I initially approached Anthony Ragler for an interview after he had interviewed for a Board position for the guild. He made some compelling points during his board interview about current barista culture, gentrification and inclusivity in our industry. I wanted to know more I reached out to him for an interview. In a break for our normal interview, I chose the long form with Anthony. (Why)
My key takeaway: Anthony gives me a lot of hope that our industry is going to change for the better. I see him being one of the people to lead that change.
This interview has been edited from the original for brevity and content.
Hylan Joseph: What made you decide to go with Black and White roasters?
Anthony Ragler: I wanted to work with Black and White as the roaster. I had a lot of interactions with them that felt very individualized in a way that happens with businesses that are smaller than the roasting icons of the game. It was also clear that they valued the people that they met. And then around the time that I decided to compete, they were some of the most gracious and genuine people that I had ever come across. That was when I really got to work with them personally. And it was the first time that I got to see what a working relationship could be with a group of people that are invested in seeing you succeed in and outside of their wheelhouse. I said, I felt from that point if an opportunity arises that I get to work with you guys, I’d love to come down because I see how you interact with people and how you interact with the community. Everyone is excited to be in partnership with you in addition to being extremely talented. Since I’ve begun working with them, I’ve only increased in my belief in that. This is one of the few places I have this strong of an endorsement for.
Hylan Joseph: Speaking to what you are calling icons versus small roasters. I am a big fan of a local company called Red Bay that did a lot for the local community in hiring.
Anthony Ragler: Red Bay is fantastic, I love them.
HJ: As our industry moves forward, looking at roasters, do you think that the Black and White model and the Red Bay model of the smaller batch roasters, is going to trump the icon roasters?
Anthony Ragler: I do not think that those are mutually exclusive. I think the bottleneck for larger companies is when you must start expanding, you have less of a pulse of everyone that you impact. There needs to be a lot more careful vetting and sorting of the people that are responsible for carrying along the vision. There can be great people at the top and then they fall off because the game of telephone, of communicating a vision, does not always communicate to the same exact language. If you ever played the game telephone as a six-year-old kid and at summer camp. You start a message on one side, and it is something completely different by the time you get to the end. Because things get lost in translation. It is possible for that same feel, impact, and interaction to happen when you grow as long as who you are growing with also are just as invested into that message. I think that that is a two-way street. I think it is definitely bringing in and vetting the right people, but it’s also once you get the right people, taking care of them accordingly so that they are just as enthusiastic about what you are trying to do as you, the business owner, are.
HJ: I want to speak to your career trajectory, then I want to talk about the comment you made during the board interview about gentrification. You started off as a barista and moved yourself into a service position. What made you decide to do that? What was your trajectory for that?
Anthony Ragler: Okay, so the trajectory was I got in as a barista and had no intention of working in coffee as my career.
HJ: No one does. I have never met one person; we make this joke. If you meet somebody who said they decided to work in coffee as a career, find them and send their picture to everyone because they are a rare as a pink unicorn.
Anthony Ragler: Or just charge them with perjury because they are lying. I promise you they are lying.
HJ: You’re probably right.
Anthony Ragler: I did not plan on it. To be honest with you, growing up in Brooklyn, cafés are not the sign of community that everyone thinks that it is. Everyone that believes in Brooklyn, That a new cafés are a sign of community. When a café shows up in Brooklyn, or anywhere that’s not downtown Manhattan or some extremely rich neighborhood, it is a sign that the neighborhood is being gentrified and the people that are native to that place are being priced out.
I went to high school at Brooklyn Tech. When I was going to school there were the four years that the Barclays Center was being built. The year after I graduated was the first year that the graduating class did their graduation in the Barclays because it was finally open. So in that four-year time span of passing that construction site every day; I watched all of the neighborhood shops, homes, apartment buildings and all those things get completely wiped out for larger chains, for cafés, for stadiums for shopping centers, things of that nature.
