Working Towards Our Purpose

Welcome to Working Towards Our Purpose, a podcast that

offers a different perspective on what a job can be. For everyone

out there that's heard that voice in the back of their head asking for something

more, it's time to listen to it. I'm your host, Gino,

and join me as I interview people who have decided to work in their

own purpose. Together, we will learn, become inspired,

and hopefully find our own path towards working in our purpose.

Joining me today is Dan Barletta, who is one of the owners and founders

of New Haven's first mobile coffee shop, the Jitterbus. If you live in New

Haven, you've probably seen the hand painted blacked out school bus around

town. The Jitter bus has been featured in the Hartford Current, yale Daily

News and News channel three something's cooking. Dan. Welcome to working

towards our purpose. How are you doing today? Good. Thanks for having me, Gina.

Yeah, I'm excited to talk to you about this. I know when I first moved

to New Haven, I remember seeing the bus around and just thinking, like, that was

such a cool idea. So I'm excited to learn more about how it happened.

So, yeah, if you want to just start by telling us a little bit about

yourself, like where you grew up and did you go to college and that sort

of thing. Sure, yeah. My name is Dan Barletta. I grew up

in West Haven, Connecticut, and I

attended Southern Connecticut State University. I

was there from 2009 on and off until

2019. College was like, a huge

just bummer to me, I guess.

I was told I had to go to college right after high school. I remember

wanting to take a year to try to think about what I want to do,

but everyone kind of told me, no, you got to go to college right away.

And it just wasn't the thing

for me. I don't know, I just didn't enjoy it. I didn't enjoy having to

go to school. Every day gave me a lot of anxiety. It wasn't that I

wasn't interested in learning, just the college setting

wasn't my favorite thing, and I did that on and

off pretty much for nine years, and it was like

a huge struggle to me. I eventually finished, I pushed through, but it was

like the biggest struggle of my life, I feel like.

Yeah, I had a similar sort of experience with college, just

feeling like you had to do it. And I remember

I was telling everybody that I wasn't going to go to college up until my

senior year when it came time to make a decision. And then I was like,

all right, I guess I'll go. Yeah, same. So what did you pick

when you went to college to study, or did you just have, like, a general

studies? Yeah, at first, I was undecided for a

long time, just kind of getting the core classes out of the way. And then

I always had an interest in psychology, so I started by

majoring in psychology, and it was all interesting,

but eventually I got to the point where I just felt like

this wasn't the career path that I was supposed to be on. And so

I ended up dropping out for a couple of years, and

during those two years of me not going to college, that's when

we pretty much started the idea for the jitter bus. So

I guess a nine year path is a little bit different than most

people. How did that look to you? Like you said, you started

the jitterbus. Did you have anything else that you were doing, like side jobs as

far as while you were going to school and taking time off? Yeah, I worked

in a bunch of cafes in New Haven. There was a couple of periods

where I was working at two at once. I was pretty much working

every day. I remember there was one year I took one day

off in July, and it was my birthday. So even though I wasn't going to

school, I was really driven to work and make money

and be able to figure things out on my own.

What led you into coffee shops? Was that just out of necessity,

or did you want to be a barista or how did you get into coffee

shops? Kind of just by chance. When I was 17,

I got my first job at Starbucks. I was still in high

school at that time, and after a month of doing that,

they fired me. They pretty much looking back on it, it's

funny because they said I wasn't cut out for the job,

and that always kind of pissed me off a little bit. But

looking back on it, I was 17. I probably was like a

lazy kid back then and just I wasn't

the right fit for them at that time. But then once I

graduated high school, I think around when I was 20, I

started applying to cafes in New Haven, and

I worked at three different cafes in New Haven, on

and off. And then my business partner Paul, who I do

the bus with, he was also a barista in different cafes in New

Haven. And he actually is the one who came up with the

idea for the bus. He brought the idea to me one day and

we kind of talked about it for a few weeks, on and off, and

eventually it just kind of all came together.

Yeah. So tell me a little bit more about the idea and where it came

from and how you got started with the idea. Sure.

So the idea came about paul

was he noticed an ice cream truck,

and he really wanted to get a coffee from it, but they obviously didn't have

coffee. So that's kind of like how the idea was born. He thought it'd

be so cool if ice cream trucks also sold coffee.

