Shawna: 0:22

All right. So welcome back to the Bureau Beach Podcast. This is part two. We're continuing our our discussion here with Sean from the Tribe Coffee. So, Sean, let's go ahead and just kick it right back off.

Sean: 0:33

What was the last question that you just So the question that I wanted to know was whether your wife has as strong of a desire for adventure as you do?

Brian: 0:41

She doesn't, but Kath has she's climbed Kilimanjaro twice. She's come with me to um Mount Everest base camp. Kath, um, she lived in a monastery in Kathmandu for six months. She's she's traveled to, she's spent some time, you know, kind of soul searching in India, Thailand. Um, she as a youngster, she's she did a lot of um canoeing and paddling with her family. And Kath, in her own way, has, you know, she's a she's a good athlete. She's she's she's a good long distance runner. She runs here all the time. She runs at that she does the sailfish run and she runs at uh at the runners depot that there. And so Kath, she she's quite she's she enjoys long distance running. Wow. But but um adventure, high adventure, um, but like sailing the oceans not really on her on her on her not uh not on her on her bucket list.

Shawna: 1:33

How in the world did you get her to um seriously?

Brian: 1:35

I I I uh the thing with it was I just put that dangling the boat. I I it was a lot of different elements because also it was getting the kids on the boat, you know. And so the thing with the main thing with it was getting a comfortable boat. Our boat wasn't very big, it's 38 foot, but it's a catamaran. So it it it's it's it's it's comfortable and it has space. And remind us how old are your kids at this point? Four and nine. Yeah.

Sean: 1:59

So Do I think that would be easier to get a kid on a boat than the wife, though? Because she knows she's got enough life experience to know what's about to happen.

Shawna: 2:07

No, you can bully the kids. Yeah. Like it's gonna be a blast. Yeah, but your wife knows you're bringing the kids on the boat too.

Brian: 2:13

Yeah, yeah, that it it's it's it's a it's it's a story there, Drake, because uh, you know, a a hundred-foot boat isn't big enough to have two kids on it. It's it's our kids need a lot of space on a boat.

Shawna: 2:25

Okay, so me and Shauna, we moved into an RV and we lived in an RB for two and a half years with our teenage son.

Brian: 2:32

Right.

Shawna: 2:32

So I couldn't even, I mean, that I think we had like 150 square feet is what we figured in that.

Sean: 2:37

But we weren't stuck in that RV. And we weren't stuck on the ocean either.

Shawna: 2:41

So, like, yeah, talk, take us through this.

Brian: 2:44

What was that life like for two years? I mean, you know, there's obviously the the the the cruising life has had very high highs and very low lows. And so, you know, uh managing um my I mean my wife Kath, she battles with anxiety. You know, I'm I I the the thing for for me really is I is I love boating and I still run a I run a power catamaran to the Bahamas and I do I run charters in the Bahamas now, even now. It helps helps to pay for this coffee hobby. But but uh what happens with it is yes, is that boating is in my blood. So I you know I run Pandora. We have a power catamaran that we run in the Bahamas. We do we do charters of I do seven-day, seven-night charters over there. She's she's at the Vera City Marina. Four cabins, four ensuite bathrooms, very light. I do three meals a day, go and see the pigs, go and see anyway. The boating thing for me is I cannot live without being on the water. It's kind of you know, it's uh it's my sanity. I love being on the ocean, I love swimming in the ocean, I love all the aquatic life and the nature. It was good, it's good because it rubbed off on our kids. Yeah, our kids, my my daughter is an is she's so connected to nature. Um, Sarah, she's she, you know, if you have a snake in Vero, all right, that's giving you any problems. You just phone me. Sure. Because my daughter will come out there and come and get that snake for you. She'll tell you exactly what it is, she'll relocate it. Sarah is she's she is an absolute when it comes to um reptiles um and her pathology. I think she wants that what she wants to be, and snakes, she handles, she knows how to deal with snakes. She's been bitten. Yeah, yeah. She's honestly she's been bitten by everything. My wife tells the story of the time we went to a farm uh in in South Africa, and what happened with it was Sarah's, she's so she's such a little nature lover, but she had a hand of oats. Um that and and there was a there was a horse, and she put a little hand out with the oats in it, and the horse took literally over her wrist. And my wife came out of the she was in the cafeteria, she came out with two coffees to come and see, and all she could see was her husband punching a horse.