I’ve never really looked at cafés as anything other than the signal that, okay, you are being priced out. During the time in which I started working in this, I wasn’t invested emotionally thinking that this is going to be somewhere that I’d stay. But as I became more visible there, I watched the clientele change. More people of color from the neighborhood started coming in. More people felt comfortable that usually would just see the shop and just walk past it. When they had come in, conversations would start about, oh, I didn’t know this was here. Or those conversations of, I knew this was here, but I didn’t feel like I was welcomed in kind of thing. That made me feel a bit more of, not necessarily a responsibility, but I felt like I could find some way to fulfill what I consider my purpose to be while still working in coffee. And that made me go, okay, I can work on building community and creating spaces for people to feel comfortable and be themselves while still doing that in coffee, because it already has a set template of the idea that this is a place you come for fellowship, this is a place you come to unwind, enjoy coffee and talk to people, things of that nature. So that made me decide that I’d stay if I could figure out the right route. And in that time span I started noticing how hard it is to get past the entry-level idea of you go from one shop where you are a barista and maybe a manager, to another shop and be a barista etc. etc. And that role just continues of, you are only allowed to be a barista and they are not going to let you get into roasting or tech or green buying or sales or any of that stuff. So when I finally was offered the opportunity to move into managing a production department and managing the wholesale side of a company, I not only looked at that and said, okay, this is my chance for me to accelerate, but this is also my chance to learn the knowledge that will allow other people that look like me and come from the places I come from to have that opportunity. Because I can pass on that knowledge. Because as it is currently set, every bit of progression in this industry is apprentice or hand chosen. Someone must pick you to move you up as opposed to you just getting the job. There is no tenure, okay cool, you’ve been here this long, now you get to learn these things. Someone has like you enough to decide they want to see you elevate. I would like to change that and make it so that it’s more of a meritocracy or there’s more opportunities for people can get the information that’s being withheld from them so that they can make the decisions on where they want to go. But that is ultimately the passion that I found for the industry itself. Being able to keep widening the horizons and opening possibilities for people in general based on what they are capable of and not who they know or who decided they like them already.
HJ: Right. What’s funny about coffee is, it’s such a massive industry and it’s worldwide yet it still feels like a small town community because you know everybody. And it’s funny how you still see a lot of the negative aspects that you also see in a lot of small town communities. The favoritism, the gatekeeping. This industry can be so progressive, but at the same time, it still hasn’t moved along in certain areas.
Anthony Ragler: Yeah. I think that that has a part to do with the fact that this is the only industry that tries to be luxury for the everyday person at the same exact time. We want to talk about the product and the industry and the things that we do in a way that gives us the respect like wine sommeliers get or the respect that craft beer gets. But also try to present it in a way where it’s like, hey, it’s for everybody. How do you make it both without alienating people is the first thing? Because we do that, we kind of keep putting the same style of people in place because people want the image of this industry to look a certain way and be able to promote it to specific places and that just further alienates anyone that doesn’t look like them. Or anyone that doesn’t have the same frame of reference. And that’s why you say this industry seem so massive but it’s so small. The reason you see the same people at the industry events is because they are the only ones allowed to go. You’re not sending those tenured baristas who’ve been behind the counter and want some career advancement to these. They have to find a way to fund themselves and pay for themselves to go because their companies won’t send them. But their company will do posse trips to competitions and things of that nature and still not bring those people. So there are so many people that have the talent and the ability and the desire and don’t even really get to see that all of these other possibilities can exist. And that is kind of the problem.
