1294: JavaTwist: From Side Hustle to Coffee Revolution with Steve Schuyler

Robert Plank 0:01 Steve, hey, we're here, and we're back with Mr. Steve Schuyler, and he is the CEO, the owner, the founder ofJava twist. Now Java twist is an innovator in the beverage industry. They combine cold brewed coffee with fruit juices. They're based in Pewaukee, Wisconsin, and Steve works 80 hours a week. He pursues his dreams. He does the hard things. And we need to hear about this message, because many times people say, Oh, I had to wake up early today, or I got cut off in traffic today. Mr. C will say, Hey, you haven't seen nothing. If you have this dream, if this goal, if you want to put in the hard hours and do the smart things and have strategy. Then Steve is here to tell us about his amazing company and his amazing work ethic and his amazing mindset. His website is Java twist.com so Mr. Steve, glad to be speaking with you. Good to be speaking with you too. Robert, wonderful. And so did I set the table about, right do we? I get a good idea of what you're about. And I mean, what has you fired at? What has you so focused and passionate these days?

Steve Schuyler 1:08 So for many years, I'm not a young man anymore. For many years, I worked in this just in a company, and for no reason whatsoever, during COVID, when the world shut down, I lost my job after all those years working for somebody else. I mean, I have always worked two and three jobs. I've always had a strong work ethic, but I realized that I was always following someone else's dreams. I wasn't doing anything for me that I wanted to do, that I was passionate about, and and some of my jobs that I've had, I've been a barista for a long time, part time barista, and so in 2019 I launched, before the world shut down, I had launched this little thing we call Java twist with One flavor. And I was like, Well, I'm going to just start doing something maybe that I enjoy, that may be a future for me. Well, then the world shut down. And I was like, wow, what do I do now? I hustled. I did everything I could do. And so now I think about following my dreams. I found a job that I still pay my bills for my family. That's my 40 hour nine to five, whatever you want to call it. But the rest of the day, I break my days up into two different distinct days. There's a lot of people know the Colby Bryant kind of work ethic, right? Where you separate days up into scheduled and I I break my day up into three days, two working days and one basically, rest, right? Sleep, body recovery. Get your mentality right, but the other two, the first two in the morning, I wake up pretty much like clockwork, 530 in the morning, six o'clock if I sleep in a little bit, and then I go to work right away at shower, get going out the door, I gotta get to work. And that's when I'm following my Java twist dreams. I go. We have a brick and mortar store where we actually go and we produce the product. I hand make all we hand make nine beverages. Now we still hand bottle them. I label them by hand. We go to farmers markets and festivals, and then I do all of that, and then I have a second shift job where then I go to my second shift job, and that's when I pay my bills. And so for me, mentality of, I'm still paying my bills for my family. I'm a family man. I have a wife and a daughter, and I have bills to pay just like everybody else. I don't want to neglect that. I'm not trying to put that aside and just say, You know what come hell or high water? We're just going to forget about that, right? We have to still be accountable and be responsible as adults. But the other side of that is I don't want to ever say that I woulda, coulda, shoulda. I wanna leave it all on the table and do everything that I can to follow my dreams and really say at the end of the day if I fail that I tried and I did the best and I came through a learning process from that. I mean, there is so much that I have learned through this process, and I'm a different man today than when I started Java twist in 2019 and even if it's just making me better, but I know I have made a product and and really I that's a bigger thing. But I view Java twist as a value proposition for my customers, I'm giving them a flavor adventure in a bottle that they never have had before with coffee and fruit didn't exist before us, and really that's. That's a driving passion for me. It's their joy when they take the first try of Java twist. Nobody's haven't had it before. Coffee and lemonade didn't exist. Now, we got lime, pineapple, cranberry, we got all these flavors, and you take a sip of that. And to see their joy and to see the light bulb kind of go on like I understand now that that brings me so much joy, and that's the value proposition I'm talking about. I'm giving the customer a crazy experience, a crazy, awesome experience with the beverage, and then they give me, in return, the joy and the satisfaction as the manufacturer for that product. So that's a little bit about my work ethic and kind of the drive behind my family, why I do this and what? What's my goal for Java twist boy, we'd love to be Coca Cola, right? I mean, wouldn't so, I mean, I hope that answers your question, and hope that kind of sets the groundwork for the rest of the conversation.

