Building Unbreakable Brands

Meghan Lynch: On today's show, we will talk about how brands that begin with a charismatic visionary founder can thrive after that founder retires, even when that founder's name is the brand name. Welcome to building unbreakable brands, the podcast where we talk to people who are growing businesses with a generational mindset. I'm Megan Lynch. I'm an advisor to family businesses and founder of six point, a brand strategy agency that helps generational brands honor their past while evolving for the future. Today, I'm very excited to welcome my guest, on. Beth is the CEO of Dean's Beans, Organic Coffee. And Dean's Beans is a 30 year old fair trade organic coffee company committed to using specialty coffee as a vehicle. vehicle for positive change. Welcome to the show Beth.

Beth Spong: Thank you so much Megan. I'm delighted to be here. Excited to share. This is a great topic, a very important topic.

Meghan Lynch: So you may remember that as part of the prep for this podcast, I asked you to think about how you would explain your business to an eight year old. And I was wondering if you would mind just reading the description that you sent me.

Beth Spong: Sure. Dean's beans buys coffee beans from farmers around the world. We pay them fair prices so they can support their families. We roast the coffee and sell it to individuals and businesses around the United States at fair prices so that everyone can enjoy delicious great coffee. We also collaborate with the farmers and invest in the economic, social and environmental projects that they tell us their communities need most.

Meghan Lynch: Awesome. Thanks so much. And I figured if we're talking about generational mindset. here on building unbreakable brands that it would be good to have the voice of the next generation as part of the process, right? So I ran your description by a real eight-year-old, my son, Henry, and Henry has a few questions for you. So I'm going to turn it over to him.

Beth Spong: Bring it on, Henry.

Henry Lynch: Hi, Beth. I think your coffee brand name sounds catchy. I like the rhyme to it. But my first question is, what day of the week do you get the beans?

Beth Spong: Well, Henry, we get beans a lot of days of the week, actually. order coffee in very large quantities. So you know those shipping containers that you see on giant ocean liners? We buy coffee in that size containers from different countries, 11 different countries around the world. And so we buy the beans and they get shipped to us around the harvest time. So coffee gets harvested at different times of the year in different parts of the world. And so, and it takes a long time for the ships holding the containers to get to the United States. So when the ship comes in and the shipping containers are unloaded, then they come to deans beans. And we get about 4,000 pounds of green coffee beans at one time from each country that we buy from. So it's kind of a really big day when the beans arrive because so many of them show up. But we don't get them on a specific day of the week.

Meghan Lynch: That's great. And that kind of leads into Henry's next question, I believe. What kind of beans you get?

Beth Spong: We buy green, unroasted coffee beans that we roast here at Dean's Beans Organic Coffee. And so we get coffee from Central and South America, Africa, and Southeast Asia. So the beans are all green, unroasted coffee beans. but depending on the climate and the humidity and the rainfall and the sunshine and the soil, many different factors, the beans will taste differently and have a different kind of characteristic.

Meghan Lynch: Now we've got Henry's last question. Go ahead.

Henry Lynch: What makes your coffee different from other coffees at the store?

Beth Spong: That is a great question. So Dean's beans is different from other coffees at the store because we are fair trade organic coffee roaster and what that means, well, I'm going start again. So Dean's beans is different from a lot of the other coffees that you can find in the store because our business was designed to have a positive impact. impact on the lives of coffee farmers. And it was built with that mission in mind. And so it wasn't started because Dean wanted to make money selling coffee. He wanted to have an impact on people growing coffee around the world. And he thought that the more coffee he could buy from the farmers, the more impact they would have on their livelihoods and their families and their communities. And so we're a mission driven company. And that makes us unique. There are a lot of companies don't have that clear a social mission. And all of the coffee that we sell is organic, which means it's made with no chemical herbicides or pesticides. And that's really important because of the planet. So pesticides, those chemicals, pesticides and herbicides, are not good for the people who are using them on their crops, they wind up depleting the soil and damaging the soil over time and they're not good for the planet. And so that's why organic is important. fair trade is really a certification that's about working conditions. So certified fair trade coffee farms or coffee farming cooperatives. That is about working conditions. It's about economic opportunity. It's about gender equity. It's about education and providing more resources and tools for the community as a whole. And those things are very important to us. And it's also about preventing child labor. So being organic and fair trade makes us different from a lot of the coffees in the store. or having a really clear social and environmental mission also makes us different. And plus we, our packages are really cool looking and they're really colorful. I don't have one right here with me, but you can't see me anyway, so it doesn't matter.

