Brian Hicks On Social Enterprise & Coffee
Brian Hicks is the CEO of Harvest Hands CDC and Humphreys Street Coffee Company, an enterprise that began as an after-school program to foster positive behavior in Nashville’s underserved youth. With a mission of using the stunning growth of Nashville to benefit those who might not normally be recipients of the wealth transfer caused by gentrification and development, Hicks has spent the last 17 years setting up generations of Nashville children for success.
About Brian Hicks
Brian Hicks is the co-founder of Harvest Hands Community Development Corporation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to fostering wholeness in South Nashville through healthy living, education, spiritual formation, and economic development.
In 2007, Brian and his wife, Courtney, responded to a community's urgent need by purchasing and revitalizing an abandoned property. This led to the creation of Humphreys Street Coffee Co., a social enterprise that empowers youth through employment and leadership development. With over 20 young adults employed and revenue exceeding $500,000 annually, Humphreys Street Coffee Co. continues to make a significant impact, embodying Brian's commitment to community and youth development.
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Spencer 00:06
Brian Hicks of harvest hands and Humphreys street coffee. Welcome to signature required.
Brian Hicks 00:10
Thanks for having me.
Spencer 00:11
You are a seasoned entrepreneur and the driving force behind harvest hands, an organization you founded and grew to an annual budget of over 4 million employing more than 50 people. Harvest hands is a South Nashville community response to the fact that kids need something constructive to do after school. That effort has also led you to the social enterprise Humphrey street Coffee Company. That's amazing. You're doing some really cool stuff in the community.
Multiple Speakers 00:38
Thanks. I do have to get say my wife co founded the organization with me. All right, give her a shout out.
Spencer 00:45
Smart man, that's important. What's your wife's name? Courtney Hicks. Definitely covering the bases right out of the gate. So most people that are listening have probably never heard of harvest hands or Humphrey street coffee. So I've got five things to know about you and the organization. And what I'd like you to do is just listen to the five and whichever one resonates the most with you to start explaining to Carli, and I go ahead and start there, for whatever moves you the most. So here are the five things. Number One in 2007 you purchased the quote, crack house on the hill, and harvest hands was born. That's a pretty good one. That's a good one right out of the gate. Number two, between three and 6pm violent juvenile crime, triples and kids face becoming victims of crime. Number three, your South Nashville after school programs host more than 100 kids per day. Number four, the Empower sports league serves more than 250 young athletes every year. And number five, at Humphrey street coffee you employ students and have three coffee shops across Nashville. We'll start with the crack house. I was hoping you would choose that place to start.
Brian Hicks 01:59
Yeah, why bury the lead? Right? Yes. So we moved to South Nashville in 2007 my mentor was a pastor. He was the pastor of Brentwood Methodist Church. His name is Doctor Howard olds. He had been my pastor as a kid, and asked us to consider my wife and I moving to Nashville to help the church develop what they called neighborhood revitalization ministry. What we referenced it as is community development. So what we were doing, I had done that work in Philadelphia and Chicago, and was doing that work in Louisville, and so we moved to South Nashville, and at the time, the neighborhood we moved to was called the neighborhood by the fairgrounds that you don't go to. Now, the realtors have renamed it since Wedgwood Houston, and someone told me in the last week that Wedgewood Houston was in a national publication as one of the top 10 neighborhoods in the country.
Spencer 02:58
I mean, it's right by the soccer study.
Brian Hicks 03:00
Come on, right? It's unbelievable. This is how we moved in there. We bought a house off of Craigslist, right? So we moved into that neighborhood, and we we go to a neighborhood association meeting, and it's called Snap. And you know, if the neighborhood association meeting is called Snap, you're in for some fun. So we went there and Howard, who had cancer at the time, and he sort of lived by this mantra that he was going to live like He was dying, because he was and so he had reoccurring non hopscot lymphoma. And so we show up this neighborhood association meeting, and he says, Hey, we want to partner. He had this actually voice. It was like the voice of God is, like, we want to partner with your neighborhood. He's like, six, five, and he says, we'd like to do work here, but we want to know, like, where should we begin? And this guy in the meeting says, Oh, we've heard this stuff before. These churches from Brentwood come up and they want to do stuff. He said, Well, believe it when we see it. And he's like, Well, where would you like us to begin? He said, there's a crack house. The guy says, there's a crack house on top of the hill. And if you want to do something in this neighborhood, Why don't y'all do something about the crack house? And and so he goes back to the Brentwood Methodist Church. And now you understand, everybody at Brentwood Methodist Church is a CEO of something, and he says to him, we're gonna buy a crack house in South Asheville. Now they thought this was a horrible investment, you know, and so, so, so he didn't really ask permission. He said, we're gonna do this. And so we bought this drug house. It was basically, I think the issue with it that the neighbors really struggled with was, it was this place where a lot of people were coming to and a lot of violence was happening, and it was, you could just go in there and see that, like it was, it was a mess, as crack houses tend to be, exactly. But the weird thing is, like, we went and toured it, and there was, like, drug paraphernalia and Bibles. So it was just a weird, like, struggle of, you know, stuff. And. And there's like, paintings of Dolly Parton on the window and all these. In fact, the guy who started Robert's Western room actually used to own the property, Robert, so, like, really interesting, so interesting history of the land, but it had fallen out of his ownership into some relatives and and they just were get unloading it. So we bought this thing, and it was condemned, so we tore it down, and we had this fall festival there. And we basically asked folks where, what would you like us to do in this neighborhood? And but actually, before that, we said, what is your favorite thing about this neighborhood? Because we actually believe in community development, that you should start with positive you should start with what people see is a good thing assets, like, what do people see as the assets of the neighborhood? And then begin to ask the questions of needs. And so if everybody there said, like, we really love the fact that we know our neighbors, that we just look out for each other, so they're real positive, but they said the problem is, is that the kids here really don't have anything to do after school, so they're getting into trouble. They're not bad kids, they just don't have a lot of opportunities. So so if you all could start an after school program, that would be great. That's pretty simple for us, because we had done that work. I'd done that in college, was in Philadelphia and Chicago, and done that work in Louisville, and so so we said, yeah, we'll do that. And so we, we this house was moved in across the road from the crack house lot, which is now empty, and it was moved in from Green Hills because someone didn't want the house anymore, and they turned it the wrong way. And we bought it again, really cheap
Multiple Speakers 06:38
Talking a house moved in like a house was rolled in.
