La Colombe Coffee Roasters: Todd Carmichael and J.P. Iberti. A Brotherhood Built on Coffee (2020)

Summary

How I Built This with Guy Raz

Episode: La Colombe Coffee Roasters – Todd Carmichael and J.P. Iberti: A Brotherhood Built on Coffee

Date: January 12, 2026 (original 2020 rebroadcast)
Host: Guy Raz
Guests: Todd Carmichael & JP (Jean Philippe) Iberti, Co-Founders of La Colombe Coffee Roasters

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Episode Overview

This episode explores the remarkable journey of Todd Carmichael and JP Iberti, two unlikely friends who pioneered America’s third wave coffee movement with La Colombe Coffee Roasters. From their humble beginnings as baristas in 1980s Seattle, through the risks of entrepreneurship in recession-era Philadelphia, to scaling their cafe and wholesale business nationally, Todd and JP offer a candid, often humorous masterclass in partnership, resilience, and redefining what specialty coffee could be in the US. The episode delves into their personal stories, hard-won lessons, business setbacks, and the enduring ‘brotherhood’ at the heart of their brand.

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Key Themes and Discussion Points

1. Origins: Contrasting Backgrounds and the Seeds of a Brotherhood

[07:26–14:59]

• Todd: Grew up poor and food-insecure in rural Washington, raised by his bipolar mother. Early on, he discovered running (state champion) and side hustles like refurbishing farm equipment.
• Quote (Todd): “We just called it kind of hungry back then… I just didn’t want to be poor.” [08:24]
• JP: Grew up in Nice, France, in a comfortable home. Father was a successful produce purveyor, and JP initially dreamt of being a pilot.
• Quote (JP): “Until I left France, I didn’t realize how important food was to me.” [17:39]

2. Seattle’s Coffee Scene and Friendship of Convenience and Destiny

[11:24–18:32]

• Todd started moving coffee sacks at a then-tiny Starbucks and longed to be a barista elsewhere.
• JP finds work at Torre Fazione Italia, learning roasting from Italian masters.
• Their first meeting: a grunge show, a champagne order, and an invitation to cook—rituals of food, cards, and whiskey cement their bond.
• Quote (Todd): “I told him I wasn’t gonna leave until he agreed… there could be no La Colombe without JP.” [25:30]

3. From Dream to Business Plan: Taking Bold Risks

[19:38–25:11]

• Todd saves $95,000 in Europe doing accounting gigs, living on a boat, writing the business plan by hand.
• JP, after flying school and deepening his coffee expertise, ultimately commits when his Italian employer is sold, and the “brotherhood” steers him toward entrepreneurship.
• Quote (JP): “Something happened… Torre Fazione Italia was sold… I knew that if I wanted to stay in coffee, I had to do something.” [26:10]

4. Choosing Philadelphia & Building La Colombe

[28:39–34:38]

• Despite Seattle’s allure, they pick Philadelphia for cheaper rents, walkability, and its proximity to NYC.
• The brand name “La Colombe” is inspired by a dove-symbolized inn in JP’s French hometown, connecting with their ethos of art and craft.
• They self-import Italian roasters and ceramics, and hack a restaurant trash chute as a makeshift roasting chimney—dodging permits, complaints, and fire inspectors.
• Memorable moment (Todd): “I went and rented a jackhammer, and I jackhammered a hole into a garbage chute… and cemented the piping into the garbage chute.” [35:17]
• Quote (JP): “We built the café by… asking forgiveness rather than permission on pretty much anything.” [36:07]

5. Breakthrough: Hustling High-End Restaurant Accounts

[39:28–42:40]

• Land their first accounts (Le Bec Fin and Four Seasons Philadelphia) by walking into kitchens uninvited and demonstrating their coffee.
• Quote (Todd): “We tore the grinder down, cleaned it, tore the espresso machine out, made a beautiful, beautiful coffee… Chef picked the grinder up with the old stuff and threw it all in the trash and said, ‘Go get your shit.’” [40:19]
• Peer-to-peer chef referrals quickly fuel demand—La Colombe serves the best of the culinary world, justifying higher prices and setting new standards.

6. Third Wave Coffee: Direct Sourcing and Quality

[46:02–50:29]

• Begin sourcing beans directly from farms, learning the logistics and risks of circumventing entrenched coffee middlemen.
• First direct sourcing in Brazil, expanding to El Salvador, Haiti, and Africa, sometimes facing personal danger.
• Quote (Todd): “There are loads of gringos that show up making promises… you have to show a resilience that you’re coming back.” [49:33]

7. Setbacks and Resilience: Todd’s Sabbatical and Mental Health

[50:53–54:42]

• In 2000, Todd is overwhelmed by mania, family trauma, and business stress—offers JP his shares and takes a three-month leave on a Pacific island to heal.
• JP runs the business, holds Todd’s place, and they reconnect stronger than before.
• Quote (JP): “You’re gonna help somebody that you love, and I’m not gonna take anything from you… You’re gonna go get better and come back.” [52:10]

8. Shifting Strategy: Growth, Investors, and the Cold Brew Revolution

[54:56–60:45]

• By 2007–08, they cautiously expand to multiple cafes, especially New York, realizing their “anomaly” can scale.
• Seek outside investment for growth and Todd’s new obsession: cold brew and canned draft lattes.
• Investment Nightmare: Misaligned private equity board pushes for 200 locations, opposes cold brew/canned lattes; Todd and JP engineer a buyback—with help from Chobani founder Hamdi Ulakaya.
• Quote (Todd): “We started the old investor discussions and we landed on one… and that lasted 52 days. To the first board meeting, I said, okay, I believe that cold brew is going to be a thing and La Colombe needs to be the father of it. And they said, nah, we don’t want to do that.” [03:13; 57:08]

9. The Chobani Connection: Finding Aligned Partners

[58:54–60:45]

• Hamdi Ulakaya of Chobani invests, shares craft values, brings funding and perspective; La Colombe buys out the PE firm, launches draft lattes nationally.
• Quote (Todd): “I want to take coffee into the future and I want you [Hamdi] to be a part of it… He did.” [59:45]

10. Impact, Wealth, and Legacy

[62:01–65:40]

• Todd is most grateful for financial security for his family, the ability to give back, and the luxury of food security—memories of hunger lingering.
• Quote (Todd): “I can buy anything in this store. God damn it, that’s awesome. And there was years and years and years that wasn’t possible.” [63:08]
• JP highlights America’s culture of philanthropy, pride in their multi-channel business, and the luck that’s weaved through their story.
• Quote (JP): “Hard work is a given… If I were going to give you a percentage [luck vs. work], I would probably call it close to 50–50.” [64:10]
• Todd’s metaphor: “The grout is luck. It’s what holds all those broken pieces together.” [64:46]

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Notable Quotes

• On partnership:
  “There could be no La Colombe without JP. There could be no Todd without JP, and I don’t think there could be a JP without… It’s like, these are the key ingredients.” — Todd Carmichael [25:30]
• On risk:
  “We built the cafe… by asking forgiveness rather than permission on pretty much anything.” — Todd Carmichael [36:07]
• On business vision:
  “We wanted to purvey to the very best of the best… and bring coffee to a whole new level. Not just like salt and pepper on the table, but we give it a name, a place, an identity.” — Todd Carmichael [23:37]
• On wealth:
  “I could buy anything in this store… There was years and years and years that wasn’t possible.” — Todd Carmichael [63:08]
• On legacy:
  “The grout is luck. It’s what holds all those broken pieces together, whatever percentage that is.” — Todd Carmichael [64:46]

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Key Timestamps

• 07:26 – Todd’s childhood and adversity
• 14:07 – JP’s upbringing in France and move to Seattle
• 16:26 – The night Todd and JP first connect
• 25:30 – Todd “squats” in JP’s closet to persuade him
• 29:01 – Naming the business “La Colombe”
• 32:51 – Smuggling in a roast chimney through a garbage chute
• 39:28 – Hustling for first restaurant accounts
• 46:02 – Beginning direct sourcing from farms
• 50:53 – Todd’s sabbatical for mental health
• 55:00 – Expansion to New York, scaling cafes
• 57:08 – Private equity deal goes south
• 58:54 – Hamdi Ulakaya investment, pivot to cans
• 62:01 – Reflection on wealth and impact
• 64:10 – Luck vs. hard work

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Conclusion

This rich, revealing conversation isn’t just about coffee—it’s about friendship, grit, confronting failure, and the courage to trust your own path, even if it means saying no to investors when others might say yes. Todd and JP’s chemistry and candor make for an uncommonly honest entrepreneurial tale, with lessons for anyone hoping to build something enduring and meaningful—preferably over a really great cup of coffee.

