YouSaid · the spoken record

Travis Boersma

lines on the record: 113
first: 2023-06-26
most recent: 2023-06-26
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Travis Borzma, co-founder, along with his late brother Dane, of Dutchbros. Like a thought experiment, and I know there are going to be people who might hunt me down for this, but could you make the argument that America is now a better espresso country, like better at espresso drinks than Italy? I know. I know. I'm gonna get, I know.”
2023-06-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dutch Bros. Coffee: Travis Boersma · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“At the best of your ability. That's how I like to look at this life that we get to live. I'm the luckiest guy to ever live, I feel like.”
2023-06-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dutch Bros. Coffee: Travis Boersma · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Let's put it this way the struggle is real for all of us no matter where you are and what you do and so the grind is part of it but when opportunity being prepared to meet that's where luck lives and you know this life isn't fair and you know the loss of my brother I probably learned the greatest lesson out of and realizing that you know I don't get to control everything You know, I use this idea of like life has a destination, the river has a destination, it's the ocean and if you look at it, you know, you can get a kayak and a helmet and an oar and navigate your way or you could be a log and let it take you where a may or you can fight it and swim upstream and exhaust yourself. And if you're able to use the resources that you've been given and you can step outside, walk downstream, see what lies ahead and try to plan for it.”
2023-06-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dutch Bros. Coffee: Travis Boersma · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And it comes back to providing opportunities for the people. I mean, you can earn six digits on just one store when you get to a given community, drive your stake in the ground. And so I love that we can have those opportunities for people to climb into those seats. And we have an infrastructure to support them with it's really us doing the best we can with what we have, where we are with everybody.”
2023-06-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dutch Bros. Coffee: Travis Boersma · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I still feel like we're small. For me, well, yes, there's this wealth and there's all this money and all that stuff. I'm just a regular dude, man. And I believe that you never arrive until you depart.”
2023-06-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dutch Bros. Coffee: Travis Boersma · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, Dan and I from the early stages always wrestled with is it better to franchise? Is it better to be company owned? But eventually, it just made better sense to morph into company own stores and provide these regional operator opportunities to the farm league or the bench that we have that's developed. We've got 320 qualified operators that aren't in those capacities yet that have more than four and a half years of experience today.”
2023-06-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dutch Bros. Coffee: Travis Boersma · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, we have a nice blend. And so, you know, coffee is still the backbone of our business. I think our number one drink as far as hot beverages goes is like a golden eagle”
2023-06-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dutch Bros. Coffee: Travis Boersma · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, they were so like, we don't like the idea that you're just serving it in a cup. And we're almost hesitant to continue to go forward with you guys, but you're doing so much volume. And we're really interested in the volume that you're doing. So we went round and round and we were like, well, if we can't come to a better agreement to where you guys give us a better price point, we do promos together. We figure out ways to work together here, then we're going to probably need to do our own. And so we did. And we're nervous about it and we didn't want it to be the same as Red Bull. We wanted to have its own identity.”
2023-06-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dutch Bros. Coffee: Travis Boersma · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it's hard to believe how the market in the industry has changed over the course of time. But we ended up doing a product that was a frozen beverage like a Grenita, but better. We called it brain freeze in the early days, and this was kind of the segue to colder beverages, blended beverages, and really something that played a critical role in our growth. And as we grew into Northern California, our franchisee down there, Chris Rezner, we were offering Red Bull. And he started taking Red Bull and putting different flavors from Tarani syrups in the Red Bull and pouring them over ice. And that was absolutely a game changer for our organization. And back in the time that we were serving Red Bull, they were adamant about their can. They wanted their product in their can to be served. And, you know, at bars, if you were to go get a vodka Red Bull, bars would make you the drink, and then they'd hand you the can.”
2023-06-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dutch Bros. Coffee: Travis Boersma · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I think that high school and college students predominantly Part of that was the service and part of that was the music and part of that was Rebel.”
2023-06-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dutch Bros. Coffee: Travis Boersma · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, I think when we stopped the train, if you will, it didn't take effect until 2010. We only opened two locations in twenty ten as a result of hitting the brakes in two thousand eight. In 2009, we turned growth back on, but it was with our own people only. And so we opened, I want to say, 20 locations in 2011.”