Brian Hicks 06:41
We bought a house. We bought a house that someone else had moved into the neighborhood because they because, like, they had a lot of land in the neighborhood, and they thought, oh, this person was building a giant house in green hills, and they didn't, but they sold their I don't know if they gave their house away, but this guy moved this house into our neighborhood, and we bought it and started an after school program in the house that was moving into the neighborhood turned the wrong way, so it looked like a shotgun house and and so we started just with the kids who lived around a lot there and, and so we we just said, Hey, we're starting this after school program. You all said that y'all are interested in this. And so we started with like 15 kids in this little house. And so that's kind of the story of the crack house. I mean, everything from there is all tied back into that first story, and how we started Humphrey Street and the way we connected with the neighborhood. But I think that that was our entry point into that community. I think sometimes if you simply just do what you say you're gonna do, I guess someone says to you, well, you respond to this thing, and you respond with action, opposed to like, maybe you know or like, just don't respond. I think it demonstrates a level of trust that's the foundation of most good community work.
Carli 08:00
So I'm a mom of four, and the hours of three to six are kind of like the witching hour. You're trying to figure out how to keep them entertained. They half brain dead from a day at school trying to feed them. What did you do with 15 children in a shotgun house from three to six?
Brian Hicks 08:18
Yeah, great question. So so I didn't have kids yet. I was, I'm 48 so I was, it was early 30s, so had a lot more energy, and so I knew that we had to the kids in our neighborhood really needed help with their homework. So we had a ton of volunteers who would come in and help with that. We would do, you know, we have a meal. But at the time, I was like, you understand, I studied theology too. And so I'm like, how do you help kids know that God loves them, you know? So I would seriously take puppets, this box of puppets, and make up songs to teach kids Bible verses and, and those kids who were there with this earth can still sing these crazy songs that made up. But what was interesting is all these little kids there, this is great. We're doing the homework, and, you know, just like a little family. But the teenagers in the neighborhood who actually want to get in trouble had no interest in hanging out with me doing puppets. I mean, it's like, you know, like, that is just not cool. And so that I said to my wife, Courtney, I said, What if we started a couple businesses to employ some of the kids? In some ways, we didn't have any idea what social enterprise was. We knew that, like the Girl Scouts sold cookies, and that worked, but we were like, what if we what if we just started a business, and then the teenagers who want money, but they're just getting it the wrong way, maybe they would come and be part of that. So my wife had given me a home coffee roaster for Christmas, and it roasted about six ounces of coffee. Coffee, and she learned to make him a soap. And she said, I'll teach the young ladies how the teenage girls how to make soap, if you want to teach them to make coffee. And so the girls started making soap. They they started making money, and they called their soap company. Their small group is called the women of wisdom. So they have Wow soap. That was pretty good, yeah. So us, the guys we, we were sitting around with my six ounce roaster, setting off smoke alarms. Couldn't hear each other talk. Our mentoring group was called the men in mentoring in community, and our company was called mimic coffee. My wife is smarter than that. And so we so the girls, they start making money. The guys see this, and they say to me, they say this. They just this is what they said. They said, this sucks. We're quitting. And I said, don't quit. Like, give me a month. And someone who was on our board said, you know, there's a guy who goes to the church who started a little company you may have heard of, called Dollar General, and you you could probably meet with them, because you're his pastor, because I was employed through the church, right? And so he said, Why don't you meet with them and tell them about the business you want to start? So I go and meet with Cal Turner. At the time he was running his family foundation over there in green hills, yeah. And I say to him and say, Hey, you want to start this business with these teenagers where we're roasting coffee, and would you be interested in supporting that? And he said to me, go back to the teenagers and write a business plan and bring it back to me, and I'll consider it. And so you understand, like I studied theology and and so, and now I'm working with a bunch of teenagers to write the first business plan of my life to present to the former CEO, Dollar General. So we take this to him, and he says to me, he says, this is this is decent. Had some help for some friends of who knew business and the teenagers really were kind of spoke into it, but he says there's one thing that you have to change. He said, mimic coffee is the worst name of any coffee company I've ever heard. It sounds like invitation coffee. So change the name of the coffee company and I'll buy your roaster and pay for you to go get trading. And I thought, man, it's a pretty sweet deal. We can change our name. Now, the kids didn't like that. They like they thought it was a good name. But what happened in the next little time between when we had to change our name really influenced how we came up with the name. We got a visit from codes. One day, the codes department shows up at the little house. Apparently, you're not supposed to run an after school program out of a residential house. So the guy selling his property next door reports us because he can't. It's like all these kids are there, and people come and looking at the house, you know, and the codes department shows up. And I don't know if this was my best or worst moment, the guy comes the door and he says, you know, you're not supposed to be running an after school program out of this place. No, yeah. I said, you know the guy selling drugs two doors down. Didn't ask permission either. You did it. I did verbatim. Absolutely. My mother probably would have been in shock if she heard this, right? He says, You need to come, you need to go downtown and meet with the director of codes. And I said, Man, okay, so I go downtown, and the codes director comes in from outside. He'd been smoking. You could smell it. His name is Sonny West. And Sonny no longer alive. In fact, the building is named after him. Now I walk in there, and my wife and I are there, and he says, I know about you. All my kids go to Brentwood Methodist Church. You can't make this stuff up. And he says, I'll give you six months, you know. And so in that bit of time between, like, when we, you know, try to come up with the name for this company, and we are basically told we had to find a new place. There's a Methodist Church in the neighborhood that closes down, and they come to me and they say, We want to give you this building. Nothing's ever going to happen in this neighborhood. Y'all can have the building, you know. And and so it was called Humphrey street Methodist Church. And so our kids are like, let's name it after the church has given us their building. So so we named the company Humphrey street Coffee Company. And I took a 12 year old who was part of one of the kids who's in the mentoring program, one of the teenagers, because his only kid who was in the mentoring program, he could miss some days at school because he was brilliant. And his mom, who her name was, hi L, she was she's the one who got all the kids. So she trusted us. She was also a pastor, and she's a brilliant woman. She works for us now. She's a senior director at our organization, but she she let him go with me. To Sandpoint, Idaho to to learn to roast coffee from Steven Dietrich, who invented the coffee roaster. Now us and Crema and all these folks use a Dietrich roaster, but he taught me and this 12 year old kid to roast coffee on the machine. And that's how we started. Humphrey Street is out of that, out of that deal, and that's why his name, that is because the Methodist Church gave us an old building.