Sean: 5:05

Do you know that same thing happened to me? Yeah, same thing, not the punching part, but the arm swallowing part.

Brian: 5:11

Anyway, so Sarah, Sarah has been bitten by when we crossed the Atlantic, Sarah got bitten by. We had a shoal of tuna follow us. Right? We we left Ascension Island and this tuna followed us for, I mean, seriously, it was like the most it was it was the weirdest thing, but also the most interesting thing. The tuna followed the boat flat out, and they would the the kids would literally feed them. And one she Sarah had her finger down and one and the tuna nipped a little bit off the end of one of her fingers. They don't have sharp teeth, they've just got like a raspy jaw, you know. Oh, yeah. And and nipped it, but all the tuna that were with us, they would they had names, you know. And some of them were like, you know, uh uh like good, you know, 15-pound tuna. And yeah, and and we've got lots of video footage and uh of that of that kind of stuff. But anyway, what it did was the the cruising life and getting the kids on the boat at that young age, you know, the benefit obviously that you can bully them. It's like that you know, they've got to listen to you. Now that that's my daughter's a teenager, now it's a negotiation and it's about deal making. But then in those days, you know, and so it's a good time to kind of get going with them. And then obviously we would hook up and meet other kid boats, um, and it was great, you know. And then we boat schooled them. My wife and they learned to read. Um, you know, and we're very, very fortunate in that they, you know, they do so well. Both of them are at Imagine, and Sarah and Rob do very, very well. I've just come back from the um the academic awards then. Both of them are in the top 10% in their grades. So they yeah, they I mean, we're just so blessed, you know, but it's got to do with the grounding. They love to read, they both have Kindles, they both get to bed early. My Kath, my wife, is she you know, she battles with the anxiety of being on the ocean, but she's done a damn good job with raising our kids because you know, you know what it's like homeschooling. You homeschool for 10 years yourself, so you you know what it's like. It's it's a struggle. The relationship between um parents and and children when you're homeschooling is is difficult. So and so when we got here, our kids were so excited to go to school, but I think the homeschooling thing was an incredibly good grounding for them. So, anyway, back to my wife, and how did I coax her to get onto the boat and get going? And um, it is you know, there are all those elements, and the first thing is obviously is a comfortable boat with a handsome, skilled captain. Yeah, um the accent helped some of the crack. No, so uh it's and and and so it kind of, you know, it it it was it was it kind of all of the elements uh sort of you know, the stars lined up because it, you know, we we we we had COVID, we wanted to get out of there, the kids were young enough to get out of there. We started the homeschooling because the kids had been taken out of school. So there were all those kind of things. And so I just seized the moment and said, this is it. And then we so we jumped on the boat and we we got going. And we we never had a destination. We weren't like headed for anywhere, you know. We we were gonna just we were gonna sail around the world as we had we had properties with tenants in them, and we had a good curriculum, you know, we had communication on the but communications, we could stay in touch with our families, and then we sailed into West Palm Beach. Well, we it's two years later. Yeah. First time I ever been to we traveled in the States before. We've been to New York, I've been to Seattle, I've been to the States climbing, you know, uh the the Denali, and we've traveled in New York and and ever, but I'd never been to Florida. Wow. First time I'd ever been to Florida.

Sean: 8:32

And one of the fortunately you came when it was, you know, 30 degrees or something of Fahrenheit, yeah.

Brian: 8:38

It was seven degrees Celsius, whatever that is in Fahrenheit.

Speaker 3: 8:42

Seven degrees Celsius is 44.6 degrees Fahrenheit.

Brian: 8:45

That is cold. It was that was what it was in West Palm Beach, and the steam was the condensate was rising off the surface. And you check the date, it was like it was one of the it was a super cold day. I believe it. What happened was we spent uh three months in the Bahamas, and the Bahamas is, you know, I mean, the best thing about Florida is the beach, yes, which is the Bahamas.

unknown: 9:10

I'm joking.

Brian: 9:12

You know, the Bahamas is 60 miles away.

Shawna: 9:15

Yeah, I know, it's crazy.

Brian: 9:16

It's just there. I know.

Shawna: 9:18

I can't wrap my mind around that.