2023-06-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dutch Bros. Coffee: Travis Boersma · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. But Dane's wisdom and Dane's guidance and the values and the principles and the culture, those were things that were established throughout our partnership and the time that we had together. And man, had I not had him there, you know, he was the catalyst as a leader. And he led by example. He was the most selfless, tolerant man that I've ever known.”
2023-06-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dutch Bros. Coffee: Travis Boersma · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“2009, your brother passed away from ALS. He was 55 years old. And you now, I mean, you'd already pretty much been running the business by yourself. But you didn't have him as your guide and mentor anymore, it was like. It was all you now.”
2023-06-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dutch Bros. Coffee: Travis Boersma · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But I'll tell you, it was a whole new approach. And all of a sudden, we started building momentum and those markets started flourishing. And it wasn't shortly thereafter in 2009, I lost Dane.”
2023-06-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dutch Bros. Coffee: Travis Boersma · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, no, we didn't have to finance them, and we didn't. A lot of people would, magically, I mean, when you have that burning desire, you find a way to get the money. And a lot of them had a mom or a dad or an uncle or an aunt or a customer for that matter that were willing to take the risk and put the money up. And then we kind of got to the place later where we looked at it differently. We said, you know what, we got to bring the barrier to entry down and we've got to really, I mean, we'd never closed a store because it didn't perform.”
2023-06-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dutch Bros. Coffee: Travis Boersma · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So you made a decision that year that you would only sell franchises to people from the system, so people who essentially the prerequisite to start franchise was you had to have worked as a barista. Manager at a Dutch brother's location.”
2023-06-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dutch Bros. Coffee: Travis Boersma · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And one of my team members that is like a brother to me, Dave looked at me and goes, you know what, man? Maybe we're in the relationship business. We see customers that come in day in, day out. We have franchise owners who are running these businesses. We're trying to make sure everybody's beaten to the drum the same way. We're kind of ruling with an iron fist right now, but he goes, and maybe the product is love. And I was kind of like, maybe, but what the hell are you saying? And the five of us sat down and reflected heavily and kind of got to this place of like, you know what? That's exactly what it is and who we are. And we got to grow from within and from within only with the people who understand the culture that have the fire in their belly. And it was a game changer.”
2023-06-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dutch Bros. Coffee: Travis Boersma · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And the thing that happened that was really unbelievable is he had developed this thing and it was a test and it was called business mastery and we went to the first one and it was like 75 people and I brought our team and I think I was only supposed to bring two of us. And it was ideas around like where you at in the life cycle that you're in of the company and where is the industry and its life cycle and what business are you really in? And I'm thinking to myself We're in the coffee business. It's pretty self-explanatory. I mean, we're selling beverages.”
2023-06-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dutch Bros. Coffee: Travis Boersma · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I remember going in and talking to Dane, and I was like, man, I don't know. And at this stage, Dane couldn't ride anymore. He had lost his mobility. He was bedridden. And our communication was him smiling. Or his eyes. And I said to him, I said, hey man, I. I'm burning the candle at both ends here. I don't know if I should sell the company or if I need to go work on me or what I should do. And maybe I should go to one of those Tony Robbins seminars. Any smiled in his smile in his eyes said a thousand words to me. And I went to Tony's life mastery, his wealth mastery, the date with destiny, the UPW, all of it.”
2023-06-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dutch Bros. Coffee: Travis Boersma · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so when you don't profit, people start to come up with creative ideas that they think are going to help them to get the result. And so our team was trying to teach culture to people at business acumen. And we knew that we really didn't want to sell franchises anymore to people who just had business acumen. We had people that wanted to open 30 locations in a state and give us millions of dollars. And we're like, nah, that's really not what we want to do.”
2023-06-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dutch Bros. Coffee: Travis Boersma · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think when we got to 2008 and we were struggling in these new markets with Boise, with Fresno, with Tempe, Arizona, the stores were not performing to the level where they were profitable. When you buy a franchise, I think there's an expectation that you're going to get a brand name with a system to execute by and it's going to profit.”