HJ: I agree with you. I have two things. I’ve been around coffee for so long I have watched the different waves come. I was around before Starbucks was popular and when there wasn’t a Starbucks on every street corner. And it was like, my first training, getting into a coffee shop to train on an espresso bar was an act of God at 22 years old. And I wanted to do it. And when I do it, this old dude treated me like a complete asshole the entire time until I made the perfect shot of espresso. It’s funny because, that has carried on to a point. It’s interesting you bring about the luxury item and the basic item. When third wave first came out in 2005, 2006, it was considered a little controversial because it was taking coffee to a level that no one had ever seen before. What the people that kind of brought their way forward was they basically took wine… You can only go a few ways with coffee. You can serve it at Dunkin’ Donuts or you can serve it at mom-and-pops or you can do Starbucks. But I don’t think anybody really at that point in time until, until those guys came around and said, let’s turn this into flavor, let’s turn this into… This is not a cup of black coffee that you get first thing in the morning, this is a cup of black coffee that you drink with fish. This is a cup of black coffee that you drink with a dessert. And it’s funny… I was actually one of these people that was really detracting it. Thought it was really stupid because I thought there was too much fluff to it. It’s like we are all buying the same coffee, we’re just selling a better brand. So it was interesting how many people like me, older people, turn over to support it because they really did take the experience of coffee and create something with it. But at the same time, they’d carry everybody with them. I completely regret detracting on the initial third wave movement.
Anthony Ragler: Right.
HJ: They created a more insular experience. It’s like even now I go into coffee shops in California and it’s like, I honestly think I am not cool enough to be in here. I have an issue with that because part of what our community is being inclusive to the community.
Anthony Ragler: Right. Now here’s the thing with that. And it’s interesting that you bring it up in that nature because I would say there is a guard of people, I think you are putting timestamps to it, I’m not necessarily sure if I have enough knowledge of the industry to speak on it in timestamps, but I can say there is a sector of the industry that, to the outside world, is presenting as coffee is Folgers, Dunkin’ Donuts etc. etc. and it’s for everyone. But that’s why it’s not valuable. And then there is a sector of the community that coffee is only specialty and geisha etc. etc. and that’s why it’s not approachable. And there is a middle ground in which these two worlds can exist where the product is given the respect and the acclaim that it deserves because of all the hard work and the hands that are required to get it to the point that it is. But not so much so in a way that it alienates people from feeling like they are cool enough or smart enough or sophisticated enough to embrace it. And that’s just what’s happening to the consumers. Inside the industry, like for example, you just brought up the whole I had someone that was a complete asshole to me until I knew how to make a perfect shot of espresso. And I’m speaking from the place of knowing people that have been making these fantastic shots of espresso for 7+ years that can’t get a job anywhere other than being a barista because no one will give them that opportunity. Like I can point to people who are like, I came to this place to be a roaster, not even the head roaster, but I just want to roast for this place. And they passed me up for somebody that was out on the street because they were more cool with them. And that’s the experience that I’ve watched happen as a black person, that I’ve watched happen to other black people and people of color and other people who just don’t fit under the same guise of whoever is picking who gets to move on forward. So ultimately, outside the industry there’s already enough alienation or devaluing, and then inside the industry whether you are liked or not is determined on whether you have value or whether you are approachable because when you make the perfect shot of espresso and you look like the person that they want to see represent coffee, it’s, hey, as a matter fact, you should be our director of education, you should be our salesperson, you should be our roaster etc. etc. And when you’re not that person, it’s like, hey, you make great cup of coffee, continue doing what you are doing. And that’s the change that needs to happen because that’s the part that is making it so difficult to be able to branch out and have more people actually affect this industry.
HJ: I think it’s changing. Let me try this again, I hope it’s changing. I see inroads to it but it’s not changing fast enough. And I don’t know how to make it change fast enough. It’s like… You bring up the tech. Let’s move on to the coffee tech aspect of what we do. As you bring up the tech aspect of what we do is, you really have to hire somebody who’s got some experience to do it, but it’s like, but first, the person has got to walk through the door. My difficulty is getting people to walk to the door and say, I want to do this. I had a very good friend of mine who wanted to be a tech. And for years she wouldn’t do it because she was afraid… And I don’t know if the term is gatekeeping, but she was afraid they would tell her no. I have a daughter and my comment to my daughter would have been, why didn’t you just ask? Why didn’t you just say, hey, I want to do this? And she says, finally, I did, I just asked and they were like, come on in. But what we need to do on our end is create an environment where you are not afraid to ask. And I think to some point, particularly in the tech industry, we’ve created this environment… And I don’t know if it’s on purpose, but we don’t create an environment where it’s inclusive. And if you show up at the door we are just going to help you.