And then he told me that idea. I thought

it was interesting. And we were talking back and forth about it for a while

and then we were both kind of

overworking in cafes. Pretty much like having

a boss, all that. We knew that if we had the

opportunity to do it ourselves, that we would be able to do a good

job. So we eventually just

kept talking about it and talking about it until the point where it was all

we were talking about. And then we bought

an espresso machine online and we hooked it up

in my parents basement and started making drinks. And once

we started doing that, we were like, this is a good idea. We really wanted

to pull the trigger on it and just try to make it become a reality.

Yeah. So how did you make it into the reality? I

know in researching I read some stuff online and said that you had a

Kickstarter that helped you start the business. Can you talk to me more

about that and how that whole thing worked? Yeah. So

we quickly learned it's not cheap to convert a school bus

into a cafe. So we started a Kickstarter

project, gave out rewards for people that donated. Our

goal was 5000, and I think we

raised a little bit more than that. I think we raised around 5200.

And that was from friends, family, and even strangers that came across

the Kickstarter online thought it was a cool idea and donated to us, which was

awesome because at that time we had no following at all. We were

like just an idea still at that point. And then

every week our paychecks we threw into it. We were lucky to still be living

at home with our parents, so it was easy to kind of

throw all the money we had into it to make it become a real

thing. Yeah. So did you always have

the idea of getting a school bus or was it like kind of a food

truck idea and the school bus popped up? The name came first,

the Jitter bus. And then we looked at a couple

of different food trucks that people were selling, but they were

like in really rough shape. They were from the

1970s. We looked at this one. It had this

huge the shifter

stick, manual transmission. I'm not a mechanic at all. I

don't know anything about cars, but it was like one of those things. But it

was like huge. It was really long and it didn't go into second

gear. And we almost bought it. And I'm so glad we didn't because I feel

like we wouldn't be around anymore if we did that. But

we were on Craigslist and we found the bus we have

now relatively cheap. I think we bought it for around

3500. It only had like 130,000

miles on it, which is pretty good for a diesel engine like

that. And it was already painted black, which was

cool. It was originally like a handicap accessible school

bus. It had like a giant wheelchair ramp on it. We had to

gut all of that out of it. But yeah, we found

that in February of 2015. And then we spent all

of 2015 building out the bus and we opened

pretty much exactly one year later in February of

2016. Wow. So was it just you

and your friend Paul? How did the

partnership of you guys starting a business together look like? Was it

just like, you figuring it out as you go along? Or did you think about

write a business plan, that sort of thing? Originally it was

me, Paul, and our other friend Andrew. He has

since moved on from the business to do other things. We're still really good friends

with him, but yeah, it was originally the three of us,

and all

three of us were good at specific things. Paul was really good at because

he used to be a tattoo artist before we did this. So he did all

the design work. That's like his area of expertise. Andrew was

really good at figuring out all the licensing and things like

was like because I had been working two jobs, I was always

really good at saving my money too. So I was like the main one, throwing

in some money for it. I guess I helped fund a lot of it

and just also had a bunch of good ideas in terms

of what types of drinks we should be making and

where we should park. Originally, I thought we were going to drive around

the city, kind of like an ice cream truck in a way. But then

we learned in New Haven you have to pick a location and you can only

basically buy a license to be in that spot. And

then you can only park there. And if you want to park somewhere else, you

have to trade with other vendors. So I learned quickly

that the idea of driving around the city just wasn't going to happen because it

basically wasn't allowed. Interesting. Yeah. I bet there's

a lot of different regulations and rules that you didn't know about getting

into it. How did you first learn about that sort of thing? Was it like

talking to the town and trying to get the permits and stuff like

that? Yeah, talking to the city

and just by trial and error. Like our first day we went

out, it was a little different back then. The areas that you

could park in were kind of different than they are now. So

we parked at cross campus downtown, and that was

originally we were like, this is going to be the perfect area. We're going to

park here every day. And then on the first day, someone from the city

came and kicked us out, said, you're not allowed to vend here. So we were

quickly kind of in shock. Like, well, we've been building this

for a year and I think we actually were told that

it was okay to vend there, but they gave us the

wrong information. So we were going off this idea that

actually it wasn't going to work at all and we had to quickly

figure out, all right, well, where are we going to park now? But we found

our spot that we're in now Monday through Fridays. It's at the corner of Grove

and Hill House. We found that maybe two, three months in to

opening and we've been there ever since.