Transcript

[Guy Raz]

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[Todd Carmichael]

We started the old investor discussions and we landed on one. We did the deal, and that lasted 52 days. To the first board meeting, I said, okay, I believe that cold brew is going to be a thing and La Colombe needs to be the father of it. And they said, nah, we don't want to do that.

[Guy Raz]

What'd they want to do?

[Todd Carmichael]

They wanted us to build 200 cafes. So I just. I said, we're out of here. We're going to buy you out.

[Guy Raz]

Welcome to How I Built this, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built. I'm Guy Raz, and on the show today, how to part part time baristas in Seattle, became best friends, moved to Philadelphia, and went on to pioneer the specialty coffee movement in the US by founding La Colombe Coffee Roasters. Tell me if this sounds familiar to you. You're in your early 20s and you don't really know what you want to be when you grow up. And one day you're hanging out with your best friend, maybe sharing a meal or a drink in their apartment or at a dive bar, and then one of you says, hey, you and I, we should totally start something together because we are an awesome team. Like a record store or a beer bar or a podcast company, whatever it is. You both get really excited and start coming up with all kinds of ideas. The type of beer you'll serve, the kinds of records you'll play in the store, the podcasts you'll make. You can't stop thinking about it. But then a few months later, reality tends to kick in. You get a job offer with health benefits. Your frozen gets into a relationship with someone who wants to move across the country, and the whole idea fades away. Have you been there? I have. So have Todd Carmichael and JP Eberti. Except in their case, it didn't fade away. Back in the late 1980s, Todd and JP dreamed of starting a specialty coffee shop. Well, it took a while, but eventually they opened it up and called the shop La Col. Now this happened to be around the same time that two other coffee companies were starting up. One in Chicago called Intelligentsia, the other in North Carolina called Counterculture. And along with La Colombe, these three coffee brands came to be known as pioneers in the so called third wave coffee movement in the US. The first wave was instant coffee and diner coffee, basically coffee that was cheap and generic that people drank a lot of after World War II. Then in, in the 1970s and 80s, places like Peet's Coffee and later Starbucks introduced Americans to the second wave coffee with a more sophisticated flavor profile and European style drinks like espressos and lattes. And the third wave, well it basically defines what most high end coffee shops are today. Places that source high quality beans directly from farms, often roast the beans themselves and have highly trained baristas pulling your espresso drinks. La Colombe started out as one shop in a run down part of Philadelphia. Today you can find its cold brew cans in tons of convenience stores across the US and the company is now valued at around a billion dollars. But to get there was a long slow grind, as you will hear them explain. JP Eberti, the JP stands for Jean Philippe was born in southern France. His dad ran a business supplying fresh meat and produce to Restauran. But Todd grew up literally and figuratively a world away in eastern Washington state. And at home a lot of times his mom struggled to put food on the table.

[Todd Carmichael]

My father left just as I was born. My parents are both bipolar and so that kind of really dictated a lot of their lives. But my father did kind of come in and out as folks who struggle with their minds do. But my mother was really the constant.

[Guy Raz]

What kind of jobs did your mom do to support the family?

[Todd Carmichael]

Well, first she couldn't maintain an office job for very long and what was left for her was either typing pool. But a typing pool is very difficult for a bipolar person because they're so inconsistent. You know, they could work for four straight days, but then they could not show up for two. Right. And so it became cocktail waitress, and usually not in the glamorous places. She was a cocktail waitress in like truck stop kind of places.

[Guy Raz]

So you were mainly raised by just your mom and presumably not a whole lot of financial security as a kid?

[Todd Carmichael]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I guess they call that food insecure. We just called it kind of hungry back then. And I had three sisters as well. And so we kind of took care of each other and I knew I needed to leave my hometown. I just didn't know how to do It. I had a globe that my grandfather gave me, and I studied it and studied it and studied it.

[Guy Raz]

Yeah.

[Todd Carmichael]

And I started these dreams, and they weren't monetary. It was more like I wanted to live. I wanted to live a life, and I knew it couldn't happen there.

[Guy Raz]

What did you do for money to pay for your own, like, your car and whatever. Like, what did you do? How did you. Did you have, like, side businesses as a kid?

[Todd Carmichael]

Yeah, I did lots of different things. So I had one. My main gig was farming. Then I had side gigs. I'm really good with my hands. I can fix things. And so I started buying equipment and refurbishing it and selling it. It started with lawnmowers, and it got all the way to large equipment. So there was always this side gig going on, and then the main job was harvest.

[Guy Raz]

You got into distance running, like cross country, I guess, in high school. And I guess you must have been a pretty good runner, is that right?

[Todd Carmichael]

Yeah, I was state champion team. We won two or three years in a row. I was in top 10 and 5,000. And then I got a full scholarship to the University of Washington.

[Guy Raz]

Wow.

[Todd Carmichael]

And bear in mind, I mean, so poor kids don't really get great educations for lots of reasons. One is that you just keep moving a lot.

[Guy Raz]

Right.

[Todd Carmichael]

So by the time I got into the University of Washington, I still. I didn't know how to add fractions. I mean, I didn't know anything about the world. I didn't know nothing. And so there was this big piece of makeup that happened once I was able to leave and start real school. So I didn't really start school school until I got into University of Washington.

[Guy Raz]

But it sounds like you were, like, really interested in learning. I mean, maybe school was difficult for you, but it sounds like you really actually applied yourself.

[Todd Carmichael]

Oh, yeah. So bipolar disorder really takes hold of you in your early 20s. Right. And, you know, I've seen it in my family. And so I was against a ticking time bomb.

[Guy Raz]

You thought it was just a matter of time before you were diagnosed?

[Todd Carmichael]

Yeah, I was afraid it was coming.

[Guy Raz]

Yeah.

[Todd Carmichael]

So I wanted to get as much in my brain before that happened as possible. So I was under a time constraint, I thought. I remember thinking that. And then I think the desire to apply myself in school that way, too, was just absolute fear. Just the fear of failing and the fear of being the first to go and not being. Making it through or I don't want to be poor.

[Guy Raz]

Yeah.

[Todd Carmichael]

I had this deep fear of being in a trailer and it was real to me.

[Guy Raz]

So 1982, you are in Seattle studying at the University of Washington. And you also have a part time job, right? I guess at the time. This is Seattle. Before like Sub Pop and Starbucks and Microsoft. I mean, they were sort of there, but it's still like early 80s Seattle. Totally different place than it is today. And you actually got a job at Starbucks, right?

[Todd Carmichael]

That's right. So, you know, when I showed up, all I really knew how to do well is fix motors and harvest. I couldn't really work where other students were working. And I looked into a warehouse, you know, just right off the bus line that would take me to school. And there were these guys dragging these grain sacks around and I thought I could. That's grain work. I could totally do grain work. I could hump sacks all day long. So I got the gig. And when I went inside, you know, the names on the bags were way different than I expected. You know, they were like Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, Panama. And I realized that right then this was raw coffee.

[Guy Raz]

And you probably knew nothing about coffee.

[Todd Carmichael]

I'm assuming I knew zero. I knew that, you know, from my grandfather drank instant coffee. That's just about all you know. And. But what I liked about it was not only was it a gig, but the names. That's the world that I had dreamt of. That these bags actually came from those places was just mesmerizing to me.

[Guy Raz]

All right, so you get a job at this warehouse moving sacks of beans, right? What happens? I mean, do you like. I'm trying to figure out how you go from hauling bags of coffee at the warehouse to getting really interested in coffee.

[Todd Carmichael]

Well, what I really wanted to do, and this probably exposes the kid in me, but I wanted to be a barista. I wanted to be the cool kid, right? And Starbucks wouldn't let me do it, you know. Come on. I mean, I was a flannel wearing farm boy, you know, I cut my own hair. You know, it's just. It was just I probably didn't present as well as they'd like. And so I, I changed teams. I went over to a place called Espresso Roma and they gave me a shot at it. Then I became this barista.

[Guy Raz]

And did you learn how to roast coffee?

[Todd Carmichael]

Not. I mean, I did, but not to a degree that I would call it skillful, not like JP. I mean, JP's the master of that, you know.

[Guy Raz]

All right, so this is 1982, 83. You're working at the coffee place. You're a student at the University of Washington. Jp Tell me about where you grew up. You are originally from France?