Anthony Ragler: Techs are very insulated when you think about it. When you aren’t a company that has your own tech program in-house, techs to you are the person you call when something is breaking, they need to come fix a thing. There’s really not much conversation there. They kind of just come in, do their thing, it disrupt your day and then they go when you are fixed and then they are expensive to pay for. Like there is no real connection for a barista at a café, like a small café, to interact with a technician. That doesn’t really correlate.
HJ: Don’t you think there should be?
Anthony Ragler: No, I absolutely think there should be. But I also think that when you’re talking about something like these cafés where there are a lot of people that have an experience very similar to you where I was treated like trash until I learned how to make the perfect shot of espresso. That is now their template of what they expect elevating in the industry to look like. I don’t think these people are even going to be nice to me until I show that I have some type of worth. So what we need to do, not only in creating a space within our own realms to make it more welcoming for people to come in and ask just off of faith, or off of having a desire, but also, kind of changing the guard in these other spaces where the status quo for people isn’t, hey, I had terrible leadership and ownership up until I got to this one specific place that treated me right. I think people have this idea that you have to pay your dues to earn your spot. And it’s almost like pledging a fraternity or a sorority where it’s like, I got hit and I got hazed so therefore you should get hit and you should get hazed. It’s passing on a cycle of something that’s ultimately unnecessary.
HJ: It is a cycle. You see it a lot. It’s the, I had to earn my dues, so because I had to earn my dues you have to earn your dues. And the problem is, it’s a perpetuated cycle and it’s a very male cycle. At some point in time, men have to go, that’s not how it’s going to work. It’s like you want to be welcome, you want to learn this, I’m going to show you. And when we first started the guild, we had a lot of people tell us, no, they weren’t interested. Some of the arguments was that, we are going to take their business away. Some of the arguments were that, it’s dangerous training techs. It’s like, listen you guys, give it a shot. Sit down and see what we’re doing and then move forward. And a lot of the initial detractors are actually supporters now and back us up. We’re not trying to take your business away from you, we’re trying to actually make it so you have a pool of trained techs that are out there. I still run into people fighting it. And it’s interesting. Next question. What made you decide to get into the service aspect of the business after being a roaster?
Anthony Ragler: I’m all over the place. I do a little bit of all of the things. I prefer to be a very hybrid kind of person. I am good at, okay, tell me my role and I’ll play that role. Like if we are playing basketball and you need me to be a spot up shooter and I just stand over there in the corner and shoot when the ball comes to me, boom, I can do that. But I am much more comfortable in a space where I can interact with everyone. I don’t just do tech, I don’t just do sales, I don’t just roast. And because I’m able to do a little bit of each of those roles, I get to understand the priorities of each of these roles. And what that allows me to do is ultimately be a good translator across the board. Like, hey, this is what this space needs, this is what this space needs. This is where we can meet in the middle on that. And just continue to do that. Because ultimately my main goal is always rooted in communication and rooted in seeing everyone be successful. So I love the tech side, but it’s important to know the tech side to know how to make sure a café manager can best run their business so that tech emergencies aren’t life or death. So that tech emergencies aren’t the crux of someone losing their job. Or they catch things before it completely blows up in their face. And sure, that may change the framework of how business works, but it definitely makes a tech work life balance a lot easier when they are not wrestling with a jammed up diffusion screw because someone didn’t know how to take care of their machine. Just those little things that lighten the load for everyone is kind of what I care about.
HJ: So when you decided to move into that area, where did you go for your training? Who trained you? Did you have a mentor or did you soak it all up yourself?