Awesome. So can you tell me a little bit more about the first year

in business and like you alluded to there's some challenges that you had to overcome

and that sort of thing? Were you still working at your

cafe jobs at the time and kind of doing it part time until

you realized it was enough to catch on or how did that transition

work? We did yeah, we worked part time at our cafe

jobs and part time on the bus and

we did that for about two years until we quit

our actual jobs to do this full time. What were some of the

things that you learned in the first year and things that you had to overcome?

I'm sure the idea had to evolve as you put it into

practice. Yeah, there was a lot.

I would say our biggest challenge was

wintertime because all of our equipment has water in it,

all of our pipes have water in it. We didn't have a garage to park

the bus and so all this stuff was exposed to the cold of the

winter. And we had read online that if you let

an espresso machine freeze, then it's basically

going to break and there's no repairing it. So we were always really nervous about

that. We were trying to figure out ways to keep it warm in

there without that happening. And there was one

winter, I believe it was our first winter, we were running a

space heater in the bus just to keep it warm overnight. Someone forgot

to plug it in and everything froze. The espresso

machine, the inside of it basically exploded. So did our

coffee brewer. So that was tough because those are our two

main pieces of equipment and they're super

expensive. Espresso machine could be anywhere between

5000 or more sometimes. So that was a huge hit

for us. But it taught

us the winter is serious. Like you got to be on top of

keeping things warm and it's something to really pay attention to

otherwise it could totally happen again. Yeah, that's something I wouldn't

even ever think about, but totally makes sense that you

winterize all kinds of equipment, but your bus you're using every day, but at

night things freeze and yeah, that seems like a big learning lesson.

So did you have to go and buy like a new espresso machine? After that.

We did, yeah. It was

one we still have it today. It's been years now that we've had

it. We found it in New York City. This guy was selling it at

that time. We only had, I think, $5,000 in our bank

account. And that's how much he was selling it for. No, I'm sorry. He was

selling the espresso machine for $5,000, and we only had

4500 in our bank account. So we were like, all right, great. What

are we going to do? And so we went down there to buy it with

only $4,500, hoping that he would just knock off

$500 for us, and thankfully he did. But we

were worried the whole ride down that it was just like we were going to

be driving there for no reason, basically, and he was going to turn us away.

But he was a cool guy and he gave us a nice deal on it.

Nice. That's awesome. I'm glad it worked out. Yeah.

So when you first started and you're out

there selling coffee, how did you get people to first know what the bus

was all about? Did you do any sort of marketing or

getting yourself out there? What did that look like? It was definitely

hard in the beginning because we didn't have as much artwork on the

bus at that time. So it was really just a black school

bus with a menu. It said the Jitter bus on it at least,

but it looked a little sketchy, I'm not going to lie. It was kind of

like, what is this thing that they're selling food out of? I don't know if

I want to walk up to it. I totally understood that it

was a weird thing to see at first, and

I would basically stand outside of it and just hand out samples of

coffee, trying to get people to come up to us, and that helped a lot.

Also, we had an Instagram and we know trying to be

active on that, to try to spread the word and word

of mouth, really, that was like the best way that people found out about us.

We had a lot of friends in New Haven, so that helped. We told

them, they told their friends, and it kind of just spread as time went

on. Yeah, I guess it is kind of a new idea that people

aren't really familiar with, so you kind of have to educate people

that it's basically a coffee shop on a bus, because just walking by

people at first wouldn't really understand that. So I guess

nowadays people know who you are, they see the bus and they

know that it's you guys. Do you do anything nowadays as far as

continuing to spread the message or do anything with

marketing or social media? Yeah, we're pretty active on social

media, mostly Instagram, a little bit of Facebook.

My fiance tells me I really need to get a

just like I haven't gotten into TikTok yet.

I feel like I'm finally too old for certain social media platforms,

and I could be wrong, I don't know, but she's always telling me we got

to get a TikTok and that it's going to help us out a lot.

Yeah, I feel you there as far as being too old to get on TikTok,

but I certainly see the value of it, I guess.