[JP Eberti]

That's right. I grew up in Nice in the south of France. My dad was a purveyor of fruit and vegetable. He started the business and became pretty successful. And my mom was a homemaker, so I had a good uprising. I have two older sisters that basically were out of the house when I was growing up. And I think my parents were over having children when I was. When I was growing up.

[Guy Raz]

I guess as a kid you were interested in. In aviation, flight. Is that. Is that true? I mean, is that.

[JP Eberti]

Yeah, yeah. That's from, you know, I. I wanted to be a pilot. I was fascinating by, you know, flying an airplane. And my sister married an American guy from Seattle. So that was the connection to the Northwest. Oh, got.

[Guy Raz]

So that. So you knew about Seattle from him. And then. And then I read that you basically after high school, went to Seattle to go to flight school, right?

[JP Eberti]

That's right. I did a lot of my flying out of Boeing Field in Seattle. And I went to a little cafe called Torre Fazione Italia, which was in Pioneer Square. First generation Italian family. And basically we became really friend. And one day they offered me the job and I took it. I became a barista.

[Guy Raz]

Okay, so you are in flight school and get this job at this coffee shop, this coffee bar in Pioneer Square in Seattle. And Todd, how did you meet JP Was it through the coffee shop somehow?

[Todd Carmichael]

So first I'm hearing these rumors that this French guy is working for TI we called it 25 Studio Italia's TI.

[Guy Raz]

And how did you hear. Why would you have even heard that rumor?

[Todd Carmichael]

Because you gotta imagine that there's maybe six cafes in all of Seattle.

[Guy Raz]

Oh, I see. Okay.

[Todd Carmichael]

And to be a barista by then and to be in coffee was like being like a dj, you know, you were known.

[Guy Raz]

Yeah.

[Todd Carmichael]

And so TI was like, I have to say it's was at that time was the best coffee roasting company in the United States of America, hands down.

[Guy Raz]

That little shop in Pioneer Square.

[Todd Carmichael]

Oh my God. Yeah. Umberto was a very famous roaster in Italy, Numria, before he even started roasting in Seattle. So he came in with like top shelf knowledge that no one really had access to. And so there was this rumor this French guy is around and there's this new sound that was happening at the time, Right. That they called. Was called grunge, right?

[Guy Raz]

Yeah.

[Todd Carmichael]

And there was a band called Green river that later would become Pearl Jam, Right?

[JP Eberti]

Sure.

[Todd Carmichael]

So there was this little venue called Oxford and They put up this stage, and this band called Green river was going to come on. And so you can imagine the crowd, and they didn't serve, like, beer in a glass. They served Rainier beer in a can.

[Guy Raz]

Yeah.

[Todd Carmichael]

And I'm standing at the bar solo, and this guy walks in. He's got a gold, like, looks. I think it's silk vest over a white puffy sleeve shirt. And it's this French guy. And he actually reaches over the bar and says, may I have a champagne, please? So he orders the champagne, and I said, are you this Jean Pierre guy? And he goes, jean Philippe. And I was like, okay, Jean Philippe, you roast for Ti. He goes, yeah. And then the next question is, he goes, do you have a stove? I said, yeah, I have a stove. And he goes, can I use it? And I'm, you know, I still. I have very little money. And I go, nah, you could use it anytime, as long as you cook for two. I thought I could get some free food out of this. And that's how we met. And literally, Thursday, Friday, Saturday night, every week for the next three years, he cooked dinner at my house.

[JP Eberti]

So.

[Guy Raz]

So, jp, you.

[JP Eberti]

Is.

[Guy Raz]

Is that your recollection of what happened?

[JP Eberti]

Yeah, I'm not sure about the gold vest. You know, I'm looking back in. Yeah, I'm not sure I ever owned one of these, but it might have had some. Yeah, I'm not sure about the gold vest.

[Guy Raz]

So you met Todd and you asked him if he had a stove, Like a cooking stove? Like, didn't you have an apartment where you lived that had a stove?

[JP Eberti]

Well, I lived on campus, and it was an electric stove, so it wasn't that great. And, you know, until I left France, I didn't realize how food was important to me, you know, and 87 was a different time in America. I mean, coffee was getting here and getting good, but, you know, things like bread were not where we are today. You know, it was a different world back then, so food was important, and I wanted. I wanted to eat. So we, you know, we probably talked about food and, you know, back and forth. And the question was, yeah, you have gas stove.

[Guy Raz]

And that's really the kind of the beginning of your friendship.

[Todd Carmichael]

Yeah. And then from there, we would eat and we would play cards. We would drink whiskey sometimes. Remember, jp or like, really cheap wine. And then we began dreaming about the world's best coffee company.

[Guy Raz]

Both of you guys start to hang out, and you start to say, hey, we should maybe one day open our own place.

[Todd Carmichael]

Yeah, that's how it finished. How it started was with ideas like, why don't we go directly to the farm? That's what your father did. And I know as working from a farm, that if you take the time to come to our farm, you would get the best stuff. So we would talk about this whole concept that later on became coffee sourcing or farm to table. And then later on, we just made it.

[Guy Raz]

But meantime, J.P. you are still studying to be a pilot.

[JP Eberti]

I was, but it was, you know, it was a good escape to dream, you know, about starting a business. And I was not committed at this time. You know, for me, it was still just a dream.

[Guy Raz]

Yeah, you were just kind of spitballing ideas people. Yeah. Two young guys just hanging out, talking about, you know, wouldn't it be cool if we did this? Wouldn't be cool if we did that. Meantime, Todd, you have graduated from the University of Washington. Was that what you were doing working at the coffee place? Was that how you were making your living?

[JP Eberti]

No.

[Todd Carmichael]

So I graduated. I'd applied for and got into business school. And so then I. I got a job as a tax consultant for a company called Ernst and Winnie. At the time, it was one of the big eight accounting firms. I was wearing a suit. I had a leather lunchbox and everything.

[Guy Raz]

And you do that job for a year, from what I understand. And then you took off. You left the U.S. yeah. Tell me the story. Why did you leave the U.S. where'd you go and why?

[Todd Carmichael]

Well, I mean, the why is multifaceted. You know, part of it was it was becoming clear to me that I have a furnace in my brain. Right. So that I inherited certain traits from my parents and that that sort of environment wasn't safe for me.

[Guy Raz]

The environment of working in an office?

[Todd Carmichael]

Yeah. I had a lot of confidence in my skill set. I had a lot of confidence in myself. It's not that. It's just that I needed to go and find a place that I could fit.

[Guy Raz]

Right.

[Todd Carmichael]

I knew I needed to put together $95,000 so I could start this coffee company with my best friend.

[Guy Raz]

Wait, so you were totally committed to this idea? You really wanted to start a Coffee Co. With J.P. and J.P. when Todd said, hey, I'm gonna go overseas because he went to Europe, and then I'm gonna come back and we're start this business, did you take that seriously or did you think, okay, have fun?

[JP Eberti]

Yeah, I mean, you know, this is closer to 89, 90. At that point, I moved in, working in the afternoon in a production warehouse. So, you know, I was really learning the whole thing about, you know, producing coffee but also serving coffee. And I really liked what I was doing. So, you know, I didn't mind the dream of starting our own place.

[Guy Raz]

Sure.

[JP Eberti]

But yeah. And Todd ended up going to the south of France, which, where I'm from. So, you know, I connected him with all my friends, people I grew up with, and it was.

[Todd Carmichael]

And I remember, jp, you took that flight. We flew together, remember?

[Guy Raz]

Yeah, you both flew to Europe together that first time you went.

[JP Eberti]

Todd?

[Todd Carmichael]

Yeah, he accompanied me, and then he spent a week or two with his family and then he flew back and I stayed.

[Guy Raz]

But when you were in France, you did not speak French going in there. You just, like, landed there. And. And what did you start to do to earn a living?

[Todd Carmichael]

Well, right away it was pretty simple. I took a train into Monte Carlo and I interviewed and got jobs. I mean, accounting jobs right away, because most of them are like shipping companies and a lot of companies that are there to avoid tax, so they're not really part of the culture. And so, you know, the operating language is English.

[Guy Raz]

Sure.

[Todd Carmichael]

And I did a lot of odd jobs, that's for sure. Consulting, tax work, accounting, no job too big, too small kind of thing. I found a little boat, I reconditioned it, and I lived on it. So basically, I always kind of embraced the idea that you could save money by living in poverty. So don't change that. Right.

[Guy Raz]

And jp, what did you do for those three years? Just continue to work at the coffee place and study aviation?