Beth Spong: Is there's anything else I would say about what makes our coffee different? Well, a lot of businesses are really focused on how little can we spend to make our product and how much can we make on selling our product. And our company is, our goal is to pay the farmers a really fair price so they can support their family. So we want to pay them as high a price as we can. And then we want to sell our coffee at the lowest reasonable price that we can. because we want all kinds of people to be able to afford really good delicious organic coffee. so that also, I think, distinguishes us.

Meghan Lynch: That's great. So thank you, Henry, for those questions.

Beth Spong: Thanks, Henry.

Meghan Lynch: Now, Beth, Dean's Beans is, it's a 30-year-old brand, but you are relatively new to the company. And you also didn't come from the specialty coffee world specifically. You joined the team in March of 2022.

Beth Spong: That's correct.

Meghan Lynch: And you had kind of a background in entrepreneurship and mission-driven consulting, plus 15 years as a nonprofit leader. But I'm curious, now that you're basically the steward for a pioneering bear trade organic coffee brand, I'm curious what through lines you see between your experience that you've had up until this point. we're Bear Dean's beans is in its evolution. know, what skills have you gained that have really prepared you for this moment?

Beth Spong: That's a really good question. And when Dean and I started talking about him hiring me for the role, initially, of Chief Operating Officer and then CEO after his retirement, we were kind of, I was kind of laughing because it's like you can't draw a line from where I started to where this job takes me. And it's not, it's kind of a left turn for my career. And yet at the same time, because of the skill sets I've developed over time, it's a great fit for what I can bring to the company. As you started out the show with Meghan, know, Dean is a legendary pioneer in the world of specialty coffee. And he's a big personality, he's brilliant and And he's the founder of this company that has really been an inspiration for many people in the coffee industry to do things in better and different ways. And so, part of it is like being clear that Dean's beans had Dean for 30 years. It doesn't need another Dean in order to carry the mission forward. And my job now as CEO is to make sure that as a worker owned cooperative, being 100% employee owned now, that we take this period of time where we're learning how to do that, our own governance and our own management together as a group really well because Dean was one owner and he was the boss for 30 years. So now a group of 15 people are finding our way forward and how to pursue the mission together. And the skills that I bring to that. I have to do with everything from knowing my way around a profit and loss statement and a balance sheet and about organizational finances, understanding revenue generation and HR and finance and operations. So I bring all of that with me from a different context. And I also as a consultant built skills related to teaching and training, to facilitating important conversations in effective ways, lifting up leadership in a group and in a room. And so all of those things come together. Let me see if there's anything else I would add to that. Yeah, I think the combination of my strong background in entrepreneurship, my I live my life on purpose. And my work has always been focused on purpose and mission. And having spent 15 years as a nonprofit leader and consultant, that's kind of the core of who I am is being on mission. And Dean's Beent is a four-profit company that has a super clear mission and is really guided and driven by that. And so this is as close as I could possibly get to my background in the for-profit world. And so I think it's a really good fit. And I'm having a great time too. Learning a lot. always get excited by learning a lot.

Meghan Lynch: Yeah, that's so important. So it sounds like it's not just the hard skills that you have that kind of prepare you to be a CEO in terms of understanding how companies run, but also For this new role that's moving away from a founder led company to now this worker own company, having that facilitation aspect of things of really bringing other people along with you and kind of helping other people find their seat at the leadership table becomes a really important piece of this puzzle for this next phase or evolution of the company.

Beth Spong: Absolutely. And listening is a key part of that. Like you can't lead effectively without listening. And I'm the CEO, but I'm surrounded by 15 other smart experience capable people who know coffee really well, who know their jobs really well, who have, you know, there's not a lot of turnover here. So they have a lot of experience with this company and with the work that they do. And so there is leadership here. And so listening to to other people's opinions and priorities and ideas, it makes the whole thing richer. so it's not like I came in writing a white horse and it's my job to know everything that's gonna happen next and be able to do that, but it's really my job to work with this group of people to carry this very precious and beautiful mission forward together.