And I know tons of businesses are using it, so maybe we'll

have to dive into it one day and figure out what it's all about.

So I also wanted to ask you about the

pandemic and how you guys got through the pandemic because obviously you're

an in person business, not necessarily brick and mortar, but food truck

style business. How did you guys handle the pandemic and were you shut

down at the beginning of it? Yeah, the pandemic was tough. There was a ban

on food trucks in New Haven from I think it was

March to June of 2020. So during that time, we

were just not allowed to vend that. And also we

didn't really want to vend because it was very early on. We didn't know

how bad things were going to get. It was almost like, is it too

risky for us to even work right now? It was just so

confusing at that time. So during those months where we couldn't

vend, it was a bummer. But we were kind of like, let's at least just

take this time and make sure try to figure out what's going on before we

can open again. And so we couldn't vend, but instead

we sold bags of coffee beans and we did

delivery. We pretty much drove around New Haven every day, dropping off

bags of beans to people that wanted to buy them, like at their

house or their apartment, and we would do

online payments. So it was no contact. And

it wasn't as good as just being open as normal, but it

helped get us through time where we couldn't vend at all.

It allowed us to still be able to pay ourselves, which was huge because at

first I was worried, how are we going to pay our bills,

our rent, all that? But we were lucky to be able to figure it out,

to make just enough to stay afloat. And then once things

opened in June, we were out there again

vending, but there was a lot less people around. There was

no students around because everything was remote. And the people

that were walking around, a lot of them, they

probably didn't really want to stop because they weren't ready

for things being open like that. And

it was tough. But looking back on it,

going through it, it was really scary and I wasn't sure what was going to

happen. But looking back on it, I'm pretty proud about how

we pulled through it and came out stronger in the

end. Yeah, that's awesome. I mean, you completely kind

of changed your business model to react to what was

happening in real time. And I think a lot of businesses didn't really do that

or think about that. Did you guys sit down and brainstorm ideas of,

hey, what can we do during this time? Because I think that's a really

good idea of you guys delivering beans to people's doors. Yeah, definitely.

And before we shut down, we had like a

ton of milk, like whole milk, skim milk, soy, almond,

oat, and it was sitting in our refrigerator and it was all going to go

bad. So we sold all that stuff off too. We had some

merch that we sold at discounted prices.

We pretty much sold off everything that we had to sell. And it worked.

I mean, we pulled through and it was such just a

weird time not knowing what was going to happen. It's still a little weird,

but nowhere near as weird as it was. But

it was tough in the beginning. Yeah. And how long did it take for people

to come back to the capacity at which they did before the

Pandemic? I mean, it must have been like months and months of people slowly starting

to come back. Yeah, I would say that whole summer was pretty

slow. And then in the fall, the

students didn't come back. So that was another huge hit

because we get a lot of our business from students and

with them not being there, it's so

much slower without the even the summers now are really

slow, but we expect that in the summertime. But for the

fall to come and then no students were around. It was kind of like it

was daunting. It was like, this is not really working right now. But

eventually the students came back and when they did,

it was like everything exploded. We were doing

so much more in sales than before the Pandemic.

So once things really opened up, students came back to school.

We noticed like a huge increase in business which was such a relief

because we had gone months or at least a year of just

wondering are we going to bounce back from this and get back

to what we were doing before? The.

Know that's I think also an interesting point you bring up about New Haven is

like it's so student based and SummerTimes are lighter for a lot

of businesses. Do you guys kind of plan for that? Do you have

summer hours or how do you deal with the changes of

students being here and not students being here? Sometimes

we take on more events. We usually do a couple of weddings in the

summertime. There's like other work events

that businesses will hire us for to come and serve

at their office or whatever the place is to serve the

staff. That helps out a lot. We also take the summertime, though, as

like it's slower, but it's kind of like a little bit of

a break for us because when the students are here, there are days

we have a line from the minute we open till we close

and it's great. It's good to

be doing so well, but in the summertime when it's

slower, it really is like a break for us too. Right now on the bus,

it's me and Paul and we'll close a little

bit early on some days when it's slow or we'll take a few days off

and go somewhere. So it's like a good balance, I would say.

Yeah. And then you guys also do the farmers market in Worcester Square

on Saturdays. How's that for you guys, business

wise? Because I noticed there's always like a line, it seems, from opening to close.