[JP Eberti]

Yeah, So I graduated in 1990, so I became a flight instructor. And I really, really worked a lot in coffee. I mean, we were getting. Opening more stores, getting busier and busier, and the business was really blooming. So I was becoming a big part of Torre Fascion Italia. And that was really. It really became my center. Coffee. My coffee profession just took over this when I realized, hey, this is going to be my career. My center was the university in flying for a long time. And then it shifted.

[Guy Raz]

So, Todd, while you were in Europe, I guess you actually wrote down a business plan while you were there. Right. For this idea of a coffee company that you'd been dreaming about?

[Todd Carmichael]

Yes, by hand with a pen.

[Guy Raz]

Okay, so you sat down and what was sort of the rough outline of the business plan? What was it going to be? Was it a coffee shop that sells coffee and what else?

[Todd Carmichael]

Well, the idea, and it was both JP And I's really just written down, is that we were comfortable being purveyors and we wanted purvey to the very best of the best of the best. We had a deep, deep belief that there would be this restaurant renaissance in America. There was going to be this huge inflow of French and Italian high level cuisine, and that the Coffee in America wasn't going to accommodate it. Coffee in America was just dedicated to, you know, fast to go business, Starbucks style, that they weren't bringing it to the culinary level. And we, we were that company. We wanted to be those people. And we would work directly with the farms, we would work directly with the chefs, that we would bring coffee to a whole new level. That it's not just like salt and pepper on the table, but it'd be, we give it a name, a place, an identity.

[Guy Raz]

In your mind, jp, do you think this guy's gonna come back or was that. I'm just trying to. I'm trying to, because it sounds like Todd, you really had a very clear plan. Like, you had this plan. You knew you were gonna do this one day. Were you kind of jp, were you just sort of waiting for this to happen?

[JP Eberti]

I knew he was serious, you know, but I didn't say yes and I didn't say no. Right. You know, I knew a lot about the kitchens, I knew a lot about chefs, I knew a lot about coffee. And Todd had the business and the coffee experience as well. And it was just clear. I knew that once we both said, hey, let's do this, it was going to be a success.

[Guy Raz]

All right, so, Todd, after three years, you've saved enough money. Did you just move back to Seattle and say to jp, hey, let's do this. Was he ready to jump right back in with you?

[Todd Carmichael]

So I didn't move back to Seattle. I flew there and I squatted in his closet.

[Guy Raz]

In JP's closet? Yeah.

[Todd Carmichael]

He had a closet that was big enough for me to lay in. And I told him I wasn't gonna leave until he agreed. Although I did respect how hard that would be on him. We had a long conversation. I could feel that he was leaning because let's get real, you know, there could be no La Colombe without jp. There could be no Todd without jp, and I don't think there could be a JP without. You know, it's like, these are the. These are the key ingredients.

[Guy Raz]

And so, jp, it took you some convincing. How long do you think it took you before you said, all right, I'm in?

[JP Eberti]

I think it was a process. You know, it probably took me the whole three years to get there.

[Guy Raz]

The three years while Todd was away.

[JP Eberti]

Yeah. And really seeing, you know, and something happened with Torre Fascion Italia. In 1993, it all came to a crossroad and Torre Fazioni Italia was sold. And it was a strange time, you know, I was like, oh, man, this is the end. You know, Umberto is going to be gone. All the people that, you know, like family did to me are going to be gone. So then at that moment, I knew that if I wanted to stay in coffee, I had to do something.

[Guy Raz]

Right?

[JP Eberti]

I mean, our friendship was already, you know, a brotherhood, you know, and it was clear that I was not going to do something on my own.

[Guy Raz]

When we come back in just a moment, Todd and JP walk into one of the top restaurants in the country uninvited and walk out with their first account. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz and you're listening to How I Built this. It feels pretty amazing when you and your team are batting around great ideas, but it can be frustrating when you're having trouble executing them quickly. Do you wish your team could move at the speed of their ideas? Simply throwing AI at the problem without clarity doesn't help. It makes your process messier. Miro changes the game powered by AI Teamwork that normally takes weeks gets done in days. I know that Miro AI is great for summarizing interview notes and generating key takeaways. With the ability to organize my thoughts faster. Tight deadlines aren't so intimidating. It recommends areas to double down, clarify inputs and add direct feedback. And you can build custom sidekicks that integrate into other workflows for exactly what your team needs. Spend time on building, not digging for information. Help your teams get great done with miro. Check out miro.com to find out how that's M I R O. Hey, welcome back to How I Built this. I'm Guy raz. So it's 1993 and JP and Todd have decided to start their own coffee business. But the first thing they need is a name. And JP finds inspiration in his hometown.

[JP Eberti]

I come from a little town called simple de Vence, who is very well known for. For the culture that a lot of painters, a lot of writers spend time there. You know, big name Picasso, Matisse painted there. And there's a little bed and breakfast that became really famous because the artists used to stay there and instead of paying women board, they just left sketches.

[Guy Raz]

Yes.

[JP Eberti]

And it's called La Colom d' or and I have a connection to it because it was one of my father account. You know, he served fruit and vegetable there but we also knew the family very well, the family that founded it that were France. And, you know, I ended up having a summer job there when I was 13, 14, you know, washing dishes and, you know, so I think the inspiration of the name is connected to the place, but it's also the symbol of what La Colombe is, you know, internationally.

[Guy Raz]

Because Colombe means. It means dove, right?

[Todd Carmichael]

The dove, yeah.

[Guy Raz]

Yeah. And so that sort of evoking that kind of idea, the La Colombe was the idea behind it. Wow. So here's the amazing thing. This is 1993. You're back in Seattle. Seattle is the epicenter of U.S. coffee culture at this point. I mean, this is. It is ground zero for the explosion of coffee in America. And you guys are in Seattle. I mean, it would make total perfect business sense to open up in Seattle at that point, but instead, you start looking at cities on the east coast, and you end up in Philadelphia. Why Philadelphia?

[JP Eberti]

So Philly was a different place then, but we ended up walking the city. And it's a beautiful city. Architecturally. The way it's laid out is an amazing city. And being European and walking and cycling everywhere, I still use my bicycle to go to work. It just, you know, for me, the fact that we could walk anywhere was just like, this is definitely making the top of the chart right now. And there was huge opportunity in terms of getting production space, warehouse space, just because the city was probably at the bottom.

[Todd Carmichael]

So the two main beautiful, you know, roads in the city right now is Walnut and Chestnut. They were pretty much closed down. There were no cafes in the city. You know, it's a city of a million some people, and there wasn't one cup of coffee. And so JP and I, we went and I said, hey, let's remember jp we sat and we had some beers together, and I chose to interpret everything that we'd seen this way. That if you were going to take an elevator ride and you were looking to get altitude, you want to get in on the ground floor. And that Philadelphia was displaying that it is here on the ground floor, and it can't stay this way and will not stay this way.

[Guy Raz]

This was. Had either of you ever been to Philadelphia at that point?

[JP Eberti]

No.

[Todd Carmichael]

Never?

[Guy Raz]

You'd never been there?

[JP Eberti]

Never. I mean, we saw great opportunities in Philadelphia. You know, we saw a city with great bones, and it was fine for what we wanted to do, that the city, especially after sundown, there was nobody in the streets. But, you know, it didn't really matter because our idea was to Be purveyors and to serve the kitchen. So it didn't really matter. And what thing that was important is at the time Le Becfin was voted, which is a Philadelphia restaurant, was voted number one restaurant in the country.

[Guy Raz]

Georges Perrier was the chef at the place, right? Yeah.

[Todd Carmichael]

Chef owner, Correct.

[JP Eberti]

Yeah. And also the proximity to New York City.

[Guy Raz]

Yeah. And also presumably Philadelphia was cheap.

[Todd Carmichael]

Very insanely so.

[Guy Raz]

So. So you find a location on Rittenhouse Square, which is probably the most famous place in Philadelphia today. One of them. What was it? It was small storefront that you found?

[Todd Carmichael]

Well, it was actually two. You know, this area of the town was really suffering. Businesses would come and go so quickly that there was spaces almost everywhere. Wow. But they were all, you know, filly spaces, so they're really narrow. So we found two side by side. So we took them both and we just smashed the wall between them and started working.

[Guy Raz]

And where did you. You just. Where did you source the equipment from? You just bought a bunch of. I mean, you had some money to start out with because you'd saved that money. So you used all this capital by roasting, like, roasting machines?

[JP Eberti]

Yeah, yeah. We took an epic trip during the summer.

[Todd Carmichael]

We.