Carli 15:22
I love hearing about the kids and how they had to persevere with you. It's unique. I think a lot of times as adults with kids, you act like you know it all, but you are learning right alongside them. How do you feel like that impacted those kids, being part of that figuring it out process.
Brian Hicks 15:40
I think that's a great observation. I think it probably those kids who were with us in the early days. I want to say we've had great impact through the years, but we had this deep connection with these kids in the early days, and so much so that the kid who was 12 stayed with us, and he's now 28 years old, and he developed that company into a company that does over a million dollars worth of coffee sales. He went on, he got a scholarship to college as a Latino leadership scholar. It's like a 31 in his AC T. I mean, the kid really stuck with it. And in fact, he has trained other kids in the neighborhood how to be a coffee roaster, and he's actually moved out of that role and now runs operations and organizations. So he had such buy in to what we were doing that he stuck with it as well. So it really kind of there was this deep, sort of in the struggle where he said, this, I have ownership of this. You know, it wasn't just a thing that I was doing and my wife were doing. It was like, this is our deal. A lot of people will say that that in communities, that those who are closest to a problem actually have the best solutions. And unfortunately, a lot of people who do community work, their approach is, if I come in from the outside, I have the most knowledge, and I'm here to fix it. You know, we are. That phrase that gets thrown around is, like, there's a lot of white saviors, and like most neighbors, like, we don't need that. What we need are folks who walk alongside of people on a journey together for wholeness. So in this journey where you say you actually know what's going on here, so I bet you know the best solution, and so if you engage those people and create opportunities. So it's like our work isn't doing things for people. Our work is creating opportunities to be a catalyst. So if other folks can be empowered to take ownership of their own life and then create pathways out of poverty. And so that's, that's, that's the goal of what we do.
Spencer 17:38
So just to complete the story with the codes, the six months you were given, you were able, it sounds like to open up a coffee shop within that time frame. Did the after school thing close down?
Brian Hicks 17:49
So we didn't open a coffee shop. What we opened was a coffee roastery. Okay, so we, because this is another part of the story. So we, so we take the house, we we renovate the built the church. Even though it was like this gift of a church, we had to bring it up from, like, the churches built in the Depression, I think, in 1929 so we had to bring it up from codes to like, 2008 so we had to, like, so you we spent all this money put it in, and you could really not even tell anything it was done like, because there's exit signs and, you know, all this stuff. But we so we move our after school program there, and we put our coffee roaster in the basement of that church, right? So this machine, which is, like, you know, a couple 1000 pounds. My friend Bryce, who lived in the neighborhood, owns a company called Olive printing. He helped us move this machine around on poles. I mean, it was, it was wild. So we start this, we start this company in the basement there, and we're doing after school program upstairs. So so we, so we basically are running a coffee roaster, a coffee roasting company, green we brought but we're importing green coffee. We do it on a harvest cycle, so we bring in fresh crop. It was a different approach than most people are using. But what Steven Dietrich had taught us was that if you bring in coffee that's in season, it tastes like tomatoes do in July, like it's a it's a crop, and so it tastes different as it's fresh. And so it was like us and Bongo Java roasting in this town. That's that's when we got into the deal. And so we were doing that. So we were doing that. So we were providing all these new startup coffee companies with their coffee, like dose coffee. We were the first coffee company, you know, to provide them coffee, and we used to provide the well. So we used to be other folks roaster, until they all wanted to get into the roasting deal. And so that kind of led us to be like all these people were supplying coffee. Do we need to eventually do our own shop so we can create our own supply that you know now we're on our own best customer with our shops. But what happened was so we worked in that space from like 2008 that church until about 2015 and about 2015 about every kid in that neighborhood. You. In a span of six months, came and said, we're moving, and it was either we grandma's house, we're selling it for $80,000 and that's the most money we've ever had, and so we're going to move out to Antioch or Madison or Clarksville. And what would happen is, you know, the House would get torn down, and there'd be two houses for $500,000 on the same lot, where Sean and Shane would live. And you know, you'd see this over, or they'd say, our rents tripling, and so we have to move. And so we had this choice. It's a real, kind of pivotal moment in our organization, where we said, we either follow the kids to the places where they can now afford, or we make a move over to the government housing in Napier so there's a government housing called Napier pseudocom, and it is the largest block of barrack style government housing that still exists in the United States. So military barracks. Most of the military barracks style government has that looks like military barracks has been torn down. This is still there. There's about 700 kids at average age 14 and a half and a square mile radius, right there. So you know. So we move over there and we buy a building. So we say, how do we continue to do work in this neighborhood? Sure, and so we're looking for a space. And we meet this guy who's like, this real rogue realtor. He's like, I know a building for you all. And so we go and we we go to this building, and it is abandoned. The only thing we knew about it was like it used to be an auto parts. It's a whole city block over in Napa shooting. And the guy says, We think that you could buy this building. We have to go to Kentucky to meet the guy who owns it, to see if we can buy it from it. We drive to Kentucky and meet this guy at 85 years old. His name's Charlie Hardcastle. And Charlie says to me, he says, you know,
Carli 22:02
That's a made up name, by the way, real it has to be. It's Charlie hard.