Brian: 9:19

60 miles away. That's I mean, last season I was backwards and forwards here 12 times. I spent last week last last year, I think I spent about I mean at least three months in the Bahamas last year. Wow. Yeah. And it's just, you know, it's such an amazing place. It has the best waters in the world, the cleanest, most unbelievable waters. I mean, honestly, the place is it's so therapeutic. Yeah, yeah. The Bahamas is it honestly, I it's it's it's so hard to beat.

Shawna: 9:50

I think we've only been to Bahamas once, right?

Sean: 9:53

Twice. We've been twice, but um, because we just went on this past.

Shawna: 9:57

Oh, yeah, that's right. On that cruise we were at the Bahamas. That's right.

Sean: 10:00

We've never gotten to spend like a concentrated amount of time there. Because you're on a cruise ship, you get one day.

Brian: 10:05

You get like part of a day and you jump back on it. Yes, and you go, yeah, it's nice to, you know, um on African Dream, what we did was we kind of embedded. We were in there for three months. We started right down in the south of the Bahamas, and it was one of my aims. Because you know, the the story is that you know, the guys on the International Space Station, um, they always they'll tell you when they when they're in space and they're in the International Space Station, so now they're in orbit, and as they go around the world, they're going round and round and they're going, and then as soon as they get to the Bahamas, everybody looks out the windows. And they look down and they look at the Bahamas. Because when you look at the Bahamas from space, it's like unworldly.

Sean: 10:41

Really?

Brian: 10:41

When you look at the at the way at the keys, the length of like the the the the keys with the you know, I mean, literally the Bahamas is like a mountain that rises out of the depths of the ocean. There are water, there's water, all right, which is 8,000 feet deep right here, the tongue of the ocean. It's right there. It's it's like it's literally 80 miles away from us. That's how deep it goes. They go, there's all that so so. What happens with it is when you look at it from space, you know, you've got all that beautiful white sand, there's just this incredibly deep. I mean, you know those the images of the Bahamas that you know multi, multi uh uh um the hues of blue. Um there there are no rivers. So the water isn't sedimented. You know, you you look at the water that comes out out of Florida, and obviously the the water gets sedimented from the runoff. Yes, yeah. In the Bahamas, there are no rivers. Wow, so the water is permanently but it's permanently like cobalt blue. Yeah, it makes sense, and there's all those beautiful beaches and the and you know, the islands that kind of rise up and the great Bahama Bank, and you know, you've seen those sandbars and we have to look that up now. I've never seen that. So, what happens is from the International Space Station, when it gets to the Bahamas, everybody goes and looks out the window to go and see the Bahamas.

Shawna: 12:01

That is so cool.

Brian: 12:02

I mean, it's they don't do that for West Palm, only for Vero. Then everyone goes inside, okay. There's Vero, and they all look out. There's Vero, yes, Vero, yes, there's Tribe Coffee.

Shawna: 12:13

Yes, and you know we missed that coffee spot. Yeah, I'm like trying to wrap my mind like, okay, how does this all come together with Vero Beach and the Tribe Coffee? Like, how did this all come together to to be what it is here today? Like, so so you you guys landed in uh I guess that's what you say is landed, but you guys boated into West Palm. How did you come across Vero?