Anthony Ragler: I got hired ultimately with no real tech experience when I got the Counter Culture job. I had kind of done a little bit of everything else. I did wholesale, I did production, I did roasting, I did sales. And when I rereached out to Counter Culture it was like, you’ve got to learn these things, but we’ll bring you in. Now in fairness, I was in one of the most concentrated areas of their company, being in New York City, so it was not really a training as much as it was a trial by fire. A lot of the things that happened I learned being in the middle of someone’s café with no idea how to fix this sitting on the phone with a manufacturer. And that is very scary and it wasn’t necessarily the best fit for me at the moment. It’s probably not the best fit for everyone, but there are some people that learn better that way. I think the thing is, we’ve got to have more avenues of how to learn so that those that learn better that way can learn that way and those that need a little bit more of a guided program or need more confidence before they step out onto the field, can actually do that and safely learn it.
HJ: Let’s go back to the gentrification. Let’s talk about the experience when that center happened. You started working there while the center was being built, right?
Anthony Ragler: No, I started working there after. You talking about the Barclays Center? I was going to high school when the Barclays Center was being built. I was passing it every day.
HJ: You had talked about working in a café that had come into the neighborhood. So let’s talk about your experience with that. Because you made some interesting points about watching the neighborhood change over a period of time.
Anthony Ragler: Yes. What in particular would you like to know?
HJ: Just go through it because it was interesting that no one has ever discussed that at that level. I was in a café in Santa Cruz and I started working there a week after the earthquake. The place was decimated. So I saw everything change over a period of four years to it became, like you said, not went from mom-and-pop shops to big boxes. But you were like the neighborhood changed, the culture changed. What was that experience like?
Anthony Ragler: At first the café experience was anyone that had already had a bit of an understanding of what specialty coffee looked like. Not to say that I was working as one of the pinnacles of specialty coffee, but just the idea of specialty coffee showing up in a neighborhood, those that had experienced it before and were willing to pay specialty prices for coffee would interact with it. And when you don’t see anyone that looks like you inside the café, whether it be a patron or an employee, it just doesn’t seem like something appealing. You’re like, that doesn’t seem like it’s for me. I don’t even know what’s going on in there. And the reason that that was so jarring at that time for me was I knew that neighborhood and I knew that area and knew there were a lot higher of a percentage of people that were native of that place than those that were actually showing up into the café. And it wasn’t until I started being there all day every day as a manager that I started to watch that shift slowly but surely happen. And then people just see you and they’re like, hey, what are you doing here? Hey, what’s this thing going on? And people feel a bit more comfortable to ask the questions and to find out the specifics around what’s going on there, similar to how we were talking about earlier about being able to make it more approachable for people to want to divulge into tech or roasting or things of that nature. You have to put things in place that makes it more approachable and makes it seems like less of a daunting task to ask questions about a thing you don’t know.
HJ: Right. You’ve been in coffee seven years now, is that right?
Anthony Ragler: Yeah.
HJ: As a whole, where do you see the coffee industry going in the next 5 to 10 years? Based on your experience.
Anthony Ragler: Based on my experience I will say that I do see a lot of great people here. I see a lot of people that are more comfortable with challenging the status quo, with actually shaking things up and going, hey, this is how it’s been done before, but this isn’t working for these some odd reasons. And the blessing in that is there are going to be a lot less cases of the same problems happening over and over again because people are being more empowered to speak up and call it out and actually face it head on. But we have to be adaptable and malleable to whatever the new section of problems are going to be. Because ultimately we can solve one thing, but if you solve one thing… It’s like working on a machine. If you solve one part of a machine but while you were doing that you break another part, you now have another part to fix. So you have to be able to make the repairs and make the adjustments while still being conscious of the fact that there is a whole other section of this machine going. So we can’t solve just how to open the door for technicians without opening the door for roasters and for educators and for importers and green buyers etc. etc. We can’t solve one without solving all of them. So I think that as this empowerment is pushed forth into the places with people that have that experience of those specific working environments bringing more of them to the table together to go, hey, let’s develop some new systems. Let’s put a new standard in place so that all of the places that we aren’t currently working at also follow suit because they are being shown this is the way that it needs to be done. Because a lot of times the reason that we have the same culture and history of people getting the responses they’ve gotten in the industry is we were just taught that’s how it’s done. This is how I paid my dues, this is how you pay your dues. So we show people, paying dues isn’t further harming people. Paying dues is taking classes and studying and being able to showcase that you can actually understand what’s happening and researching new information and things of that nature. That becomes the status quo. So we’ve got to start pushing for things like that, in my opinion.