Brian Hicks 22:05
Charlie says to me, I show up to work every day to find fault. This is what he said. So I'm gonna sell you this building, and I'll finance it for you. I mean, this building is like, it's the whole city block, and it has an interstate sign, like the, you know, has a Lamar release on it, all this stuff. And he says, I'll find so he sells us the building for $750,000 I mean, a week later, I get a call for someone who's like, I'll give you twice the amount for it, you know? And we're like, no way. So, so here's the here's the problem. We got a building that's financed, and we have kids who in our neighborhood who need after school programming and that can and we have this sort of ticking clock of when they're all moving out, and we're like, How in the world are we going to renovate this building? Because is it? It really is a dump. I mean, the barely any electrical, no plumbing, the only thing in the building was an abandoned ambulance with, like, 50 stolen bicycles. I mean, it was a, I got pictures of this stuff, an abandoned ambulance, yeah, like an ambulance. It was like, all these bicycles in it, you know? It was just an old couple old video games that were busted up too. And so we say we don't have time to do a capital campaign that would take a couple years. But what did happen is the same force that had caused our kids to to move out of the neighborhood. So what, basically, you know, what you pick your term, redevelopment, gentrification, whatever it is had caused the land where the crack house was the worst investment ever. You know that that Howard olds and but he died in 2008 so it caused that property to go from 250,000 to $2.5 million Wow. And so we said, what if we use the same mechanism that's being used by the developers and just give it back to the kids. So we sell this property and then pay off Charlie Hardcastle and renovate the building. And it costs us exactly the amount that we sold it for the whole deal. And so we renovate this community center with our friends from twy Frierson, and we, we move our base of operations to the government housing, and now we have this huge, you know, 10,000 square foot warehouse where we do all our coffee roasting, and we have a community center that holds, you know, about 100 kids, you know, up to 100 kids and, and it's just an amazing space, and, and that, that was, it's how We moved over to naper.
Carli 24:42
You bring the puppets?
Brian Hicks 24:44
I think that they're in a box. It's a great question, though. There's like, this can of worms. You know, that was, like, very random and so, so what happened then was, we have this building over in wedge of Houston. Now, yeah. We say we're already roasting coffee, and everybody who moved into our neighborhood drinks expensive coffee. So what if we created a coffee shop there and employed use that to create additional jobs? Because our thought is, you can be upset with the change that's happened and get frustrated with all the stuff that goes on when a neighborhood redevelops and kids can't live there, or you can figure out how to channel it for good, like good, like, how do you use gentrification for justice and and we really, what we're doing with teenagers is really workplace readiness and so, so we're doing that with the coffee roasting company, you know, creating helping kids to learn to roast coffee and package coffee and sell it. We're doing marketing and branding. But like now, we have an opportunity, because we have this building that was given to us to turn it into a coffee shop and then teach kids to be baristas and hospitality and those types of opportunities. So we start the coffee shop. We don't do the work to start that and get that rolling, and it just, it just takes off, because I think it was the right place in the right time, you know, and just the change that happened there and and so, so that was, that's how we got the coffee shop open. Was, was through that pathway of moving over there and then it becoming the space that is like a blank canvas
Spencer 26:21
As you grew how much of the ministry was supported by your kind of sending church, even though they were sending you local sending church, versus the revenue from selling the beans that you were roasting. Because I think some people hear this and say, Man, maybe my community could experience a transformation like this. But I wonder when that scale moved from like, okay, we're kind of standing on our own two feet, versus the church having a 10 or 15 year mission. Yeah, with you through the growth.
Brian Hicks 26:59
It's great. Question. Did the church tell you to ask this question?
Spencer 27:03
I know this is the business.