Brian: 12:36

Right. Um, so um we went through the Bahamas. There is a group, okay, that's run by uh a Canadian guy and his wife, Pat, Addison Chan, who have a house, they they're the Canadian, but they have a property here. And Addison runs this group, it's called the Bahamas Land and Sea Group on Facebook. And Addison is the authority, he's written books on the Bahamas and on Cuba. He is just such an incredibly knowledgeable person. And you, if you ever get to, he is worth interviewing for your podcast. Oh, yeah. Get hold of Addison, please. He is like he is a mine of information. He is really an amazing person, and his wife, Pat. And anyway, Addison through this, the the thing is we were we were coming in, and what happened with it was that we were coming to the States, and we uh we we were going to put our boat up um in uh in storage. And what happened with it was that we were then gonna go and do some touring on the in on in in the interior. And what happened with it was that we needed some parts, you know, for the boat. And Addison offered to collect um some some Amazon parts for us to order from Amazon, he gathered them for us, and then he'd meet us um at um Riverside Park with all the stuff that we ordered. Now, you know what happens with it is when you sell from South Africa to the United States, there's no Amazon along the way. Yeah, there's no fresh milk. Oh wow. Seriously, you know, I mean, you know, the the conveniences in the states and and why the Americ why the United States is such an incredibly successful society and and and successful economy is that things work here. You know, you have refrigeration, you have incredibly um efficient infrastructure for shipping. Look at this guy who just walked inside here now. Yeah, everything moves around. You you have a thriving economy, it's remarkable. And anyway, so we arrived here. The boxes, Addison had the boxes, so anyway, we we he said, sure, you can order a few parts, whatever you want. I promise you. He needed his like Subaru um hatchback to bring down all the boxes that we ordered. He said those boxes just kept coming and coming and coming and coming. And anyway, we befriended Addison and so we stayed at Vera for three weeks. We we pulled up off the off Memorial Island with with uh with African Dream. We pulled into the Vera City Marina, and what happens is at the Vera City Marina is that you have the goal line bus. Yeah. So you can just get on the go-line bus and you can go to Publix, you can go straight to Walmart. The bus stops right outside Walmart. Yeah. And we could load up with groceries and then we back to the boat, and the kids were loving Riverside Park. There's the tennis. We played tennis, we walked around the park there. It's so beautiful. I mean, we just had such a ball in Vero. We were like, this place is awesome. We you know, we met Addison and Pat, and and it was just like it was such an amazing place. But anyway, we were moving on and we kept on going up. We ended up in St. Augustine's and then we went through, we kept on going up, and we ended up in St. Mary's in Georgia. Oh, yeah. If you ask me someone who's got a Georgian accent, I can hear a Georgian accent as well. They also have a beautiful way of speaking. Anyway, we ended up in St. Mary's boatyard with Rocky and his son, and it was just like the most amazing experiences. Hurricane season came, we put our African dream out of the water, we put it in storage, and we went home. And we were in South Africa, and while we were in South Africa, I was back there with all my friends. Um, and what happens with it is um over the years uh of uh of climbing, especially climbing Mount Kilimanjaro, is I had been constantly hired by a company which is called Tribeca Coffee. They're the biggest coffee roastery in Africa. And what happened with it was that the owner of Tribeca is a guy named Martin Fitzgerald, and he uh while I was back in South Africa, he said to me they're putting another expedition to Kilimanjaro together. Will I take them up there? They're gathering more data on what's happening with the receding glaciers on Mount Kilimanjaro and how it impacts coffee, the coffee plantations around the base of the mountain. And we go to the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro, and uh we we basically get to uh um Kilimanjaro and with Mountain with Martin, and we we gather, we we climb up to the summit of Kilimanjaro, which is super high altitude. So what happens with it is these glaciers are receding as a result of climate change. We don't know the origins of climate change, but we do know that climate change is real. The glaciers are definitely diminishing. Whether it's cyclical, whether it's contributions from carbon, is anyone's guess. There are a lot of different theories which have been politicized, and there are agendas and all kinds of nonsense that goes on. And if that's around money, but the thing with it really is it's definitely 100% certain that the glaciers are diminishing globally. So we have been over the had been the last 15 years monitoring the diminishment of glaciers on the on Mount Kilimanjaro, and they're just about gone by now, and they will be in the next 10 to 15 years. There'll be no more ice left on Kilimanjaro, which has an impact on the coffee which grows on the slopes. Coffee grows at a certain altitude, it grows at about 900 meters, which is about 2100 feet around about there, 20, 2300 feet, and then in a band which reaches up to around about three and a half thousand feet. And the coffee that grows at higher altitude in cooler environments, and particularly it has to be around the equator because it has to be cool, but it simultaneously has to have some precipitation. And so there is a coffee belt which is around the equator, and that's where coffee grows. Southern hemispheres like this, it doesn't grow literally because the fruit gets subjected to vectors and to bugs. So what happens with it is that vectors and bugs bite the seed. There's a particular bug where it's warm like this at lower altitudes, bites the seed and the coffee won't grow. Now, what happens with coffee is interestingly is it has a natural herbicide or pesticide called caffeine.

Sean: 19:05

Oh yeah. So what happens with this?