There's always a huge line there too. Yeah, the farmers market. The

Worcester Square farmers market is huge for us. It's

our absolute busiest day of the week, every week for the entire

year. Even in the wintertime when it's cold, we always have a huge

line out there. And we started doing the farmers

market maybe a year into being open and it's

just been so great. We love City Seed and that market has

really helped us spread the word about us,

because with students where we park at our normal spot, a lot of

the know they're great, but eventually they graduate and they leave and we never see

them again. But when we're at the market, we're really showcasing

who we are and what we sell to the community of New Haven, the

people that live there, especially all the people that live in Worcester Square. So it's

nice to be able to offer what we have to

people who live in New Haven as well. Yeah, definitely.

It's definitely like a whole different target market than college

students. How did you first get into farmers market? Because I know

City Seed is a little bit restrictive at that farmers market because it's such a

big one and there's certain requirements you have to meet. Was that a challenge

to get into the market? Not really. I mean, at

first we found out about the farmers market and we're like, well, this is

cool, we should totally park here. And we found out you have to

apply and then wait for them to approve it.

And we were kind of like, I don't want to do all that. So

we'll park a little bit down the street and people will walk

over to us. And we were doing that for a little bit and then

probably wasn't the best way to go about it, but we had

that mindset where it's like, we're a mobile cafe, no one's going to stop us

from parking a little bit down the street. We'll just do that. But then eventually

someone from Citizen came over and at first I thought they were going to be

kind of mad, like, what are you guys doing? But they were like, this is

great. You guys should really apply, be a part of the market. We did,

and we've been doing it ever since, which is about

seven years now. Wow, so you bring up seven

years. You guys have been a cafe bus for the past seven

years? Yes, we opened in

February of 2016. Wow, that's certainly a long

time to be in business. Did you ever think at the original

idea that you guys be in business for this long?

Not really, no.

I didn't think I would do it full time. I thought it would always be

a part time kind of thing. I always thought that I'd have to go and

find a job somewhere else, do that full time, and this kind of would

be a secondary thing. That was how it originally felt. But then

once we started doing this full time and it just started to

grow and grow, it became more apparent that we

enjoyed doing this. It's tough, it's hard, but we love working

for ourselves and putting out our own product, and it makes it

worth it. At the end of the day, for us.

When you did make that transition to be full time, did it

feel like, risky or scary or did it all make sense

and you're like, yeah, if we do this more time, we'll be able to cover

ourselves, no problem. I imagine it was somewhat of a risk, right?

It was definitely a risk. It was definitely scary because my

actual job, I thought of it as a safety net. I

thought if something happens at the bus, it's not working out, at

least I have my job to fall back onto. So once I left

that, it was kind of like, all right, I'm all in now. Everything has to

work. There's no going back. Right. And was that

job like a cafe job that you had, or was it. A

I worked I was working at Maison Matisse, downtown New

Haven, which was a really cool cafe.

It was actually sad when I quit that place because I had been there

for, I think, about three years, and the staff was always very cool.

It was an enjoyable place to work, so it was tough

to lose that safety net. But it was also

definitely necessary for me to grow the

business to what it is today. It would have been a lot harder

to do if I was still working part time.

Yeah, it's definitely something I've noticed, like trying to do two things at

once or be in two places at once. You can only devote so much energy

to one thing. Exactly. So I think when you kind of go all in on

something, it even gives you more of a pressure

to force it to be successful because it's the only thing that you have.

So do you guys have any plans, like future plans, as

far as expanding or maybe getting a physical location

one day? Or is the bus the way it is? How

you envision it? We have plans to

open a storefront, brick and mortar location. It's currently in the

works. We're trying to figure out all the logistics behind that.

But yeah, I think that's our plan to get a storefront. Still

do the bus, but have like a home base where we could

basically a storefront that'll allow us to do more than what we're doing now because

right now the bus, we park it we used to park it in

Paul's backyard. He moved out of there. So now it's parked in my

driveway. And it's nice having it at my

house, but it's tough because I have to store

everything at my house and I live in New Haven,

but it's kind of far from our location, so we have to drive in and

out every day. But yeah, we're trying to get a storefront location that'll

basically work as a home base and

it's going to be a lot of work, but we're totally up for it.