[JP Eberti]

We traveled from Nice all through Italy, and we bought everything we needed. Roasting equipment, espresso machines, y hand painted ceramics, grinders, everything that we needed.

[Guy Raz]

Hand painted ceramic. Because you served your coffee. I think you still do. I've been to that location off Rittenhouse Square, and I remember the first time I went there, I was struck by the hand, like the painted earthenware ceramic mugs that you got and the little plates, little saucers that they came on. And that was from the beginning. That's how you served coffee there.

[JP Eberti]

Yep.

[Todd Carmichael]

We were traveling all the way through Italy. I'll always remember it because we had an envelope, we had traveler's checks, and we would go directly into a factory and begin negotiating, like on the floor. And we went, okay, we'd like those two espresso machines. We want. We negotiate. Negotiate and we go, all right, take the box off. How about if we don't take the box like we were? And we would hump these machines into his dad's car. And we found the roaster in northern Italy, paid for it, strapped it to a pallet, and watched it ship.

[Guy Raz]

So this is 1994. You've got a small location off Rittenhouse Square. You're roasting beans there. And by the way, I live in the Bay Area, so I pass by several roasters on a given Week. And you can smell that smell. It is really strong. Like when you're by a roastery. I mean, were any of your neighbors and the other businesses, like, sort of, I don't know, complaining? It's a nice smell, but it can be overwhelming.

[Todd Carmichael]

Well, we ran our first load, and it was clear that with that environment in that part of town, you couldn't roast in that cafe.

[Guy Raz]

You had all this equipment in there. You realize you actually cannot roast in there. You have presumably didn't have the ventilation for it.

[Todd Carmichael]

We didn't have the ventilation. It was not gonna work. The way the building is formed, the way the wind comes down and the barometric pressure, it was that moment where I thought, like, we were. We were ready to open. I mean, we had now spend all. I think we had maybe $500 left in the bank account. I mean, there wasn't anything left we needed to go. And we had all the green there. We'd had. Everything was ready to fire up.

[Guy Raz]

The green was the coffee beans. Right?

[Todd Carmichael]

Right. Yeah. And it was really clear that we weren't not be able to open. I mean, it was just this. The nightmare scenario in my mind was like, oh, they came this close. Right. So I went and rented a jackhammer, and I jackhammered a hole into a garbage chute that runs the outside of the building. And I think it's about 20 stories high.

[JP Eberti]

Yeah.

[Todd Carmichael]

And I piped the. Then cemented the piping into the garbage chute chute and told JP to fire it up. And, you know, it takes forever to get that whole chute heated up, but once you get hot air to rise, it just sucks it like a syringe.

[Guy Raz]

Up the garbage chute. The garbage chute was your chimney?

[JP Eberti]

Yep.

[Guy Raz]

I'm assuming you did not ask for permission to do this.

[Todd Carmichael]

No, no, no. In fact, we built the cafe by our like, with no permits. Like, I did all the wiring, all the plumbing. Like, we asked forgiveness rather than permission on pretty much anything. But the big deal was if someone would force a giant bag into that chute and it would get lodged. And so I would take the freight elevator up, go up on the roof, and we would drop bowling balls, remember, to dislodge the trash.

[Guy Raz]

Didn't anybody complain in the building?

[JP Eberti]

Yeah, we did get a lot of complaints. We got the fire department in, you know, about two, three times a week.

[Guy Raz]

Because somebody was like, something's burning.

[JP Eberti]

Yeah, exactly.

[Todd Carmichael]

Yeah.

[Guy Raz]

And did the fire department sight you or anything? Or did they?

[JP Eberti]

No.

[Todd Carmichael]

We would turn the lights off and hide behind the bar.

[JP Eberti]

We would hide, totally hide. And then we roasted in the middle of the night, which helped, but it made the life just really, really, really rough. Yeah.

[Guy Raz]

How did you. In that initial batch of coffee, where did you get it from? Where did you. Was there like a distributor in the US that you went to and said, we want, you know, 100 bags of this and 100 bags of that?

[Todd Carmichael]

That would have bankrupted us?

[JP Eberti]

Yeah, we bought only a few bags.

[Guy Raz]

And where did you buy it from?

[JP Eberti]

I think the broker was. I think they're still around. I think it's called Paragon Coffee out of New York.

[Guy Raz]

And how did you know which coffee to buy? Like, which one was going to be good coffee?

[JP Eberti]

We sampled a lot of coffee.

[Guy Raz]

Right.

[JP Eberti]

I mean, hundreds, hundreds, hundreds.

[Todd Carmichael]

We have. Just behind me, obviously, the podcast folks can't see it, is the original roaster. It's a little cylinder. It holds about a half a pound of coffee. And you put it on a gas stove, you put your green coffee into it, and you turn it by hand, and then you dump it all out into a colander, and you use some kind of cool air to cool it down. And if you would have gone to JP's apartment at the time up in Spruce street, before we settled on all the buys we would make, we had hundreds of bowls of this coffee everywhere. And we were hand grinding it and cupping it, and hand grinding it, cupping it, and we built up our first blends there.

[Guy Raz]

And in 1994, right. Even though Starbucks was starting to kind of grow, it was in San Francisco, in Los Angeles, and people were sort of starting to develop a taste for that Starbucks darker roast, which a lot of people for a long time hated. They thought it tasted burnt or bitter. How did you know what people would want to drink at end the that point? I mean, it was still, you know, our coffee palette wasn't that sophisticated in 1994.

[JP Eberti]

Yeah, but you see, we had the best audience. You know, we had chefs.

[Guy Raz]

Because you were going to restaurants, you were focused on really trying to appeal to chefs.

[Todd Carmichael]

Oh, yeah, that's it.

[Guy Raz]

That was it.

[JP Eberti]

That was it.

[Todd Carmichael]

And part of it, too, is it's you. If you love it, then that's the one you should stick with, you know, so first we wanted to please ourselves, and then you introduce this to some of the best palates in the world, and they like it. You're good. I think it's really hard to make food and beverage for everybody. It's like Kurt Vonnegut wrote for his sister. He wrote for one person, and I think that when I make food and beverage, I have like one or two people I think about.

[Guy Raz]

How did you find the restaurants? How did you get into them? How did you. Did you just kind of pound the pavement and start to call?

[Todd Carmichael]

Well, I'll tell you about the first one. And then that started the. The whole kind of process. So it was October 15th. We walked on the street, we went to the number one restaurant in the country at the time, Le Beck Fin. We went into the back of the kitchen. Someone stopped and asked us, what are you doing here? And we said, we're here to make coffee for Chef. So they just assumed maybe that was an interview.

[Guy Raz]

Interesting thing. Yeah.

[Todd Carmichael]

So we went, we tore the grinder down, cleaned it, tore the espresso machine out, cleaned that, put our coffee into it, made a beautiful, beautiful coffee. And then said, where's Chef?

[JP Eberti]

Chef.

[Todd Carmichael]

We went upstairs. He was screaming. He was a screamer. It was the 90s, right? Wanted to know. And we said, we're here to make coffee for you. And we just put it in front of him. And you just step back. And so that's how we got the Beck FA that day, you mean?

[Guy Raz]

He said right then and there, okay, you can be my coffee supplier for my restaurant.

[Todd Carmichael]

He actually picked the grinder up with the old stuff and threw it all in the trash and said, go get your shit. Wow. It's like, in other words, bring your stuff now. It's the truth.

[Guy Raz]

And you thought, all right, we got to start with, because that is the best French restaurant in the United States. And if we're in there, then other French restaurants or other high end restaurants are going to want our stuff.

[Todd Carmichael]

Well, the second one was the same day was the Jean Marie Lacroix Extraordinary.

[Guy Raz]

Chef, also in Philadelphia. I think he was the Four Seasons, right?

[Todd Carmichael]

Yeah.

[JP Eberti]

Yep.

[Todd Carmichael]

Yeah, that's right. And we did the same deal. We just walked in the back. So we're here to make coffee for Chef. And he said, bring it today. So that night, we were being brewed in than two of the best restaurants in the country. And by the end of that week, we're getting calls from major players in New York. And everyone's saying, what is this coffee I want to try? It was all the Frenchies.

[JP Eberti]

Yeah. And you know, the media were not what it is today, obviously. And back then, Chef would only talk to Chef. You know, they wouldn't buy things because they saw an ad somewhere. But once somebody finds something, they're eager to talk about it.

[Guy Raz]

And by the way, what was your price point higher? I mean, Was it more expensive to buy your coffee?

[JP Eberti]

Coffee.