Brian: 19:08

We're just talking about that one. Caffeine protects the fruit. So what happens with that is if you grow caffeine at a lower altitude, it has a higher content of caffeine. If you grow coffee, it has a high content of caffeine, and as a result, the coffee is bitter. And you get a different variation. The coffee that's like this, this is uh the bag this comes in, is called robuster coffee. And you get an an uh a coffee which is called Arabica, which is grown at a slightly higher altitude where there are less bugs, it's less subjected to uh infection and and uh and uh uh and subject to um to vectors because higher you go, there are less bugs. It's cooler. So what happens is the coffee has a lower caffeine content and therefore it's sweeter. So coffee that's grown at high altitude, like fruitier coffee, is obviously sweeter, and coffee that's grown at lower altitude is bitter. Now, what happens with it is with climate change is that the belt is climbing because it's getting warmer higher. So coffee literally grows at a slightly higher altitude as it as an impact and as a response to climate change. And coffee that's grown at lower altitudes becomes more bitter because it needs to protect itself. Yeah, you know, you have tannin in trees. Uh in in some trees, like in the you know, in in in in in in uh in in some of the reserves where you'll find giraffe, the way that that trees protect themselves is that with giraffe, for example, which brows at higher uh uh high uh heights, yeah, is the tree has a higher content of tannin in the leaves, excuse me, at a higher height than what it has lower down. So what happens is the tree protects itself, yeah, the leaves by having higher content of uh of of tannin, which is bitter. And the same thing applies to coffee. So what happens with it is the the impact of this really, especially on big plantations and on global on production, is is is I'd been involved in this project helping scientists and and and helping a uh a meteorologist to gather the data. And the data um and and what that involved really was climbing to altitude and be able to work at altitude. Yeah. So because most people get to altitude and they're like, yeah, you know, you can't you can't do anything. But once you're you know, when you when you've when you're skilled at dealing at with altitude, is that you you you're able to work at altitude, you can do stuff. So I used to get hired to go and do stuff, and then I got into coffee and we used to go through the plantations, meet the farmers, and you know, I was I had the great, great fortune of being exposed to many subsistence farmers on the slopes of Kilimanjaro. And I got into coffee kind of um as a secondary topic. But anyway, it's through all this process, um, you know, is I'm not getting any younger. And the days of my climbing days are sort of, you know, I mean, we we don't climb as much. We climb you can climb till you're older. And I'd love to take my kids to the Himalayas and all those, like we do. But what happens with it really is that I increasingly became interested in coffee. And because I had been um part of this this project and had knowledge on coffee, is that what what happened with it was there's a discussion took place for me to open a coffee business in in Florida here, doing specialty coffee and and we do specialty roasted uh uh coffees, importing coffees from from Brazil, from South Africa, and using the intellectual uh property from our parent company, which is in which is in South Africa, which is the biggest roastery in St. Africa.

Sean: 22:45

That's right. Yeah.

Brian: 22:46

So how it all came together was that we we originally started the business in St. Augustine.

Speaker 4: 22:51

Oh, right.

Brian: 22:52

We're gonna open the business in St. Augustine. Yeah, we were gonna go and we were gonna uh uh run it in St. Augustine. We we'd been um we're doing some uh research on this startup and how we're gonna do it. And I went to St. Augustine one day and it was damn cold.

Speaker 3: 23:06

It's a lot colder in St.

Brian: 23:08

Augustine. And I said to my wife, I said, you know what? No, if we're gonna run this business, if we're gonna start a business here, do it, get a startup going, and we're gonna make, you know, there's gonna be a significant capital investment, employee people, pay tax, you know, follow the, follow, you know, uh, get a work visa, you know, to do it legitimately as as it's uh as the system provides for, is that I'm not and you're gonna do this in a place where bananas and mangoes grow. Yes, I love that, yeah. Seriously, yes. I can't be living in cold places anymore. I'm an absolute wimp when it comes to the cold now. So am I. So it uh, you know, and then so if eventually what happened with it was that we you know we headed back down and uh we we got back to Vero and then came to came in, saw Addison and got to got things going. And I said to Kath, you know what? You know, the best advantage that we have in Vero is if you know, because it there's risk um with a startup. Sure. You're never guaranteed, you know, with everything. Now I've done a lot of market research and I've done some business management, I've run different businesses in my time, but there's always risk with with running anything. And I said, you know, what we'll need to do for the first six months is we'll have to live aboard until we get to the point where we're we're we're happy that we've got the business going and then we can buy a house. So the what happens with it is that we the the trouble that you have on the Florida coast is hurricanes. Yeah. Now what happens with that is so I said to Kath, look, what we do is we'll upgrade to a better boat, and then what we'll do is we'll invest in something that if a hurricane comes, that we can run like hell with it, which is Pandora, she could do 20 knots.