Nice, that's awesome. So you'll have a coffee shop and then also the

school bus to work out of. So yeah, I'm sure

that brings up a whole new list of things that you've never

done before or have to learn how to do. What's that been like as far

as how to go about getting a storefront and leasing a

place? Have you learned from anybody? Have you gotten help from anybody

as far as how to go about that? Yeah, so

we found help with this guy. His name is Mark

Hales. They basically help

small businesses start up in New Haven. They help them

find ways for funding and just they have a

bunch of people, they have someone who's good at accounting, you could talk to

them. They have someone else that they're good at team

building, so you could talk to them about how to hire the staff and keep

them happy. And it's been such a huge help to

us. And anyone starting a business in New Haven, I feel

like they should totally use them because there's no way to know everything.

And it's just great to have an

organization that helps make all this make

sense because at first it doesn't make sense. It's really daunting. And

I could totally see why someone would have the idea for a

business. They start to get into it and then they realize this is so much

confusing work. I don't think I'm going to pull the trigger on this anymore. I

think I'm just going to work my safe nine to five job

and just be happy with that. So it's

totally important to ask questions and find help in this stuff,

for sure. Yeah, that's definitely some good

advice. And something that I've always struggled with is asking for help

and even knowing where to go to ask for help.

But I've noticed that networking and meeting people is, for me, the best

thing to just get information from people who have done things

similar before. How did you go about finding this guy? You said his

name is Mark Hale? Mark Hales. Yeah. Mark Hales. They're

like a consulting business that you're kind of hiring on or how does it

work? We found him through we

were trying to get a business loan from our bank and

they referred us to this guy. They said he's huge help

and he'll be able to answer basically any question you have, which

he has been able to do that. So let's see. I

have it here. It's the SBDC. I forget what that

acronym stands for. But oh, Small Business Development Center. There we

go. Yeah, you got they're

just they're really great. They've helped us out so much.

Nice. That's awesome. I'm glad that they're helping. You

mean, what does it even look like for real estate in New Haven? I mean,

there's so much new construction going up. I know even just in Worcester Square,

there's tons of new brand new retail space.

I imagine that's way different than the older stuff that's been around

and locations probably affect the

price of things. Do you guys have any idea where you want to be

or where it's possible to be? Definitely

downtown area. I think we're leaning towards Wisher Square area where

the farmers market is. That's just such a good spot. There's some

coffee spots down there, but there's not very many downtown. There's like one on

every block, so it'd be nice to be somewhere where there's a little

bit less coffee, which is hard to do. I mean, we're in New Haven, and

there's so many cafes in New Haven. But I think

worcestershire square area. We actually looked in one of

those huge condo buildings that they put up

recently. We looked there, they had a retail

space available, but it was like the price they wanted

for rent. It was too crazy for us. There was no way we were going

to comfortably sign that at lease and pay it every month. So we

passed on that. We looked at a couple of other places. It's

definitely high, the rent is high, that's for sure. But

I think just the cost of doing this,

it's not easy. It's not going to be cheap, but it's

doable. And you got to have the confidence. There's people

doing it now, they're making it work. And I feel like that we'll be able

to as well. Yeah, I think that's a good attitude to go

into it. I think it's really easy to just get overwhelmed by things.

And I know for my business, I've always tried to keep overhead

at zero just because it seems less risky that way, because

it's like, oh, well, I don't have anything into it, so it's just my

time sort of thing and maybe a little bit here and there. But I think

that also kind of limits you to where you can go and what you can

do. Definitely. So, yeah, that's I think a good

perspective to have is just other people are doing it so we can

figure it out too. Right, so you said something before.