[Todd Carmichael]

When we arrived in Philly, coffee wholesaled to restaurants was at about A$50 a pound and ours was the mid sevens.

[Guy Raz]

So weren't some restaurants like, are you out of your mind? No, they weren't.

[Todd Carmichael]

No. Because we explained to them, I go, chef, coffee is a spice. And that's all I had to say. Because you could buy saffron for nothing and you'd have to use like a bird's nest amount in your dish to make it taste anything like saffron. Or you get this stuff from Pakistan or Afghanistan where you use a pinch, but it's going to cost you.

[Guy Raz]

Yeah.

[Todd Carmichael]

And they understood that.

[Guy Raz]

And was it, was it pretty clear to both of you right away that you were going to have a sustainable business within the first six months that you were going to turn a profit?

[Todd Carmichael]

Yep. Do you remember jp?

[JP Eberti]

Yeah. And I don't want to look at it and say it was destiny or whatever, but it was so clear because the space between the food that this restaurant were serving, the level was so high, the food was so good and where the coffee was in their dining room was such a void. It was so clear.

[Guy Raz]

Yeah.

[JP Eberti]

And you know, we got 1, 2, 3, and it started. We got known.

[Todd Carmichael]

It just burned.

[JP Eberti]

It just burned.

[Guy Raz]

When we come back in just a moment, how Todd and JP started to explore sourcing coffee beans directly from farmers all around the world. And later on, how a big private equity investment in the company turned into a nightmare. And how Todd and JP managed to wrangle their way out of it. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz and you're listening to How I Built. Hey, welcome back to How I Built this. I'm Guy raz. So it's 1994 in Philadelphia and Todd and JP are selling wholesale specialty coffee to more and more high end restaurants. But the idea of premium and expensive coffee still isn't mainstream. And Todd and JP find that it's a challenge just to describe to consumers what's different about the coffee they're making.

[Todd Carmichael]

Because espresso in America up to that point was an abrasive liquid. It was not to be consumed without tons of sugar or milk on it. And we wanted to break that mystique. So we were looking for something that was European but like nine levels higher. We wanted something nutty, sweet, that was like molasses. So that's what really guided us.

[JP Eberti]

Yeah, I mean, the word I remember using describing the first coffee we did was balanced. We really wanted to achieve a soft, sweet finish. Because we felt like the American consumer. The public at this time needed to be intruders to better coffee, but also not to scare them away. So it was important that the coffee were really clean. And this is something that we focused on. And we had a rule. It was three words.

[Todd Carmichael]

That's right.

[JP Eberti]

Remember, it was three words per blend to describe them. And that played a really important role in creating those first three, four blends that we made.

[Guy Raz]

I'm just curious why you were so focused on the cafe. I mean, the ceramic cups and the service in that cafe if you never intended to open cafes, if that was not your business place.

[Todd Carmichael]

Street cred.

[JP Eberti]

Yeah, street cred.

[Todd Carmichael]

Street cred. We're serving some of the greatest chefs in the country. And if we were going to have a brick and mortar space, which we really felt we needed one to have some street presence, we needed to execute on a level that no one else could.

[Guy Raz]

And did you get beyond sort of the Northeast and the mid Atlantic? Were you distributing to places beyond that?

[JP Eberti]

Yeah, yeah. It's a funny thing with kitchen. You know, a lot of people go into a kitchen and then move away to San Francisco, Louisiana, Denver, Miami. And we had such roots in the kitchen we supplied that people ended up taking us with them when they moved. So we did move from kitchen to kitchen, you know, and it went. When this started, then it went a lot faster.

[Guy Raz]

Meanwhile, in the 1990s, were you still buying your coffee from brokers or were you starting to buy it directly from farms?

[Todd Carmichael]

Yeah, it was the 90s. We started weaning off that because it was clear that, you know, at first we, you know, we were the only ones looking for that type of coffee. So we had, you know, everything was easy to get. Easy to get. No one else wanted it.

[Guy Raz]

And you could pick whatever coffee you wanted at the beginning. But then it became harder as high end roasters started to come online.

[Todd Carmichael]

Yeah, the demand started picking up. And then it was. It was clear that we. Our timing was right. So it dovetailed right into let's go look for ourselves. Right.

[Guy Raz]

How did you do that?

[Todd Carmichael]

Well, I mean, one of the first ones was, strangely enough, we met a Swiss guy who owned a farm in Brazil. Remember that? What was that Swiss guy's name?

[JP Eberti]

Orse.

[Todd Carmichael]

Orse, yeah.

[Guy Raz]

And you met him? You met him where? Where'd you meet him? Oh, God.

[Todd Carmichael]

How did we meet him?

[JP Eberti]

We met him through 19th Street, Ritanelles Cafe. He came in.

[Todd Carmichael]

Oh, that's right. So I think we met him through like, chocolate. I think we were playing around with Chocolate. He's got a farm. We go to the farm. And once you do that, then you become hungry for it.

[Guy Raz]

So you go to visit this guy's farm, and he has a coffee plantation in Brazil. Yeah, yeah. Okay. So you go there, and what do you see?

[Todd Carmichael]

Well, then, you know, you spend time on the farms, and we start figuring out right away exactly what's making the better coffee and what's making the inferior stuff. Right. We start immediately getting interested in varieties and growing styles and all that, which is not a big giant leap. The real key is how do you get all these boxes from, let's say, a mountain in Rwanda to Philly? This is the challenge and the processes that it has to go through. So that is the real big first step. It's like figuring out how to do that, how to put a supply chain together. And once you get that, then you go, all right. Then you feel confident walking into Haiti, going up in the mountains and saying, all right, let's look for some farms.

[Guy Raz]

So it was literally because the coffee business is very, very. I think complex is an understatement. Right. There are so many middlemen. And when you go to the actual farmer, they're making pennies. They're not making anything. They're selling it to a middleman who has a couple of connections in the bigger city and then sells it to somebody in the bigger city. And the bigger city person is they're the ones who are selling it to a distributor in the U.S. so, yeah, there's a lot of hands that goes through before it comes to the roaster. And the people at the bottom of that chain get jelly and nothing.

[Todd Carmichael]

Nothing. Very little.

[Guy Raz]

Yeah.

[Todd Carmichael]

And you have an idea that that's what's happening. But when you go and you visualize it, you see it, and you see the eagerness that farmers have to work with you, because that chain of events that you described can sometimes be 10 or more deeper than that.

[Guy Raz]

Wouldn't there be middlemen who would feel threatened by this? Who would say, you know, who would threaten the farmer or maybe even threaten you guys? Or didn't that happen?

[Todd Carmichael]

Well, in the case of Brazil, no. Brazil is a very sophisticated country when it comes to farming, and you're not going to really run into it there.

[Guy Raz]

You can go directly to a farmer and say, I want to buy your beans. And they'd say, fine.

[Todd Carmichael]

But you say, El Salvador. Oh, indeed. Haiti. Oh, my God. And Haiti. There were times that I felt, yeah, this could be it. I'm probably going to not make it out here. Alive.

[Guy Raz]

How do you buy directly from farmers in places like Haiti or in a place like El Salvador if there are middlemen who depend on that income too and who are going to be threatened by you going around them?

[Todd Carmichael]

Well, I mean, first let's use Haiti for an example. What you realize is that there is strength in numbers. Once you get the faith and confidence of farmers, then you can do pretty much what you want. The problem is in places like Haiti or in Africa or even El Salvador, there are loads of gringos that show up, making promises and then never come back. You have to show a resilience that you're coming back time and time and time again. And once you've done that again, Haiti, I was called Emblaz, a white gang, but now I'm called Le Blanc. I'm the white guy. They know I'll come back. So then they can buck the system and traders that are trading over borders or they're taking big lion's share and it ends up in some Maxwell House blend. They're looking for giant volumes and we're not disrupting that. We're looking for this creme de la creme. And often they leave you alone.

[Guy Raz]

So, all right, so you've got this business going, you're doing well, and then in 2000 and six years in, Todd, you decide to take a three month sabbatical, go to a tiny island in the South Pacific with I guess 100 people who live on it and just kind of live there for three months. So first of all, Todd, what was going on in your life? Why did you feel like you needed to take a sabbatical?