Brian Hicks 27:06
Well, early on, the church was like 95% of our support base. Yeah, right. I mean, they may. In fact, the reason why my wife, Courtney and I said that we would come because we were a little bit hesitant to come to Brentwood from, you know, doing work. We had renovated house in the west end of Louisville, like I thought it was. I was, I mean, I'm a Kentucky guy. I mean, I went to school at UK, like, I believe blue, and so I, I was like, I can't leave, you know, but because the church said, we're having a shift in how we do our mission, we're going to go deep instead of wide we're going to invest in South Nashville and South Africa. You know, they were really making a real different philosophical show. A lot of churches will give, like, $1,000 to everybody. And they said, We want to make deep impact. So I'm like, I can sign up for that, because I recognize in some of the work I was doing in Louisville that we didn't have a lot of resources, and it and resources are the gas that makes this kind of stuff go I mean, I can sit all day and tell you about great things you can do in a community, but if there's no investment and no resources, you're just you have a lot of good ideas and so, so that was, to me, said, this is potentially something that will work, because most you know, you all know the data, Like most nonprofits close in the first couple years, and, yeah. And so here's a church that's willing to sustain something, I mean, that gives you the base to get something off the ground. So, so that that turned into Okay, the Church gives a, you know, pretty significant amount of money every year to Okay, members of the church also are individual donors. They give to their colleges, they give to this nonprofit, and like they felt a sense of ownership for this nonprofit that they helped start. So they become individual donors. And then once we start roasting coffee, and it sort of takes off, it just sort of all the you know, we, we reached new individual donors and family foundations. But the church, you know, became such a smaller, smaller piece of where it went from 90% now it's probably less than 5% okay. I mean, you know what we and so we, we, you know, we sell in our coffee shops. You know, over, you know, our coffee shop in Wedgewood, Houston does over half million a year in sales. You know, in our coffee roasting business is probably close to a million, if you put everything together in that so, so if you just kind of do the math, and you know, we've grown to, you know, organization that started with a couple 100,000 to, you know, closer to 4 million this year. And one of the things that that sort of has tipped that a bit is, I give a shout out to my friends who own the graduate hotel, Ben and Mary Weprin, who own AJ capital. And they, they moved into our neighborhood, and they, they're part of doing a lot of development work. So again, this shows you how partnerships work. Is they started coming to our coffee shop in winters Houston, and I don't think they knew that it was, had this, it was a social enterprise, that it was all the profits went back to do community development work. They just were looking for a good coffee shop in their neighborhood, because their buildings around. So they go there, and someone says to him, like, Do you know what this place does? And they said, Wow. Like, how do we get involved? And so we meet with them, and they say, like, what? How can we support you? It was just, it was just so obvious to me. I was like, use our coffee in your hotels, right? I mean, because, and I think a lot of business people really resonate with this what we're trying to do, because they are and they understand, like that you can use the economy for good. And so so they're like, Oh yeah, you all have an excellent product. That's why we're here. We can help in this way. And so they agree. And then so over the last year, we have a deal with the graduate hotels, and so they have our coffee all throughout the southeast and 12 hotels. So you go to any of these college towns like Athens or Oxford, and go to the graduate hotel, and you could buy Humphrey street coffee knowing that you're making an impact with the kids in South Nashville. And now we've grown our you know, we have an after school program in Napier, and now we have one over off of Harding, and then we're opening our third after school location at Woodson elementary this year. So that's kind of been our growth more so than we realized. There's a challenge in the coffee shops, like we were trying to do a shop on Broadway in partnership with the church there and and it was such a it was a real interesting challenge, because at our Wedgewood Houston shop, we have about 90% of the customers who are returning customers, and the people on Broadway, most of them aren't coming for coffee, by the way, but they're About 90% new customers, right? And so unless you can really market that and get the word out, like and, you know, it's hard to get people to even come into a coffee shop on on Broadway that does specialty coffee. So we've that one's been more of a struggle, and we're trying to revisit what the next step is with that, just to be candid, but we did open a shop in Bridgestone Arena in partnership with the Preds, where the kiosk, if you're a game or an event at Bridgestone, you can go and get Humphreys coffee there, and you'll see it. We kind of, you'll see this on the boards and stuff. And students work there. And so I really like the fact that some of our kids can work in those places downtown, because that that's really there's been a ton of development, and I don't think a lot of that benefits our kids, and so I want to be the person who uses the change of Nashville to benefit the kids are often left behind, like they live less than a mile from downtown in the government housing. Why should they not benefit when their neighborhood changes? Right? That's, that's the hope is that you can use this to empower leaders who use the change in their neighborhood to grow and become develop the skills and pathways out of poverty.
Carli 33:15
I'm super curious about, I don't know if you call them your graduates of your program. Not sure how you went from puppets to what you're doing with the 14 year olds in the roasted but the kids that have gone through your program, what do you have data on what they're doing now? Or, well, how they maybe change from the outcome of kids that chose not to go to your program?
Brian Hicks 33:36
That's a great question. We have been trying to build a kind of database of in fact, one of our previous students came back as a summer intern who was trying to put together the database. Because she came back, she said, I was so impacted by this program. I want to work somewhere in the summer. I want to come and do this with you, you know, and so we are trying to, I was just reading, you haven't read any David Brooks' stuff. There's a book called sec, the second mountain. I was reading that recently and talking about the things that move you. And I, if you just looking, I write in all my books and in the margins, I just started writing the names of all these kids that I know graduated and kind of like, because I just had the sense that I need to reconnect with those kids and start like an alumni group, you know. And so, so I can't give you all the data on it, but what I'll say is, and I think that it's something that we need to continue to do, is to track that because, because it shows the story in numbers. And as someone who's a storyteller, I think that it's good to have those so
Carli 34:37
The spins patents of the world, brain works, numbers.
Brian Hicks 34:41
Yeah, here's what I'll tell you in if you were to come to harvest standards and see what it looks like, it's sort of a zoomed in version would be, if you, if you came, you'd see Ruben, who was the kid I told you, running, coming up with all the processes and doing all technology for organization. You'll see the. Kid, Ricardo was part of our after school program, who also went to Lipscomb is now our current Green Coffee buyer, coffee roaster, and Kim, who's from Napier community, she is one of the managers at the coffee shop. And then recently we got into we realized that a lot of our work is helping kids with trauma, so kids who've dealt with adverse childhood experiences, we really understand that that's a barrier to success is trauma in people's lives. And so, so we have hired a counselor who does counseling for kids in house. And then we have, she has a couple interns. One of those interns is a former student who went through her name is Andrea, and so she works. She's gonna be with us starting this fall. And then, you know, if you go just throughout Damani, who's grad, who went to our program and graduated from Tribeca, he now helps with the roasting and production. And Elgin is another kid from the neighbor he worked here, so you would go and you realize that these kids who went through this program are now employed and running essentially every in every level of leadership, you would see these students involved in the organization, and that, to us, is really our goal. And picture of success is that raising up leaders who then run the organization, and then we sort of move out of the way, is that's and that is kind of the goal of what we do. We recognize. One of the things that happen to under resourced communities is there's this message that's taught, or at least, kind of assumed, that success means to leave the neighborhood. In fact, you'd even even hear people say they made it out. But but imagine in your neighborhood if all the leaders left, yeah, there would be a leadership vacuum and, you know, and so the neighbors wouldn't know to look out for the kid and those kind of things, like as it used to be. And so our goal is to fill that leadership vacuum with kids who have come through harvest hands and worked at Humphrey street so that they transform their own neighborhood and give back and help it to heal.