Meghan Lynch: I love that. You are listening to Building Unbreakable Brands, the podcast all about brand stewardship and crafting an enduring legacy. I'm here with my guest, Beth Spong, CEO of Dean's Beans Organic Coffee. So we already talked a little bit about the Dean behind Dean's Beans. So the brand is named for Dean's Saigon. He's... charismatic, really visionary founder. Dean recently retired and he sold the business to the employees creating a worker owned cooperative. And the vast majority of brands do not survive this transition from a founder led company to kind of a next generation, whether that's the next generation of a family or in your case, the next iteration of ownership. And especially one who's as charismatic and visible and kind of relationship oriented as Dean, I'm curious how you Dean and the company really prepared for this transition. Like what did that look like in the years leading up to the actual actual transition?

Beth Spong: Right. So the transition from the time I arrived in March of 2022 to Dean's retirement and the employees purchasing the company was about 15 months. We worked with consulting group, the Cooperative Development Institute. And every single week we developed a steering committee. So it was a very structured educational process. And we didn't talk about the fact that, and I'm not sure that many people know, that most businesses don't survive this transition. And so what we knew we had was a group of people who knew the business well and that their lane, and their individual lanes, and department lanes, and Dean, so we had that, and we had teachers and advisors, basically curriculum. How do you get from, wow, we could become a worker owned cooperative. employees who have been making this product and getting this product out in the world could actually run this. this company to making the transition and Dean retiring, those elements were really important of having a team of a group of people really interested in becoming owners and the benefits that they saw could be derived from that and Dean's commitment to the mission of the company and to that legacy. He did have opportunities and offers from large conglomerates to buy the brand and he just thought about what would happen to the mission and the company if he did that and he could see that a large conglomerate would buy the brand and then move operations someplace else out of Orange Massachusetts where it's a good employer with good wages and great benefits and contributing to the tax base of rural community in western Massachusetts. all those things were intentional and important to Dean and why we are here in Orange. So we could provide good jobs with good benefits and contribute to the tax base in a community that really needs those things. And so he knew that they would take the brand and dismantle the company. And then he also had a smaller coffee industry person who wanted to buy the company with some partners. But he understood that their goal would be to grow the company rapidly and then sell it to a large conglomerate that would pull it apart. And neither of those things really appealed to him and he didn't want to retire and close the business and have those jobs go away in this community. So, when it became clear that the employees were really into and excited about learning about the opportunity for employee ownership of the company, we began that process with CDI as our guides. It was a lot of work, really lot of work and involved. Any number of things from the mundane but important details of crafting bylaws for the company and opening the books so that our profit and loss statement and our balance sheet are shared with employees every single month. So people see where the money is coming from and they see where it's going. And so a lot of things have shifted so that everybody on the team who's a member owner has the information they need to help to contribute to a solid and wise decision making.

Meghan Lynch: Wow, that's sounds like a lot to hold and carry through all of this transition.

Beth Spong: It has been.

Meghan Lynch: And kudos to him for looking that far down the road to kind of see all these different potential futures and then decide, nope, I really want something that's different from all of those and figure out exactly what that might look like.

Beth Spong: I don't need to walk away with the biggest possible pot of money.

Meghan Lynch: Right.

Beth Spong: And a company that is gutted. Yeah. And where jobs and benefits and all that stuff go away in Franklin County.

Meghan Lynch: Yeah. One of the things that I think of is that we definitely live in a world, especially in business where people often just see bigger as better. You know, bigger, the bigger the company is, the stronger it is. Many leaders feel a lot of pressure. to grow, to scale, and they kind of associate that with sustainability. it sounds like Dean had a different kind of vision. And I know that there have been times in the company where he had opportunities to grow and scale quickly, whether it's with Whole Foods or with Trader Joe's, that there were opportunities where there were national retail deals and things like that, that he said no to. I'm curious, you kind of think about the history of the company and kind of what it sets the tone for going into the future, what if those decision points meant for the company and its sustainability?