Robert Plank 5:59 It doesn't. There's so many interesting threads. I'm like, Oh, do I? Do I pursue that? Or do a process pursue that? And it's great to hear about how, because there's like, two extremes, basically, right? There's either like, well, I'm resigned to my nine to five and I'll, I'll play it safe and settle for my steady paycheck. And that might be great for a while, but then when you're in your later years, you won't be known for anything, right? You won't have built anything. You'll have built it for someone else. And if that's the life path you want to be on, then many people do it, and that's great. But if you want more, then the alternative is not necessarily, to drop that. And like, pursuing your dreams can be multi prong, right? It can be strategic. And there's that, that tendency to say, Well, I'm working the nine to five. I don't have enough hours to build the business or or let your ego in the way and say, Oh, I'll go all in. Well, there's, there's so much time to be freed up from not watching TV, from not sitting around the house, right? You can be productive, and you can have your cake and eat it too. It does take some taking care of yourself and time management and and focus and stress management, all these other things. But it can be done, and it seems like you have done it. And I'm just, I'm amazed whenever food and beverage is involved, because that just seems like a low margin, many times thankless, right? People expected, people expect a Coca Cola can to be perfect every time, like, if you drink Coca Cola for 50 years, and there was one can out, not even bad, but just didn't taste quite right. You'd be done forever. It's just like, you need to be 100% perfect. Or it's like, I mean, people can't. You need to, like, formulate, right? You don't want people to, like, get sick or die. It's like, unthinkable. It's some scary stuff. And so food and beverage, you have to be, like, extremely on the mark. And so it almost seems like you'd be crazy to create a new beverage just because of everything that's involved, as far as, like, the perfectionism required and like, How did this even happen? Like, this idea of the mixing fruit and coffee, it seems right up there with, like, the first person to drink milk from a cow like who even imagine? Who the thought of something so crazy? So how did you even come up with such a crazy idea?

Steve Schuyler 8:07 So the beginning, uh, story is crazy. I, like I told you. Beginning, I worked two and three jobs for a long time. I was a part time barista while I was working nine to five. You know, I was a part time barista to help pay our bills, right? And so, because my wife didn't work. So my perspective, I as a barista, we are indeed drinks. And I was in everything from the Big Green Lady starbucks i was in those coffee shops to all the small mom and pops coffee shops that were out there. And we would be R and D and drinks all the time, all all the time, right? Well, I was running a coffee shop here in town and and I was kind of the director. I wasn't the boss, but I was, you know, right there. I'm basically running it. And we, everybody knows what an Arnold Palmer is Arnold Palmer United States. Drink is iced tea and lemonade. It's very popular product in the US. I mean, everybody knows what it is. They order it. They order the dirty Palmer, right with alcohol. But Arnold Palmer is very popular. We were serving Arnold Palmer's in the coffee shop that I was running, and it was in the summer, and I ran out iced tea. Just ran out right, sold out of it, and I didn't have anything else. And so I said, Well, what I had cold brew coffee? And I said, Well, why don't I try this cold brew coffee with this lemonade, see what it tastes like. It was at first. It was really awkward, and because I thought it would be equal, equal ratio. Well, I messed around with it for a little bit, and I then served it, and I fell in love with it. And my customers, I put it on the menu just to see what would happen, and I put it on the menu, and those people that were willing to try it, man, they were blown away at the flavor. Yeah, and it just that idea, well, that launched, just that one idea in that one small coffee shop, launched me on this journey, and I couldn't let it go. I kind of walked away from the coffee world because it was, I was working seven days a week and I wasn't getting any time off, and I'm like, I gotta at least take one day off, maybe a little half a day. And so I kind of was like, okay, so I, I walked away. But I I couldn't let it go. I couldn't let this drink go. So I started making it at home. I actually started pressing my all my own fruit with lemons and everything like that, just to try to make it the fresh. I realized really quickly that Lemonade was pretty simple and easy to make, juice, water and sugar. It's not very complicated, right? So don't reinvent the wheel. So I found a really good lemon juice, and then I took my cold brew and I bottled it well. At that old, early onset, I didn't know what the shelf life was. I'm not a manufacturer at that point. I don't know anything about science other than just going through high school and college. So I'm like, I gotta figure this out. So I went took a class, and because I had people asking me for the product, and I'm like, Well, I can't sell it to you, because I don't know. And so friends and family were asking me for this drink, and I was drinking it. And so I went to this class, and I said, Okay, if I do anything, I'm just going to launch, launch one flavor. But right away, when I started with lemon and coffee, I realized that fruit, so coffee is the seed of a fruit. A lot of people don't realize that coffee is actually the seed of a cherry, red, ripe coffee cherry, and it's the seed of it. So why wouldn't fruit go with fruit? That's kind of the thought process. So I said, Well, if lemon works, I wonder what other what other fruit juices might work? So we started messing around. I mean, lemon and lime and pineapple now, and cranberry. I initially, I tried all sorts of different flavors. I mean, I have, you name it now, I have probably tried whatever you're thinking about. I have probably tried it to make it work, to see what it would taste like. I've even tried some weird concoctions, but that's kind of the the baseline story that that my origin story as it were. If, if that answers your question,