Spencer 37:03
It's a really powerful story, Brian, and the thing that I note most from your story is the original Genesis of how you all found traction was that you had a unique skill, and it was coffee roasting. And I think that's a really important thing for people that have a heart for ministry to absorb. Because when you said we were one of two places in all of Middle Tennessee, all of Nashville, that knows how to roast coffee, that's a that's a unique and special skill anybody is able to open a coffee shop and sell some coffee, and that's a tough business. A lot of times, when people are looking to make a difference, sometimes they look for what is the lowest barrier to entry for me to do something, and they may think, can I pick up trash can I do basic things that don't require any skills. And what I think is so special about your story, and part of what helped Cal Turner kind of engaged was to say, we're going to fly you to Idaho. Was that it, yeah, Sand Point Idaho, we're going to fly you to Idaho to learn how to roast coffee in a really unique way, a really unique skill, and from that, it kind of allowed you to gain traction in a lot of other places. And I just think that's a really fascinating part of the story is that it began with a really unique skill, and in probably ways that are only providential. It's just how the Lord works. Is that it turned out to be roasting coffee. I don't know that that was sitting in your mind while you were playing with puppets in a crack house. It's just how these things go. And I think there's a really important lesson, as I see that a lot in entrepreneurship is that when people think about wanting to start their own business, they default often towards thinking, what is the thing that I can do most immediately for the least amount of money? And that's often the ones where you're going to find the most competition and the least differentiation between you and other groups. And I think that's what's so powerful about your story, is that you've started with differentiation, and you've kind of done it the whole way through in the communities that you're serving and the kids that you empower and the connections that you've been able to generate, I mean, are just jaw dropping. So it's a really great story to get to know.
Brian Hicks 39:35
It's interesting that you made the observation because, because we had that skill all these coffee shops in town, when they try to get into the roasting game, would come to us and say, will you teach us like barista parlor did? And the folks who went eighth and roast, they used to come down to our basement buy coffee from us. So all these people kind of were like, there's this specialty roaster, you know? It's like in the basement of this old church who can do this thing, you know? And so that. Was, it's true. The other thing I would say about that is that a lot of people will come to me and say, We want to start a coffee cup, a coffee shop, you know, whatever. And I'll sit down with them and talk with them, and most of the time, 95% of the time, I say, don't do it. Yeah, it's for the same reason, because I'm like, how much experience you have in the industry. What do you It's like someone starting a film company that does not run a camera. Yeah? It's just like, that's a great idea, you know? It's like, no, if you have the skills or willing to do the hard work, then maybe consider it. But I just think people get into that stuff, and they like you said, it's just it was an easy way of entry, you know? Yeah.
Spencer 40:39
So we have a segment every podcast that we do called No Dumb Questions, which is an opportunity for us to be able to just ask you stuff that maybe you're just going to have to answer because you're sitting here. So it'd be awkward if you didn't answer the question. So I've got a couple for you. First, I'm not a coffee drinker. Carli is a big coffee drinker. Nice. I just have never had it connect with me for, like, why I'm gonna pick up a cup of coffee the caffeine doesn't do anything for me. So what's the whole, yeah, what's the whole deal with, like, having roasted coffee beans to begin with? Like, is it better than what I'm gonna get if I go up to, you know, even a nice store, like Whole Foods, where they've got the, you know, roasted beans, or the little grinder that's there in the store. Like, what's the what's the value?
Brian Hicks 41:24
Okay, a little nerdy.
Spencer 41:25
Okay, I'm here for it. We both wear glasses. So, yeah,
Brian Hicks 41:31
So coffee. Most people the coffee that they know, or at least that their parents had, my dad in the crystal cans of sanka, you know? Yeah, Folgers good to the last drop is a species of coffee, or it's a variety of coffee called robusta coffee that grows on low elevations and has twice the amount of caffeine. It tastes like rubber and most of it's burnt, right? Like most of the time. People say they don't like coffee. What they don't like is burnt coffee beans in the same way that if I walked into a bakery and got a loaf of bread that was like, made from a baker, but they burned it, I would hate it. Yeah. So, so what most people don't like is the carbon that's been infused in a coffee bean. Now, robusta coffee tastes bad in its essence, it can grow anywhere. It's why it's robust. It can grow low level. We're in an industry called specialty coffee, especially coffee, especially coffee, grows at higher elevations. It has to have the right climate. It grows between the two tropics. It's only places it grows. And so that coffee has less caffeine and is higher it's like buying it's like getting good grapes from a wine maker, opposed to, like, cheap grapes. Okay, and so you if you get those beans that have been careful attention to the care of them and the right cultivation and the right varieties, and then you roast those beans, not dark where you're burning them, but but lighter, then you can taste the origin of where the coffee is from. So then it goes from being wine from California versus wine versus in Willamette and wine Italy. This variety, it has it. It has the same in fact, they say that they have a certain number of receptors in your tongue, and coffee gets more of those than wine does. So So coffee treated the right way actually has amazing flavors that that don't taste like burnt coffee. So coffee from Kenya is a real distinct tomatoey flavor, and coffee from Central America tastes like really chocolatey and so what we're trying to do, and also you can process the same coffee differently, and it'll taste like fruit, or just it'll taste really clean and so, so if you understand, kind of the the way that coffee is, this is a it's agriculture, and it's and it is, how you grow it, and what you do with it influences. The other thing that is, is that a lot of people don't realize is that espresso is the espresso machines are so expensive they're like, 20 some $1,000 like our lawn mosque machines are just, they're made in Italy. They're really, there's a lot of stuff that makes them expensive. But the goal of espresso, a lot of people will say, I love the smell of coffee, but I don't like the taste. And espresso is the coffee that the way of brewing coffee to try to get it closest to how it smells. And so that's why you'll have espresso drinks and do like espresso more than coffee. So if you can get that. And then, in fact, I drink Americanos, which is like watered down espresso. It it pulls out the fats and the oils that other kind of brewing methods don't and so. So I think that the understanding of those things about coffee helps to least open the gateway to wow. And then, and then, if you so, so if you were to come, and I would invite you to to come to our rosary, we could do a tasting or cupping with you, and you and I would then what our team would do is you would taste four or five different. Coffees, and then you would be, oh, this does taste different. You know, this doesn't taste like all the other coffee I've had. And that's how
Carli 45:07
be my dream activity. Yeah,
Spencer 45:08
Let's do it. If I drink, if I bring some creamer from Publix. Are you all gonna, like, throw me out of the room? Of like, is that, like, super taboo? Is coffee only drink black?
