. And I think that one day, you'll be able to tell some pretty incredible stories about things that have happened here and the stories you've found out and heard about even that have risen out of sort of you having this place in Acheson. I think it's phenomenal. So thank you. Yeah, great job. Yeah, it's great. I mean, this is exciting. I love the fact that we get to do our podcast from here. I love the fact that Michael's open to that. And I love the fact that we get to tell his story. I think that's phenomenal. I do too. And I want to give a shout out Michael to your staff. Yeah, because great staff, amazing customer service. All of them are fantastic. Again, if you haven't been to The Wall, you really need to get down here. Quick note on the staff. That is all just like fluke because I'm not smart enough or good enough at picking stuff. I just like, I kind of know these people. I know one of them is my brother-in-law. I'm like, I'm stuck with them, come work for me. And they've all worked out really good. And I've got to watch them. Yeah, just like. And you're a mentor to them in many ways. I think of Brandon and how he came in, kind of didn't know a lot and you mentored him. And now he's one of your roasters. Yeah, he's the head roaster. Yeah, does a phenomenal job. And you're customer service and you're staff and they're friendly and they're happy. And it is, it's an exciting kind of place to be. And if you're feeling kind of down and you walk in, by the time you walk out, you're not feeling so down. Plus you get great coffee or a great beverage or whatever it is, it's fantastic. So this has been a good one. Michael, thank you so much for taking the time to do this with us today. Really appreciate it. Again, really appreciate you letting us use this space. And we hope that you enjoyed this story. And Jennifer? We've got lots of upcoming podcasts. So we hope you tune in each Thursday. Our podcast drops at noon on Thursdays each week. Share it, because these stories are phenomenal and we want them heard. Share it with your friends, family, colleagues, wherever you can, your social media. Get the word out there. And you can find it on wherever you find your podcasts, whether it's on Apple or Spotify or all those other places I don't know about, but I understand you can find it there too. And just a couple of things, a couple of announcements, things coming up for the ABA. Coming up for the ABA, when we talked about Michael winning the Community Award last year, the upcoming Business Awards Gala is happening on Saturday, September 28th. The gala. I love the gala. Nominations are open. You can visit our website to nominate a business or an individual that you feel deserves some recognition and tickets are on sale. So don't delay because it will sell out. That's right. It will sell out and all you need to do is go to www.Achesonbusiness.com and you can also find our podcast there in case you don't have one of them podcast site things. And all the information about our gala plus all the information about the ABA is there. And if you're not a member of the ABA and you're in business and you're in Acheson or in Edmonton or Stony or Spruce and you think, hey, I want to become an associate member, check us out because that would be a really awesome thing for you to do. Thank you, Jennifer. Thank you, Cam. And thank you, Michael. Thank you, Michael. Thanks, everybody. We'll see you next week. Have a great day, everybody.