Beth Spong: Well, those were key moments. Dean, again, was very intentional about thinking them through, thinking it beyond the wow, we could have this much more business and this much more money coming into the business and um, thinking about, okay, so we scale up so we can provide both foods or trader jose or some really large other really large retailer with their coffee. Then those companies are notoriously fickle. So we might be, you know, their company, their coffee for three or four years and then they might want somebody else. And so we have scaled up our operation based on one really large customer and a number of smaller customers and then if that large customer went away, that would be really a scary time for the company. And so he didn't think that was worth the risk with what he had seen, but those companies do historically. And he also, one of the things that has just been beautiful about the way that that he's built this company is Dean has a really clear sense of how much is enough. And what the business that he built was enough for him, for the lifestyle that he wanted, for the amount of stress that he wanted, you know, got it to a point where, you know, scaling it up in one way or another to the next level would have brought more stress, more challenge, more need for capital. And that wasn't what he wanted at that point in his life. And so that's our journey to take, to decide, you know, what does growth mean to us and how do we think we might want to get there. But making those decisions to not in the short term and rich, but in the long term in danger, the company. He was really solid on those.

Meghan Lynch: And that's a hard thing to say no to. I've seen so many business leaders, know, and you get pressure from family, from friends going, how do you say no to Whole Foods or this is the deal of a lifetime? know, it feels, you know, there can be a lot of pressure to say yes to those moments. so, so kind of really stepping forward with that leadership of, you know, staying within yourself and, you know, really looking at it from, again, that long term point of view, not that you always have to say no to those things. by saying no in that moment, he kind of set a tone for leadership that I would imagine might give you the same permission to say no if you felt like there was an opportunity that yes might be great, but you know, isn't necessarily in the short term.

Beth Spong: It might be great in the short term and, and really risky in the short term and the long Long-term scaling is a really complex process. And it can be done very poorly, which is a big problem for companies. And so he was wise and he really knew himself. He thought, this is enough. I don't need to be bigger in order to have this be enough. And it seems to me that part of our national culture is what you lead with, which is bigger is better, more is better. And that's not always true. And the ability to be satisfied with what we're doing, even if our goal is to grow, because we're talking now about how do we grow, how do we move forward? What does growth mean to us?

Beth Spong: The things that we've zeroed in on thus far are looking at maximizing the pounds of coffee that we buy, that we sell. Because the more coffee we sell, the more the farmers benefit. And to maximize the amount, the number of dollars that we invest in social, economic and environmental development projects in the coffee lands. That also is a direct benefit to the coffee producing communities and to the farmers livelihoods. a lot of people don't recognize or understand that most coffee around the world is grown on small stakeholder farms, which means those farms are between half an acre and five acres in size. And those farmers come together in cooperatives to bring the their coffee to market. And many coffee producers around the world are also indigenous people. And so making a difference in those communities by buying as much coffee as we can and making those development project investments is really important to us. In addition to being, to becoming the best employer in the Pioneer Valley, how do we do that? know, and part of that is wages and salaries, making sure that we are really competitive and that our benefits stay really leading edge. And, you know, for me also a part of that becoming the best employer in the Manning out accepting and challenging and inviting people to step forward and providing opportunities for leadership and growth for the entire team. So all those things come together as how are we gonna think about success?

Meghan Lynch: Sounds exciting. It sounds like the team is really as a collective really stepping into Dean's visionary shoes and really starting to kind of craft a new vision for the company. So that sounds really exciting.

Beth Spong: Absolutely. Yes, it is a very exciting time and Dean is on our board. He's gonna be on our board for the for the first three years which is great and he and I are in communication on a weekly basis. I call him with questions and ask I say, hey, do you remember how you decided this or what were the factors when you were considering that? So so he's very much a resource for me.

Meghan Lynch: That's great. Yeah You've been kind of holding this role for about two almost two years now and I'm curious as you Look back on the past two years is there a moment that stands out as a highlight or a moment where you have felt particularly like confident or proud about what either what you've achieved or what the future looks like.