Brian Hicks 45:17
You that you can take, buy a couple bags and take it home and do that
Carli 45:22
Literally gonna be my question, though, is you run these coffee shops? And I'm all about whatever you like is great, but this explosion of milk choice, yeah, is just like a conundrum to me, yeah? And it's like there's the menu of milks at regular coffee shops now is as long as the types of drinks. So, yeah, tell me about that.
Brian Hicks 45:45
That's a good question. I think all I can explain to you is you can blame CrossFit. Like we started, my wife and I started doing CrossFit. At some point, we don't do it anymore. We just run and my wife does hot yoga. But there was this kind of shift away from, like, milk somewhere in the last 10 years, where people started eating paleo and this kind of diet, and people realize, like, milk is not the best thing for you. I mean, it just like sort of became accepted from a lot of folks and so, so what are the alternatives, right? And so what happened is for the baristas who make coffee, so a barista makes the espresso drinks, they would try these different soy lattes and oat milk and almond milk, and they realize this one has the better texture of this one goes better in the drinks. And so, so they were trying to get away from people who can't drink milk, you know, lactose intolerant, or they're just their diet. They just cut it out because they don't think it's good, and they're trying to find an alternative to that. And so the differences all sort of came out of like, well, soy milk really isn't that good for you. You know, we the more we know it's not good. It causes this. And or almond milk, people are allergic to almonds, and so now oat milk is the thing I know, darling. It's like, oat milk is like, but you know what's next, right? I mean, there's so I think it does kind of go back to, it's, in some ways, a trend, but I think there's part of it that will stay because of the the movement away from, uh, consuming lactose and those kind of things that that people still want a latte and so,
Spencer 47:29
so you a black coffee drinker? Is that? How you do this black coffee
Brian Hicks 47:32
I'm like, really boring. You would think that someone who has started coffee shops would be like, Oh, try all these drinks. I get the same americano
Spencer 47:43
Every time, just black, no sweetener, no milk, straight
Brian Hicks 47:46
Like I usually get, like a double or quad American that's like either two shots or four and with less water in it and and that's how I like it. And in fact, that's how I sort of will determine when I travel, if I like a coffee shop or not, it's like, how good is your Americana? You know, it's a baseline.
Spencer 48:07
So I can just imagine you, yeah, I can imagine you walking into a coffee shop, just an unassuming guy coming in, and it's like, you're a coffee sommelier. I mean, you're coming in being like, these are some Arabica grapes or coffee beans or Robusta or whatever it is. So, yeah, that's that's pretty awesome. I got one more for you. So most nonprofit leaders have amazing hearts, and I care a great deal for them. I meet with a lot of them, sure, most all of them are terrible business people, just terrible business people. Bless their hearts, right? And South, we're going to say that so you've come in and were able to bridge from buying a crack house in a really tough part of Nashville into sitting across from Cal Turner and having your coffee in the predators arena. I mean, that's unbelievable. Where did you get your business acumen, and how might you speak specifically to other people that are inspired by your story, that are so intimidated by business? How might you speak to that?