Robert Plank 12:33 yeah, you're a mad scientist, basically, right? You say, you say, well, there is this one happenstance. We ran out of this. So we tried that. And then you said, well, well, now that's the the kernel, the seed of an idea, as it were. And then you said, Well, let me try all these different mixtures, concoctions, and then let me go back to that foundational knowledge and take a class and figure out what I don't know I don't know. And that way there's no excuses, right? Because many times someone might say, Oh, well, I invented this drink and but I can't sell it. I can't multiply it. Can't manufacture it. It's just little humble, oh me. And it's like, well, then you won't get it out there, right? You won't actually get the marketing and the press that's required to kind of make this thing grow and get attention. And so what has it grown to? Like you say you started with the one flavor, and like what happened after that?

Steve Schuyler 13:24 So I initially bootstrapped the business. And a little bit about my nine to five was I worked in the garage door industry, and so I would go work for a garage door company, and then put a garage door in on the side for a friend or a family member, took the money put that into Java twist, so I didn't take any of my budget for my family. I told my wife, I promised my wife I wasn't going to take a dime of our money. So I took the money from that side job of a garage door, and I put it into Java twist. So we launched the one flavor I would literally go buy a case of of bottles, and then I would hand Peel and Stick labels and and I bought, I don't know what it was, 100 labels. I didn't go a lot. And that very first farmers market, we went to a very first farmers market after I got certified, and I had to pay for all of that and and go to this class like I told you about, because this is a ready to drink shelf stable product. I had to have machinery specifically designed to make that happen. There's nothing on a small scale. Everything is large scale. Think of big a big bottling operations. There's no small bottling operations. So I had to take a page out of the beer industry to make it happen. I have these kettles now. They're about nine gallons. That's what I started with. I found one on like a Facebook marketplace. I bought one kettle. I did one case at a time. I took the money and I went to the market and I and I sold that case. Right? Eight, whatever it was that one case, then the next week, I took the money that I made and I did it again, and I did it again. Well, now fast forward from 2019 when I launched that obviously we had to go through COVID. That's a whole another story. I'll explain that if you want. But now we have nine beverages. We have our own brick and mortar store. So I have, I have seven coffee with fruit flavor combinations. We go through them, lemon, the original coffee and lemonade. We have a lime, which is kind of like key lime pie with coffee. I have pineapple juice with coffee. Very islandy vibe. Cranberry, because we're in Wisconsin, it's sweet, it's tart, it's coffee, it's it's a wild cranberry crack. A lot of my customers call it. We do an apple which is a honey crisp apple juice with the coffee, very smooth and mellow, really fall vibe. Very good, hot and cold. We do two zero sugar flavors. Now we're using monk fruit in in these two we use the original lemon and then a cranberry with with the monk fruit. While I was on this journey, some people don't drink coffee, right? You don't have customers if they're not coffee drinkers. But more, more than that, Mom and Dad was coming up to the farmers market, and they had little Johnny or Susie with them, right their their son or daughter. And I didn't have anything for the kids to drink, we launched this thing called Chocolate lemonade, and it's like lemonade with a little kiss of chocolate. And now I have a blueberry lemonade. And we're going to be launching more flavors in the non coffee line, because a lot of our customers are asking for that. So really, from one beverage now to nine beverages, we still hand to them. We still use the kettles, but I have six of them now, so I can produce a lot more. And we're in our own space, which is huge. I mean, I can go in there and work anytime before. When I started, I was in a Commissary Kitchen. You were sharing space with other artisans, so you'd always have to be on their schedule, and you'd have to book it well in advance. You know, it was a little bit like, how do I do this with my other work? And so being able to go to our own store. It's Java twist people that can actually come and walk in and they can buy our product and sample it. And then we still do we still do farmers markets, we do festivals, we do fairs, we do events, right? So anything and everywhere we can go and get our name out. That's what we do, I can ship the product all over the country. I've had requests to ship it all over the world, but that's really expensive, and so I don't do that. I've just stayed here in the continental United States. But from our standpoint, I mean, there is no other product we are unique in the marketplace, and that coffee with fruit didn't exist, and now it does, via Java twist. And so that is how we are unique and how we stand out. Now it's hard. It's very hard because it's not like I invented a soda or a cola, and I everybody knows what cola should taste like, obviously, Coca Cola and Pepsi and RC and all these colas. I didn't just reinvent the wheel. I created a new one. So we have to sample because I say cranberry juice with coffee. Nobody knows what that tastes like unless you've had it. You understand what that actually tastes like. A lot of people come up to the table and are like, ah, that doesn't sound very good. And then they try it, and they're blown away. And so you I have to sample every single day, every every booth, everything we set up, we always sample, because I don't want you to buy something that you don't like. So it's a no like and the trust, right? I want you to know who we are like it, right? And then you trust me to make it so that's, that's our business model.