Are you the finance guy for Jitterbus? Are you the one

kind of like crunching numbers and stuff? Yeah. So

what's the perspective of that on the business? I imagine

seeing actual numbers and projections and stuff, it could go either way,

give you confidence that you guys can do this or you can look at

those numbers and be like, wow, it's a lot of money, and be daunted

by it. Yeah. It's funny because

I've never been a math guy at all. This kind

of just fell into my lap as not my responsibility,

but it's like I'm good at figuring this stuff out for the

business and it's been great,

honestly, because the numbers have been very positive. So

we've increased our revenue every year since

we've opened. So just seeing that graph go up, it

makes it a lot easier to work with. If it was the other way around,

I would probably be losing it and freaking out. But

everything's been good, so it makes it easy to work with that

stuff. Yeah, definitely. That's always a good thing

when the graphs trend upwards. Yeah. So, yeah, I

did want to ask you too about do you guys have other employees that

you hire for working on the bus or is it just. The

two of you right now? Just the two of us. I think once we

eventually get this cafe space going, that's when we'll have to hire people

for sure. And

it's weird to think we're going to be somebody's bosses because we don't think of

ourselves that way, but it's definitely like a whole mindset we

got to get into. We got to be able to manage people. We want to

create an enjoyable place to work because we worked at

places that we have enjoyed and we worked at places that we didn't enjoy

and it's easy to see

what's the word I'm looking for? The company culture.

Yeah, exactly. There have been places I worked where just

the management was just so bad and no one wanted to be there and it

was so obvious. And once it's like that, the product really suffers

because nobody cares. And the places I've worked where it was

enjoyable and everyone was getting along, the product was way

better, if that goes without saying. But it seems like a

thing that some places just don't understand. They

don't treat their staff right and they expect everything to work well anyway,

and I don't understand that, but that's

definitely not the type of place we're trying to be. We definitely

want to make a place that's enjoyable to work and people

want to come in and work with us and that's going to be

like a huge thing for us, just making

sure everyone's happy at the end of the day, it is work. You got

to show up and all that, but we want it to be a place that

you want to come to. Yeah, that's a

good point. I've got a couple more questions for you. As we're coming to the

end of our time, I did want to ask you about

the word success, and what does success mean to you? Because I think

it can mean many different things for many different people. But just curious to

see what it means to you. Success to me.

For me, success was I was talking about this a little bit

earlier with college. I just didn't enjoy it, didn't have a

good time. And I felt at that time that I was

setting myself up for failure and I was just

really worried about the future. I didn't know what I wanted to do. I wasn't

sure what I was going to amount to or

anything like that. And I really found my success

with the bus by. And it's not about

making money to me. To me, it's about being happy with what you're

doing and building the bus, getting it up and running and

then seeing it grow. To me, that's my

success. Being from a place where I felt

really just I felt like I wasn't

going anywhere and it was sad. I really struggled with

it. And then we built the bus, got it up and running,

and I saw how well it was doing and how it

was making people happy, which was making me happy, and

just being able to figure something out on my own and

enjoy what I do for work. That was basically how I

felt like I was becoming successful. And

it pulled me out of that weird funk that I was in where I felt

like, I don't like going to college, and because of that, I'm not

going to amount to anything. And it showed me that

you can do other things. You don't need to go to college. I

finished college, but Paul, my partner, didn't go to college, and

we worked the same job and we're just as happy.

And it's definitely

been an experience being able to build something

and have it work and have people enjoy

it. To me, that's my success, I would say, yeah.

No, I think you put that well and articulated that well. I think it

seems like it's given you a purpose, like a greater purpose purpose, for

sure. Whereas I think, at least in my experience,

going to college, getting the job you're supposed to, that was the thing that was

missing for me. I wasn't connected to

the job at all. I was just doing it and eventually

questioning, why am I doing this? I don't like doing this, why am I here?

It's draining to think to do that for the next 30, 40 years,

something that you don't really enjoy. Everyone has

to work and make money and all that.

And I'm not one of those people that think there are bad jobs. I

think if you're working and you have a job, it is what it

is. But I also think that you really

should be doing something you enjoy, and I feel like a lot of people kind

of miss out on that, and it's tough, but you really got to take

risks in order to be happy with what you do.

I agree. Well said. So thanks for joining

me on this podcast. I really appreciate your time. If people want to

find out more about you, where can they do that? We have a website

right now, thejitterbus.com it's still in the works. You could go

there. There's not much there right now, but we're working on it. Also,

Instagram, our Instagram handle is Jitterbus Coffee,

and you can find us on Facebook as well. Those are the two main

places to find us. All right, well, thanks so much, Dan,

and look forward to what the Jitterbus has in the future and

possibly a future physical location. Awesome. Thanks, Gina. Thanks,

Dan. Thanks for tuning in and listening to Working

towards our purpose. If you like this episode, please share it

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