Brian Hicks 49:13
Oh, man, that's a good question. So I grew up. My mother was a teacher, and my dad worked for the government, and my mother made more money than my dad, who works for the government. But I grew up in a neighborhood that's similar to like Belmont here, but they bought a house before the neighborhood changed, right? It's called chevy chase in Lexington, Kentucky, and everybody around us was very wealthy, except for us, and there's four boys in our family, so at an early age, one of the things you learn in a neighborhood with wealthy neighbors is that you gotta learn how to hustle. So like when it snowed, I was shoveling the snow. There was leaves, I was raking the leaves, or I was, I was a paper what was a bad paperboard? Because I would always talk to the ladies too long, you know, and, but, but, so at school, I was selling candy to kids in high school. Know, I mean, so there's this sort of entrepreneurial, like, like, life story that happened that that I have to recognize and give credit to, something that I really resented as a kid, that I think, as a person of faith, I'd say that God used that to prepare me for something I had no clue about later on. You resented, I resented being the kid who in the neighborhood didn't have cool shoes, okay, you know, like, or had to get go to the thrift store to get close, you know, like, different, yeah. I mean, we have a car. High School van was called the turret on wheels. You know, it was like, it's the worst car. And like, You were lucky for the thing to start, you know, it was like an old Toyota van with the engine on the inside. I mean, it's a mess, you know, and my brother would laugh if you heard this, but, but so, so that kind of life experience, I think, is part of the other thing is, I realized early on and doing the work, well, I told you the story about coming here from Louisville, that that a lot of leaders think that their passion will get them there. Well, I was passionate with 150 kids with no resources, and that didn't work. And so there's a humbling that goes with with sometimes things not going like you expect, that you take a step back and you say, what needs to be different here for the senior work? Because I care so much about the work and the mission that if I do not learn these skills in the business world, I will not be able to accomplish this mission that I feel like I've been created to do. And so that drive then put me around people at a place like Brentwood Methodist Church, where I have on my board the former president, CEO of Ben and Jerry's right? And so I have people like that who are business people. AJ, capital folks who moved in our neighborhood, they're friends, and they're always willing to help. And truthfully, I've actually found my business friends more willing to help at times than my church community folks who throughout the city, I'll go out try to get these churches to use our coffee, and they're like, Oh, we don't have it. We can't afford it. But the businesses are people, and they understand the the use of economy to make a difference. Yeah, and so. And so I've been really moved by that, and so it's made me want to learn more about business. So the people that I meet with on a regular basis, like Cal Turner and I meet every month. He's a mentor. I meet with my friend Bruce, who I told you, he also ran kaboom is a nonprofit. They built playgrounds and ran Ben and Jerry's. I mean, the dude brilliant ran wild oats grocery. It's like the Forrest Gump of business. And so he was also Bon Jovi's manager. Like, and so to tell you, like, and so people like that who have these business experiences. In fact, the guy who's the Chair of the Board of Bridgestone Corporation, reached out to me last week, and he says, I get coffee at your shop, and I'm just interested in giving back. And I'm like, I'll send messages to churches to like and they won't respond. I mean, I don't mean to be caught at the churches like, I'm just saying there's a difference in the way that these business folks behave in the world they use like skill sets and and results matter. And so if we are talking about making an impact in a community, but not having integrity with that work, not following through on it, I promise you, those business folks are not going to continue to continue to invest in what we do. Yeah, like, Good Money Follows good money, right? And my friend Cal said, you say, right? Too much, by the way. I think I really do believe that is that is that I've learned that without some and I would tell you, the more I learned about business, the less I know I mean, as we scaled up as a company. Our struggle with cash reserves has been real. I mean, I'm like, oh, yeah, it's only half of what it was before it's like, because our budget's twice as big, you know, and so things that are I've had to learn the hard way and, you know, but at least I have some mentors who are like, Oh, this is part of business, instead of me just freaking out and not having any clue
Carli 54:00
Part of your story that I appreciated right off the bat, you told us that Courtney co founded all of this with you, and that her soap actually kind of kept your coffee afloat there for a minute. Yeah, Spence and I talk all the time about it takes a really special union to be an entrepreneurial marriage, and there's a lot of this feeling of dependence on one another, dependence on the Lord, while you're trying to build it, you're holding hands, just trying to make everything work when you're not sure what the future is. So how has that worked out for you? Is she still part of everything that you're doing?
Brian Hicks 54:37
Thanks for asking that. I think sometimes a lot of people talk about their spouse and just kind of offer flattering terms, but when I say that about Courtney, I'm 100% serious that without Courtney, harvest hands would not exist like she is. She's brilliant and here, and she has a different skill set than that. I I'm like, an idea minute person. You. Courtney is, if you ever study the Enneagram, she's an Enneagram three, so she's an achiever, right? So I come up with an idea. She's like, we're gonna get this done, and we're not gonna get it done, but we're gonna be the best. I mean, she was a college athlete in a d1 school. She was a runner, and so she has this work ethic that says, if someone works this much, I'm gonna work twice as hard. And so, so no one can outwork her. And so when you have someone like that combined with someone who's a visionary, who feels this real kind of vocational, missional calling to something, then it takes those gifts and puts ends like, it's dynamic, right? It really does say like, Oh, these two, these two gifts often don't exist in the same person. And so if you put them together, what you can accomplish is, like, there's an, you know, X times what really you do by yourself. And so, so she's and now she doesn't even work for the nonprofit. She works for Belmont, as she's a Associate Director of, I always get this wrong, but I think it's a grant, associate director grants, grant at Belmont and the Creative Arts Collective. So now she they got a Belmont get a grant from the lily Foundation, where she oversees those grants and the relationships with the folks they're giving money to. So she always says, Now I don't give away I don't have to go get money. I'm giving away money. So they're giving away money to folks who are trying to use the arts for to spread Christian faith. So so she's doing that work now. And so she's, I mean, she's already gotten moved up in that organization in six months. She's, you know, gone from a coordinator to associate director. I mean, her track record speaks for itself. And so we're very fortunate to have her start that. And so I really do believe that that she is an equal part in this. And unfortunately, I people always point to me, you know, like, I think that like that. I really sometimes like that, and maybe I just talk too much, and they're like, you'll come talk to us, but like, I think that she, she really has the ability to work in a way that that actually gets results. So
Carli 57:11
I love that answer.
Spencer 57:14
Well, Brian, I think what I take away from here in this story is, first, you have a gift for storytelling as well, so that the only skill that was present here was not just roasting coffee, but your ability to communicate the message and take us along a story that has a lot of twists and turns is Just amazing, and how relatable you have made the transformation of Nashville, rather than villainizing it and saying, You know what, we're just going to be really angry and upset. There's room for that. But it also is you reframing that into a place of saying, How can we have this be a redemptive story at the same time, I think it's been a fascinating piece for you and Courtney to have brought to Tennessee, and it pulls together all of my favorite components of a story. It's entrepreneurial, but it's for the Kingdom. It brings together the really successful with those that have nothing at all, and brings them together in a community in the same under the same roof, buying coffee together. And so I just love that now when I go to the predators stadium or anywhere else that I'm going to be recognizing your brand and for what you're doing for Nashville. So thank you for being here with us today, telling us your story so well, and for the kids that you're impacting, it's really spectacular.
Brian Hicks 58:54
Appreciate it. Yeah. Thank you. Bye.