Robert Plank 19:05 Well, very nice. You're an innovator and a problem solver, and you're so right that it off just first impression. It does sound weird, and it's like, well, if you mix it at home, and you didn't know, like, what the right pineapple juice with coffee and the right ratio and all that, if you did just mix it half, possibly, of course, it would taste weird and like it was a mishmash. But because it's the special formulation, you try it out, it's something new. I mean, how weird is it's cola. Anyway, it's like, why is it, why is it brown? Why is it fizzy? Why is it like, sugary and syrupy, like it's even, you know, anything that is unknown to you, it is weird until you try it. And what's great about your story is there's just kind of like, all these small wins, right? All these base hits you say, Well, I figured out the Facebook marketplace, I get the kettle, I figured out the Commissary Kitchen. So, like, that was an excuse, and you and you, and it's What's also great about what you said in there. Is, like, you have a handle on money, right? A lot of people don't even, like, make much of a budget, or they don't have this kind of multi step strategy. Like you, like you say, well, this job will work. I'll put this in the business so that way it won't just be, it won't just be, like, stealing money from myself again and again. You say, Hey, I have real plan, and I know what my numbers are, and I know what I what success looks like, and I know that if I get to this level, if I sell this case at the farmers market, then I'll do this other part of it. And we're limited on time, so we only have a few minutes. But I definitely want to get into the difficulties, because when you talk to these, these people that do like food and beverage. They have a similar work ethic as you right? They say, if there's some farmers market 50 miles away, if there's some no charity event, or if there's some school or something like, I'm there, I'll go set up a booth. And I'm always impressed by that work ethic, because, like, my town has a farmers market every Saturday, and I walk through, and sometimes you see the people with their like, jars or something, or they made something homemade. And if you wonder, like, how profitable that is, right? You wonder if they're really selling any kind of units. So it's always interesting to hear about where people go wrong, or you've gone right, or you've struggled, so especially in COVID times, but also all the time, like, Where have you really been, maybe stressed, panicked, not sure where to go on and in this problem solving mode.