Speaker 3: 24:46

Oh, okay.

Brian: 24:47

So if anything comes in, and simultaneously is we need to find a place which is relatively secure from hurricanes in the event that they come over. Because we'd experienced Hurricane Nicole, Hurricane Ian. Um, then obviously we went through Milton here, and every time a coconut that those those came through is I took Pandora into the mangroves here. Now, I don't know if you know these mangroves here, but because we've learned about them. We've been learning. There's seven miles between, and I should keep this a secret.

Sean: 25:20

We can edit it out if you're gonna go.

Brian: 25:22

No, no, no, no, you can use it if you want. Between between Sebastian and Fort Pierce, all right, there's seven miles to Fort Pierce and seven miles to Sebastian from Vero, which means that because this creek is there, there used to be a cut in uh through the barrier island into in there, but it's been it's be it, but it's been it's been uh filled in.

Speaker 4: 25:43

Okay.

Brian: 25:44

But what that does is it prevents surge. You don't get big surges of surf coming in, even in a hurricane. And the biggest problem with with hurricanes is the surge, it's the waves that that move boats around and slam them against other boats into so you can basically tuck into the mangroves here, and because these mangroves are are really, really secure mangroves, and we spider up in the mangroves. Wow. Right? And we just sit there, we wait for the hurricane to come over, we undo the lines, and we go back onto the mooring ball. And that's what what we do. So Vero is the best kept secret in a hurricane. We tied up in the mangroves for Nicole, and we tied up in the mangroves for Milton. Milton, the tornado tour right behind us there while we were in the mangroves. There, it was horrific. So the the thing with that is Vera became a good natural choice to try and get a good specialty coffee, wholesale, uh business-to-business roastery, fresh coffee, um, a value for money at a good price to people, access to good quality coffee. All right. Um, and right here in Vera. And so we found this location, which is ideal for the roastery. And actually, so what this is is a roastery, we're not we're not a coffee shop per se. This is more of we we obviously we have a retail section here. People come here and they come and enjoy the good quality coffees, but actually, Vera but we're actually more wholesale business to business. Christ Fellowship Church, Ryder's Peterson's, Tilly's Coffee, Vero Bean, Vero Grounds, Double H coffee, all these uh these coffee outlets. We supply them the beans. Uh-huh. So the coffee that you're drinking is coffee that we roast here, and we air roast. Um, right? It's it's like we have a special uh roasting technique. Air roasting is very interesting because what it does is it separates the chaff from the bean when it cracks. And what happens is that is that you get a very low acidity um type of roast that's kind of without the chaff, and it makes the coffee, it it give it makes the coffee sweeter.

Shawna: 27:55

Thank you so much, Sean. This has been so so good, so insightful too about the science behind coffee as well. There's so much, there's so much wrapped up in you and your story and in your wife. Like that's just it's just amazing. Thank you so much for jumping on here to share this with us. It's a pleasure. We love the coffee here. Like I mean, the coffee it's if nobody has if anybody listening that's in Vero and you haven't been to Tribe Coffee, you have to come here because it is incredible. Like, can you stop and get a bag from Tribe? Oh, sweet.

Brian: 28:26

Thanks, Ron. Thanks for supporting us. Oh, yeah.

Shawna: 28:29

I mean, it's it's amazing. It's so different. Again, Sean, this has been awesome. So thank you so much. So much that we've got to learn about coffee. And uh, I would I'm excited to learn more about what you guys love about Vero now that you're here and and all the connections you made. So, and I see surf pictures up on the wall too. So I'm sure that's that's probably gonna come into this next episode, too. So but uh with that, if you guys have enjoyed the episode, make sure to get ready for part three, grab a cup of coffee from Tribe, sit down, enjoy the next episode, and make sure you click subscribe.

Sean: 28:58

Catch you next time, neighbor.