[Todd Carmichael]

I think that I started to. Well, I was suffering from my brain. You know, I was a hard driving guy and I was just, I was having difficult times. I just said, oh. So I actually went to JP and I felt really bad. I said, you know, I was going to end up like my father, right. I thought I was going to go mad. Just total 247 anxiety mania. I just couldn't sleep. I couldn't, you know, it's just really. My furnace was just burning really hot. But I just got in a space where I didn't think I was going to be okay. And you know, there was a lot of, of problems back home with my, my mother and my sisters and my dad. You know, my dad had killed himself and it was just like, and there was just loads of pressure. And then I got involved in bad relationships and just like, I wasn't managing well, right. So I went to JP and I said, you can have my shares. I don't want to ruin this thing. You can have it all.

[Guy Raz]

Wow.

[Todd Carmichael]

I was just. And this is the kind of brother this guy is. He could have easily. Because I would. I mean, when I was saying it, my hands were. Were shaking, and when I get that way, I stop eating. So I wasn't eating. I wasn't sleeping. So I just drove myself into this really, really tough place.

[Guy Raz]

JP when he said to you, hey, I'm gonna leave the business. You got it? Can you handle it? Were you like, wait, what?

[JP Eberti]

Yeah, the story is, you know, he was. Todd was going through a hard time, you know, and he needed to hit reset. You know, I felt like, you know, being brothers, you know, I felt like, hey, listen, go take your time. You know, it was even to the point where it was like, you know what? I think I'm done. So I told. I said, listen, don't make any decision now. And, you know, it was clear. It was like, you know, you're gonna help somebody that you love, and I'm not gonna take anything from you. You're gonna go get better and come back and we'll talk.

[Guy Raz]

So you went off for three months, and you picked some. Some tiny, remote island to just live there. And what did you do for three months there?

[Todd Carmichael]

Well, okay, so I built my own little hut, and I arrived with zero money and just a little backpack and a surfboard. There's a giant wave not too far away called King Kong. I fished, and I surfed my brains out. And then I wrote a book, and it was a piece of junk. Let me just tell you. It was trashy. You would not make it past the first chapter. But I think I did that like chopping wood, you know, it was therapeutic. And I wanted to prove to myself that I could write something right? So I did. And so there was a lot of stuff from my past that I'd never dealt with, and it was. It helped a lot.

[Guy Raz]

This was three months, or almost three months on this remote island. No Wi Fi. This is 2000, so no Internet. And JP you were not in touch with him that whole time?

[JP Eberti]

Yeah.

[Guy Raz]

And were you not worried? Were you not, like, you were just like, yeah, okay, go, and I'll figure it out. And you just ran the business for while he was gone?

[Todd Carmichael]

No.

[JP Eberti]

I mean, I was worried that he was not gonna go for a while, you know, which would have been bad. So once he went, I knew that was the start of him getting better.

[Guy Raz]

Wow.

[JP Eberti]

And the business, you know, we work. We always had such a Group of very tight people. You know, if we look at the turnover that La Colomba has had over the years, it's very low. So we just had that core of. Of people from the beginning, you know, so three months was, you know, felt like two weeks. I mean, it was just not much, you know, to end all. It wasn't like impossible.

[Guy Raz]

So when he comes back, was he. How did he seem to you?

[JP Eberti]

Much better. In a different place completely. I mean, I was just like completely different person and, you know, happy to see him, that's for sure. You know.

[Guy Raz]

You decide 13 years after you open your first location off Rittenhouse Square in Philadelphia to open a new location outside of Philadelphia for the first time. Because I think at that point you had like two locations in Philadelphia, maybe, or three.

[Todd Carmichael]

Was it two, jp? Yeah, no, Dilworth. Dilworth had just started. We had two.

[Guy Raz]

Two in Philadelphia. And you decide to go to New York to the most challenging market in the world. Right. And by the way, it sounds like the business model at this point was starting to change because.

[Todd Carmichael]

Oh, it changed big time.

[Guy Raz]

The cafe wasn't really the point. But now you're opening a cafe in New York.

[Todd Carmichael]

So why 2007 and 2008 was the major fault line in the company? It was a massive shift in everything. See, we thought for a long time that the 19th Street Cafe was just an anomaly.

[JP Eberti]

Yeah.

[Todd Carmichael]

It wasn't due to the fact that we're any good at what we do. It's just that we got lucky and we were really afraid of making a second one because it would prove to everyone that the first one was just an anomaly.

[Guy Raz]

Yeah.

[Todd Carmichael]

So be honest with you, we were scared.

[Guy Raz]

Yeah.

[Todd Carmichael]

Because what if it were a failure? And so we finally decided to face our fears and we opened one in New York. Like we'd evolved in isolation, that we've got to this point that we're going to turn this thing into a true beginning business. We could become the reference coffee roasting company in the world if we start right now, you know, and if you. If you look at the top line revenue of La Colombe, it is intense. Hockey stick that started in 2008, where you just completely decided that we were going to dominate in this area.

[Guy Raz]

So clearly you are shifting now at this point to cafes. And does that mean that at this point, 2007, 2008, you were shifting away from the wholesale side or did you continue that?

[JP Eberti]

Oh, we continue that.

[Todd Carmichael]

No, they're called categories. Right. So you never, you never abandon the energy that you're giving to one category because you've added a second and we have five now. And you, you realize that you don't have to leave your first child because you're having a second one.

[Guy Raz]

So. So you guys are now fully onto this new path of cafes. And tell me about how you were able to do this. I mean, presumably you had to go seek out outside investment, Right, which was going to be the first time you were going to get outside money into the business, right?

[Todd Carmichael]

Yeah. I mean, there's a couple things that were going on too, is that I became fascinated with this thing that wasn't being done anywhere yet called cold brew. I had this idea that you could brew coffee, put it in a bottle and sell it to stores. So that was just starting. So I knew when GP and I believed in the ready to drink coffee. So we had that, we had the cafes. So we looked at each other and went, man.

[Guy Raz]

Yeah.

[Todd Carmichael]

So we started the old investor discussions and it was so awful because we have different blood types to such a degree that it just, it was so difficult. And we landed on one. We did the deal and that lasted 52 days till the first board meeting. I said, okay, I believe that cold brew is going to be a thing and La Colombe needs to be the father of it. We also need to create ready to drink drinks that include milk and hopefully one, if I can invent it, one that's frothy. And they said, nah, we don't want to do that.

[Guy Raz]

What'd they want to do?

[Todd Carmichael]

They wanted us to build 200 cafes.

[Guy Raz]

This is your new board. This is your board because you had to have a board when you bring in outside investors. And of course, some of those board seats were held by that. Was it a private equity company?

[Todd Carmichael]

Yeah, so it was a private equity company, me and jp. So I just, I said, we're out of here, we're going to buy you out. I gave him a sum too, actually. I told him how much? Double.

[Guy Raz]

But in order to buy them out, presumably you'd have to find like another investor to get the money to do that.

[Todd Carmichael]

That's true. You know, first we agreed we would need an angel investor. It would have to be someone who's craft based, who believes in making, behaving themselves in the world and creating value for other people and participating in communities and being decent.

[Guy Raz]

Yep.

[Todd Carmichael]

And so I thought of, hey, there's that Hamdi Ulakaya guy from Chobani. From Chobani. I'd met him months earlier. He, as well as JP and I are concerned about the refugees coming across the border from Syria into Turkey. He's a craft man. So you make things you understand, right? I mean, he understood the complexities of Greek yogurt and why that mouth feel is so important. He understood the beauty of clean milk. He understood clean ingredients. So I go in my lab and I create the very first draft latte, drill a hole in the can, I put a volleyball valve in it, I put coffee, I put milk, I seam the can and I jack the contents up with nitrous oxide to make it self foaming. And I bring it up to New York and I said, this is going to be the most expensive coffee you've ever tasted. And yeah, he loved it.

[Guy Raz]

And then what you say, hey, I need a favor from you, or hey, would you be interested in investing? What's your pitch to him? What do you say to him?

[Todd Carmichael]

That's exactly how I say it. I don't know how smooth or awkward I was, but I said, I want to take coffee into the future and I want you to be a part of it. In order for that to happen, you need to take out this vc. And he said, great, let's meet him. And we met him and he did.

[Guy Raz]

And they had no problem with it. They were like, sure, we'll sell, that's fine.

[Todd Carmichael]

Yeah, they doubled their money in a couple months, right?

[Guy Raz]

That's pretty good.

[Todd Carmichael]

Yeah.

[Guy Raz]

So it did cost quite a bit to get out of that bad decision that I guess you guys took.

[Todd Carmichael]

It did. But you know what, in retrospect, it didn't. It was very helpful. We had to go to the next level of growing up and we ended up getting a lot of really good executive people from it and a real different way of looking at our business. So it was like, oh, there was a whole bunch of maturity that we got out of that deal that I'd still say I would do it again.