Steve Schuyler 21:26 So scaling the businesses is really where I'm at right now, and that's the problem for us. There's very little margin right now in in our product, in order to compete, there is no other product like ours, but everybody compares us to a another beverage, right? So if I went in and actually charged what I should for our beverage, nobody would buy it, because they wouldn't see the value there. I can just go buy something another beverage, right? So I have to be in line with beverages overall. Even though they're not a there's not a competitor there, I still have to compete in that range. And so for me, the margins are paper thin, and the way people grow is in the beverage space is not just grassroots, which is really where I'm at, I have to grow grassroots, one store, one customer at a time, and eventually, hopefully, if I can stay in the business long enough, we keep winning customers one sip at a time, and that feeds into bigger accounts, more production, and that means more margin, right? So the more volume I do, the more money that I can make. I have not paid myself since 2019 so I am really hurting right now, stuck right with how to get over that hump and the way we've gone back to this year, we're going back to grassroots. We were really aggressive last year, and we try to do bigger events, and those didn't pan out the way that we thought the market was soft last year. It was just a bad year overall. And so this year we're going back to our roots and saying, okay, farmers markets, one customer at a time. And and really, capital is hard, right? Unless you go out on a limb and take a lot of debt. I'm in some debt because of our lease of our space. So I'm in that struggle bus right now, Rob and and for me, the way I see out of it is, is collaboration. We're collaborating with the cookie company. They're coming to our space now to help us so we're trying to think outside the box, not just pigeon hole in ourselves. I'm open to any and all conversations about how we grow as business and and how we can continue to give value to the customers via this beverage. So really, I think it's problem solving 101, every day I try to solve three things in my business. I try to focus on the rule of three, which, every day I want to do three things, even if I have a crazy schedule at work or something else is going on with my family, I want to do three things every day that push my business down the road. And if you think like that, and obviously there's a lot of days when I do like 20 or 30, you know what I mean, but even on the really days that you're not motivated, if you do three things, even if it's answering an email or or putting up a Facebook post or something like that, to get your business continue to go forward, you would be amazed, in in six months, in 12 months, what what that is, and what that looks like. You go from standing here to all the way down the road and you're like you. Well, how did I get here? And then you just think, think back, and you said, Well, I did this, I did this, I did this. And it just baby steps to get you where you want to go. I'm in it for the long term. You can't be thinking short term profit. These venture capitalists, they want their money back right away. ROI on their business, right? I want to be able to show massive profits. Well, that's not how most businesses, how most businesses start. You don't get venture capitalist money from Coca Cola. Coca Cola doesn't buy you, or look at buying you until you're telling ten million worth of business a year. I'm not even close. So they wouldn't I'm not even a blip on their radar. And so I have to do the little things to get my business there, and that takes time. And so you just gotta be in it to win it. And so that's where I am.

Robert Plank 25:50 Well, that's a great mindset and a great message that no one else will do this hard work for you. You have to prove yourself on those days. You doubt yourself, you tell yourself it's a test, right? How bad do you want it? And are you going to be one of these people that gives up? Well, that is a choice. Or you can be someone that says, Well, hey, I'm having kind of a slow day, a down day, but what are those three things I can do to move my business forward, to have kind of like a tortoise and the hair effect, right? You say, Well, even if I have all these down days, it adds up over time, but then I have those days when I'm just really rocking and rolling and I get 20 things done, and you make me think, Steve, about any time I failed with a project, it's because I ignored it, neglected it for months, right? That's what really kills you, is by taking your attention away from something, and then you you get the the regret and that bad feeling and even thinking about it, and then it just kind of, you're in the death spiral, versus like, Hey, I what you focus on grows, and I'll just keep on putting this little bit into it every day. And, man, you're on quite a journey, and I'm rooting for you, and I'm excited for you, and I'm here to help you. Right? You're even, even if you have a million things going on, you say, hey, I can take the time I can take 2030, minutes to come on Robert Plank podcast, because you're looking for these people that will help you in your journey, in these small ways. We'll get on Apple podcasts. We'll get on YouTube. And so how can others help you? You have this website, Java, twist.com, and what should they buy? And where will you be physically like, what's the next kind of like, you know, physical location area where you'll be,