Beth Spong: Wow, that's a really good question. I want to go back circle back to the way that you described like the stewardship work that that we're doing as stewardship of the mission stewardship of Dean's legacy. That's very much how we think of And clarity as possible is really important to us. So I was this chief operating officer for about 15 months. And then I've been the CEO since July 1st. So six. months, almost. Yeah, six months, July 1 to December 31. um, moments where I felt really proud, visiting origin, you know, going to Central and South America to spend time with coffee farmers and with our partners there. And going to Indonesia to visit coffee producers in Sumatra and Timor, uh, we're planning a trip to Ethiopia at the end of February. And so again, our goal is to go and be with the farmers, uh, on their farms and, um, understanding that, you know, most people wake up, they, they make their coffee, they're sewing their cup of coffee. They're not thinking about the human beings who are on the other side of that cup of coffee, the human beings who make that possible. So actually being able to be with the farmers and there's a tremendous amount of poverty in farmers, coffee farmers around the world. The climate change is having a huge impact on how coffee is grown, where it can grow, how long the growing season is, those kinds of what the harvest yield is. And so there's a tenuousness to the future of that livelihood, and just the reality that coffee farmers don't make a lot of money. so talking, being in Nicaragua and talking with, you know, going up, up, up, up, up, in the mountains, where coffee grows, and spending time with Alfredo and his family during the coffee harvest, and being with them as they're sorting beans and saying to him, You know Alfredo this is my first time to be actually where coffee is grown. I'm so eager to learn tell me about your life and him just looking me in the eye and saying it's a really beautiful life. I get to work with my family, we get to work in nature, we make this delicious coffee and seeing and feeling his pride in the work that he does he and his family do and and the way that he is able to just be really grateful for the for the kinds of richness that he has is was really moving and and what I would say very un-American in the sense that we are so focused on we can be sometimes so focused on what we don't have. have and to be someplace where their means were quite modest and have him say with pride, it's a beautiful life that we're living. And to know that we're part of strengthening their community, not just by buying their coffee, but also investing in their access to fresh, potable water, investing in literacy and education so that their children investing in microfinance or women, investing in reforestation and coffee and hardwood and fruit tree seedling nurseries so that they have a variety of crops they can eat and sell. All those things, I understood in a very different way, standing in Nicaragua, standing in East Timor and up in the mountains and in Sumatra. So making those connections made me really proud.

Meghan Lynch: Yeah, I can imagine that must have been extremely moving and the other thing that I feel like has been a theme of this whole conversation is that fundamental question of how much is enough and really deeply feeling that question and I think particularly just thinking of the listeners as they're thinking about building a sustainable business, building something that lasts beyond them. I think really sitting with that question sounds like that's been an important piece of the evolution of Dean's Beans and will continue to be and it sounds like it's a big piece of relationships with farmers, with employees and it's really a cornerstone to the brand. So I really love that as a theme and a takeaway and it's something that I'll be thinking about for sure. So thank you so much.

Beth Spong: Thank you and being new to the coffee world and going very early on to in my first week actually with the company in more in early April of 22. Going to the specialty coffee association conference, I had my little lanyard with my Beth Spong from Dean's Beans Organic Coffee and I was introducing myself to people and there were thousands of people around and every time I introduced myself, I'm going to say 80% of the time. People would be like, beans beans, I know beans beans. Deans of legend, Dean has done more for coffee farmers than anybody else in the coffee industry. Now, I knew him as the owner of Dean's Beans here in the Pioneer Valley. Really a smart guy, really creative business owner, really brilliant mind, really values driven. I knew all those things about him, but then going to this context that has been his world for 30 years and he's hearing people say, people who just sort of instinctively responded to, I'm from Dean's beans, with those kinds of comments had me also feel a different sense of the scale of his impact and his legacy and the meaning that it has to hold this mission tightly and have the commitment to steward it and carry it forward because it actually really does make a difference to a lot of people in a lot of parts of the world.

Meghan Lynch: Yeah, that's such an amazing thing to be part of. Well, thank you so much Beth. has been such a great conversation and I really, really enjoyed it. Thank you so much for sharing both the insights, the stories. know listeners are going to get some great takeaways from this.

Beth Spong: My pleasure. Thanks so much for inviting me to join you for the conversation and I love that I just love the idea of building unbreakable brands, and which implies building brands that last a long time. Yeah. And that are not fragile. It's really exciting exploration you're engaged in and I'm happy to be part of it.

Meghan Lynch: Thank you so much. So if listeners are interested in tasting some beans, where can they find you?

Beth Spong: They can go to deansbeans.com. And you can see all of our mission. You can see photos and stories, and you can buy coffee there and we make it really easy. We about we also we sell coffee to individuals directly online through our website and we also do a large part of our business more than half of our business is wholesale to other businesses, cafes, restaurants, hospitals, coffee, colleges and universities, food co-ops, grocery store, first Whole Foods and so businesses can buy from us as well.

Meghan Lynch: That's great. So everybody can kind of be part of this bigger mission as well and help continue to affect lives and really make a difference. So thank you so much, Beth. Really appreciate it.

Beth Spong: Thank you, Meghan.