[Guy Raz]

And this, the draft latte cans, I mean, they became an incredible hit. Like they're, I think they're distributed all over the country. I read something like they're in like one out of three US Grocery stores.

[Todd Carmichael]

I'd say, yeah, it's probably higher than that now. I'd say we're getting like two out of three. It's close.

[Guy Raz]

And jp, what do you think of the strategy now? I mean, it seems like you guys chose the right path back when you kind of told the private equity company, hey, you know, we don't want to open 200 locations. We're going to go in this different direction.

[JP Eberti]

Yeah, you Know, I've seen so many good concepts over the years being pushed to really roll out, out. I'm not saying that we can't get to a big number of locations, but there's a balance of things. I'm really, really, really happy that we kept growing the business in different channels than just retail. I mean, how many great concepts have we seen over the years that just got crushed because VC money got in and pushed it too hard? I mean, there's dozens of example, and it's. I think we were a little naive to think that that was a solid plan. And we learn and thank God Hamdi is with us, and we're on a different path.

[Guy Raz]

Yeah. This business has made both of you rich. And I know that, Todd, you grew up in serious insecurity. Food and financial insecurity. What does it mean to you to have money? What does it enable you to do now?

[Todd Carmichael]

Well, I think the first and foremost is, you know, I can guarantee the future of my children. And that was. That was a big thing for me. I always wanted to have a family, and I wanted to be able to provide for them. What you learned, though, is that there's no such thing as security ever. There's no amount that will make you secure. That's just something that you nen have to live with.

[JP Eberti]

Yeah.

[Todd Carmichael]

It lets me make a change. If I see things I don't like, I could fund programs. I can do things like that. And I could do more than just bitch about things now. I can actually go and move the needle. And food.

[Guy Raz]

And food, food, food.

[Todd Carmichael]

I could. I still. I'm 56 years old, and I can go to a store with my wife, and I'm walking in front of the cart, and I'll spin around, and I say to her, I can buy anything in this store.

[JP Eberti]

Yeah.

[Guy Raz]

Yeah.

[Todd Carmichael]

God damn it. That's awesome. I could buy anything in this store. And there was years and years and years that wasn't possible. But I guess the most important one is that, you know, I have a safe home with my kids in it, and I like that a lot.

[Guy Raz]

How about you, jp? You grew up in different circumstances. You grew up comfortable, but, I mean, obviously now you are. Well, this made you very wealthy.

[JP Eberti]

Yeah. You know, and this is one of the things I respect the most about. About the U.S. you know, it's how people become wealthy, give back. And that includes us, you know, and it's a great feeling, and it's amazing. It's not that way in Europe. And this country is amazing. Not just us. A La Colombe, it's amazing, you know, it's pretty cool. So being part of that, doing a share. Yeah, it's great.

[Guy Raz]

Jp, when you think about how much of your success has to do with your hard work and talent and how much has to do with luck, what do you think? What weight do you give to each of those?

[JP Eberti]

I think luck plays a really big part, really big part in the success of La Colombe. It's. Yeah, luck plays. I mean, hard work is a given, right? You're going to work hard. If I were going to give you a percentage, I would probably call it close to 50. 50. I mean, if you call luck, you can also talk about timing.

[Guy Raz]

Well, the fact that the two of you met in the first place.

[JP Eberti]

Yeah. And people you meet along the way and, you know, the opportunity that create all that, you know, are put in the same bag, you know, for me, that's luck.

[Guy Raz]

How about you, Todd?

[Todd Carmichael]

Yeah, I just. I don't know. When he was talking, I got an image in my mind. It's like we have these mosaic tables. They're broken pieces of La Colombe ceramic, you know, that they put together to make this mosaic tile. So I would say that the grout is luck. It's what holds all those broken pieces together, whatever percentage that is. Because obviously they would mean nothing if it weren't for the grout. Right. It wouldn't hold together. So I would say, I guess 35% of it's luck or good fortune or destiny or, you know, the gods or. Because it's true, man, that luck begins with Green River. And whether he was wearing a gold vest or not, I'm not sure. Is meeting JP huge piece of luck? Had I not gone that night, there would be no La Colombe.

[Guy Raz]

That's Todd Carmichael and JP Eberti, co founders of La Colombe Coffee Roasters. By the way, in addition to founding La Colombe, Todd also once held the world speed record for trekking to the South Pole on foot, unassisted. There's a whole documentary about his trip called Race to the Bottom of the Earth that aired on the National Geographic Channel. Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week. Please make sure to click the follow button on your podcast app so you never miss a new episode of the show. And please sign up for my [e-mail] or on substack. This episode was produced by Casey Herman with music composed by Ramtina Rabloui. It was edited by Sarah Saracen with research help from Dereth Gales. Our production staff also includes Neva Grant, Katherine Cipher, J.C. howard, Sam Paulson, Chris Masini, Alex Chung, Kerry Thompson, John Isabella, Andrea, Bruce, Rommel Wood, and Elaine Coates. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built this. And don't stop the podcast just yet, because right now you're about to hear an amazing small business story that you don't want to miss. This segment is presented by American Express with a Business Platinum membership. The best just got even better. And this week's story starts back in 2009, when a former Dell engineer named Peter Mann set out to solve a. A very personal problem.

[Peter Mann]

My son struggled with asthma when he was an infant. He would have an asthma attack to where he would change colors and not breathe. And it was really distressing not being able to do much for him as he, you know, was a little bit older, more middle school age. He would have an asthma attack just sitting on the couch.

[Guy Raz]

Peter learned that one of the big triggers for those asthma attacks were allergens and other particles in the air. So he started looking into air purifiers, and he was pretty underwhelmed at what he found.

[Peter Mann]

It's almost like bulletin board looking terrible websites, and some of them are selling these same products with just different logos on their product.

[Guy Raz]

Peter came from the world of tech, so he knew how to develop a product and market it online. And he thought, why not just do this myself? So he hopped a flight to Hong Kong, negotiated a deal with a manufacturer, tested some samples, and about six months later, Peter's own air purifier, which he called Aranci, arrived at his door.

[Peter Mann]

I remember opening it and plugging it in and turning it on, and within about 15 or 20 minutes, the air just felt different.

[Guy Raz]

And his son's scary middle of the night asthma attacks, they went away.

[Peter Mann]

And what wasn't waking him up, which wasn't waking us up, it was just a huge win win.

[Guy Raz]

Customers loved the product too. And Aranci's sales grew steadily over the next decade. When Covid hit, demand for Peter's air purifiers skyrocketed, but so did competition.

[Peter Mann]

It just got to the point where it was oversaturated.

[Guy Raz]

So Peter decided to pivot and focus instead on the technology in inside the device, specifically the electric motor. He merged with a partner, bought a huge factory in Virginia, and built an air purifier in house from scratch as a way to validate the technology. Now Peter's setting his sights on a much bigger market with a seemingly endless demand for cool, clean air AI data centers. Now, around the same time he made that pivot, something happened in Peter's personal life that completely changed how he looked at his business and himself.

[Peter Mann]

In 2022, my wife was watching CBS Morning show and in April, they do profiles of people that are autistic. And she's like, oh, you need to see this. And I watched it and I was like, oh, my gosh, I didn't know it. Like, now so many things make sense.

[Guy Raz]

Peter thought, that's me. The hyper focus, the ability to build systems, and some of the social challenges he'd experienced as well. Sure enough, at age 55, he was diagnosed with autism.

[Peter Mann]

I did a LinkedIn post and I said, you know, hey, I was recently diagnosed. If anyone that's autistic that, you know, is going through interviews or navigating the workplace wants to talk, I'd be happy to talk. And wow. I had video calls with dozens of autistic adults. Probably 75% of them were just struggling with the interview process.

[Guy Raz]

So he's spending more time thinking about ways his company can set people up like him for success.

[Peter Mann]

This kind of hit me like my son's asthma did.

[Guy Raz]

By the way, the son whose asthma attacks inspired Aranci to begin with with Peter says he's doing great.

[Peter Mann]

He seems to have largely outgrown it. He still has an air purifier all these years later.

[Guy Raz]

That's Peter Mann, the founder and CEO of the air purifier and now electric motor company Arancy. His small business spotlight was presented by American Express. To build a business like no other, you need a card like no other other. There's nothing like business. Platinum. It. If you like how I built this, you can listen early and ad free right now by joining Wondery plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Prime members can listen ad free on Amazon Music. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short [e-mail] survey.