Steve Schuyler 27:26 well, we're in southeastern Wisconsin on a regular basis at farmers markets all summer long. They really hit kick off in May. So we're we have a couple events here in April, indoor markets that we're doing. They can come to our store. They can visit us online. On a bigger scale, if somebody sees this, like, I can make a specialty drink for anybody, right? So if you had Steve, I want you to make a drink for me. And I can do that. I mean, you're like, I wonder what this would taste like, or that would taste like, because I have this now history of of these crazy drinks, and we even touch on the awards that we've won, but I've put my products up to the test and sent them to awards and winning awards, so we have 20 plus awards now. So from that standpoint, I've had people reach out to me and say, Hey, can you make me a beverage? And we've started those conversations so we can do that. I can. I mean, I have had people say, Hey, listen, we'd love to invest in your company. I mean, all of that, if somebody is on a higher level, wants to help us take it to really the big box retailers and really nationwide, not just worldwide. Reach out. I mean, you can get a hold of me. My cell phone number is on the website. My email is on the website. I mean, those are direct links to me. I answer my phone every day, and I'm happy to have a conversation with anybody about business. As far as locally, support local we're trying to really blow up in southeastern Wisconsin, right? We want to really win our market so that it just starts to, you know, you build the iceberg from underneath, and then you just slowly let it grow. And so we really do a lot of local stuff. I'm also doing stuff around the state to try to win other areas of our state, not just southeastern Wisconsin. So we go to Madison, we go to Green Bay, we go to Central Wisconsin. So we're all over Wisconsin at some form or another, all year long. And we do these events, you know. And so we just try to continue to get the word out via social media and engage with me on that. On those platforms, I'm on YouTube now, just like you are YouTube and Tiktok and LinkedIn, right? We've talked about that already. So any of those platforms I am really we wear a lot of hats. That's my hats. I wear a lot of hats, right? Not only making the beverage. Message, but social media and doing stuff like this, trying to constantly promote our business, they can find me on any one of those platforms,

Robert Plank 30:10 very nice, and one person at a time, like you said. And so that website we said is Java, dash, twist.com, and the phone number that you mentioned is 414-469-9173, if you're one of these people that Steve mentioned, if you say, Hey, can you make this flavor? I've got this crazy idea. If you're an investor, if you have an event, if you're someone that you think needs to be speaking with Steve, or Steve needs to be speaking with you, then make that happen. And on YouTube, that URL is youtube.com/drink, Java twist, at the very least, go there and subscribe. And then we said that Steve is on LinkedIn. That last name is S, C, H, U, Y, L, E, R. Mr. Steve is the CEO of Java twist, and he just has this crazy plan to change the world, one person at a time, to combine fruit juice with coffee. And you make me think, Steve, like, I've had like, blueberry flavored coffee before, like with like the beans, the grounds themselves are flavored So, and it's like a blueberry muffin with your coffee, right? So it's not such a crazy idea, when you think about it. And on Java twist, you can place an order. There's the product catalog, there's mixer recipes, there's reviews. You can find out what you need to know. Steve's email is Java twist llc@gmail.com, like we said, he's on Facebook, LinkedIn, on Instagram, it's Java twist. And on YouTube, it's drink Java twist. And before I let you go, Mr. Steve, it's time for the last part of the show, the scary part where I try to stump you, I try to put you on the spot by asking for a quote or lesson that has served you in your adventure. So what comes to mind for a quote or lesson?

Steve Schuyler 31:56 So in college, my professor that I learned from, he said, If you want to be great, Steve, serve, and I have tried to do that in every area of my life. I want to be great. I want to leave a legacy for my family. I'll leave a legacy in my church, I want to leave a legacy with other people that I'm coming with, that were before, that are with me now, and that are behind me, and I view that as service through service. So be great serve. And that's really what my heartbeat is with Java. Twist,

Robert Plank 32:46 what a message, if you want to be great, serve. It's not about you, it's about them. And if Steve's message excites you, if his concept excites you, that is Java. Dash, twist.com, try the lime. Try the pineapple, lemon, Apple cranberry chocolate. Try these mixes of fruit juice and coffee. It'll change your life. It'll change the world. And thank you, Mr. C for showing up, stopping by, inspiring us, entertaining us with some amazing stories. I really appreciate it.

Steve Schuyler 33:16 Thank you, Mr. Robert, nice to talk to you. All right.