HJ: What do you think your key takeaways are to date? What have you learned right now? And then as a bookend on that one, what advice would you give somebody who was just coming into the industry and said, coffee looks interesting, I think I want to do it as a job?
Anthony Ragler: I think the biggest thing that I’ve learned is that I have one perspective and there are many out there. Not to state that I think any of them hold any more or less value, but ultimately, I’m going to hear other sides to the experiences in this industry. And they are all things that I can learn from and adapt to to be better for people in general. Like just across the board. And that is something that I kind of what I want everyone to take across. And then for a person that is interested in coffee and wants to make a career out of it, I think the first thing at this current state is, it is not entry-level lucrative, so patience is a virtue. But at the same time, it becomes more fruitful just like anything else out there in the world when you have a purpose. And the purpose doesn’t have to be the same as anyone else’s, but as long as you learn what your purpose is and how you want to interact or impact the space, you can be pointed in the direction of the people and places that will help you be able to do that. Just be sure about what you want and be patient.
HJ: The patience thing. It took me 10 years to get anywhere in coffee. So I would agree with you on that. It was never my intention to be in coffee, but I managed and then when you’re managing , but the job is addictive because it’s a very social job. But there is that one day when you open your wallet and you are blowing dust out of it because you can’t pay your bills. And you’re like, I love the job, I really do, but I’m not going anywhere.
Anthony Ragler:It’s always a real shocking feeling when you look down and you’re broke and you’re like, how am I broke, I’ve been at work all week?
HJ: Exactly. And everybody local thinks you’re the greatest person in town. It pushes you for so long and then you’re like, well, I’m married now or I want to get married and I want to have kids. And coffee has lost so many great people because of that. Because it’s such a journeyman operation and the whole journeyman idea is so antiquated that it’s like baristas bring you… A good barista brings you so much value to your café in terms of creating repeat customers. You can’t even qualify how much value that is. People go to cafés for their barista. I remember as a barista, and I’m sure you did, where it’s like, I want Anthony to make my cappuccino. And I had that all the time. And that goodwill, having that reputation spreads. And in my opinion baristas need to be paid way better in a shop because they are the ones generating really, truly, generating the value for the business.
Anthony Ragler: Right, that kind of points out the fact that the people are bringing the value and not the quote unquote product. Yes, you get those that understand what’s going on with coffee and are willing to pay the prices that we set in place, but there are a lot of people that, because they have not yet found the value in the product in the same way, they don’t see why they need to get it from this place as opposed to a commodity place. So there is a lot of work that needs to be done in increasing the perception of the value across the chain. Yes, you can do that by presenting us closer to what wine looks like and making it more of a specialty niche experience, but, are we doing that at the risk of the volume of people we can be bringing it? I’m really anxious putting a finger on what that middleground looks like of bringing high quality that people will value, but also in a way that more people will want to give it that value.
HJ: I think people lose perspective. When I used to train baristas, I used to show them a cup and I used to explain to them that when somebody buys this cup, they are not buying a cup of coffee. They are buying your smile, they are buying fresh food, they’re buying a clean café, they are buying good music, they are buying an experience, they are buying a better day for themselves. When you serve that cup, don’t think you’re just serving a cup of coffee because maybe 20% of them are buying it for the cup of coffee, the rest are buying it for the experience that we are providing. So there needs to be a balance where I think the experience needs to be more inclusive, I think about my dad who won’t go into coffee shops. It’s like there’s a lot of people like that that won’t go into coffee shops because… My dad is like, I just don’t feel right going in and buying a cup of coffee. It’s like, why? You get him a cappuccino at Starbucks and he’s addicted. Don’t be afraid, try it. Do we create that environment or do they create that environment? Or is it mutual?