2023-06-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dutch Bros. Coffee: Travis Boersma · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“2008 was probably the time where we made the heaviest I made the heaviest decisions that I ever made in my life with the company and we decided to draw a line in the sand and stop our growth with franchising and evaluate how we best should grow and that's like stopping a train because you've got a year and a half of locations to go still open that you're committed to with franchise owners that are growing”
2023-06-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dutch Bros. Coffee: Travis Boersma · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it sure was. I had the wherewithal and I had the leverage to perform to the best of my ability. And I had to ratchet it up. And there came a time in 2008 where we had grown into some markets. The brand wasn't well known. It needed to be pioneered in those markets. And we had franchise owners that were willing and able, but it was a challenge. We were growing with people that maybe had business experience, but they didn't necessarily grow up in the company. And they maybe didn't have the principles or values all the way that we did. And the real estate bubble was about ready to burst if it hadn't already.”
2023-06-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dutch Bros. Coffee: Travis Boersma · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, the business was a huge priority. I felt compelled for Dane and his family to continue to perform well. And make sure that we continue to grow and scale and that if we were going to go down this road and Dan wasn't going to be here, I was going to make sure that I was able to provide for them”
2023-06-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dutch Bros. Coffee: Travis Boersma · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So it had gotten to the place where his breathing diaphragm, he was really having a hard time breathing and he was on oxygen, which is the worst thing you could do because he wasn't having a hard time getting oxygen in. He was having a hard time getting the carbons out. So at some point, he couldn't do it anymore. We had to go to the hospital. And at that stage, he had the choice to be put on a ventilator. And the family chose to go down that path. And from there, he's probably one of the few people that was able to still walk. With a ventilator, but it doesn't adapt to your heart rate, man. I mean, it's air in, air out, air in, air out. And so, you know, you can maybe take a few steps and pause. And his quality of life for the next two years, seeing grandkids born and those kind of things and going over to visit with them and watch me.”
2023-06-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dutch Bros. Coffee: Travis Boersma · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Not only was they and my business partner, he was my brother, he was my best friend. And what I now know is he was my mentor. And for him to be going through this thing, it was horrific. And I was like loaded all on my back. I'll do everything that I possibly can to make sure that the business stays afloat and that it's working and that we go through these storms and literally I was killing pain with booze and dope and it was tough. And I was not healthy. The business was doing okay. But I wasn't handling it well, and it took its toll. It really truly did. And I think that there is a pivotal moment in time, and it's when he finally, this is the deal with ALS, you either get it limb onset or it starts with your speech and it goes to swallowing, and then it goes to your breathing diaphragm.”
2023-06-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dutch Bros. Coffee: Travis Boersma · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And the hard part is you think, how do we beat it? What can we do? Maybe there's a way, maybe we're the miracle. And then you're thinking, well, maybe it's something else still. And so we thought maybe it's Lyme's disease, and he was getting treated and flying to Colorado Springs at a porter inserted in his heart from Lyme's disease. And you're like, well, it could be that. And maybe this will, you know, And he didn't really want to do that, but he asked me and goes, Hey, man, what do you think? And I said, I go, Dan, man, I think you should turn over every rock, man.”
2023-06-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dutch Bros. Coffee: Travis Boersma · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You rule out all these things through testing and time You know, when this fire happened, I was so concerned about him. I thought, oh my gosh, he's so stressed out. I kept thinking maybe he's just overwhelmed and we're growing at a rate that's maybe excessive. And so I just, I mean, my heart hurt for him because I knew something was wrong. I just didn't know to what extent. And it took us a good year and a half to figure out that he could have ALS. And that was brutal news to even entertain because we knew it was a death sentence.”
2023-06-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dutch Bros. Coffee: Travis Boersma · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And you can't diagnose it until you're well into it. What happens is you go through a process to rule out You know, tumor cancer.”
2023-06-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dutch Bros. Coffee: Travis Boersma · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, you know I said, that's amazing. Thank you. And literally the next morning. I was like, we got to figure out what we're going to do. And people were coming up that were community members and saying, you know, you may want to consider antidepressives at some point because this is going to be a long road. And these were people that had actually had fires themselves. And I'm like. Listen, man, all I want to do is get it behind me and make sure that our stores are not impacted.”
2023-06-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dutch Bros. Coffee: Travis Boersma · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm just sitting there and I mean, I'm like, once I realized that it was gone, gone, I called Paul. Paul had been our green bean voker and buyer. I said, hey man, I don't know what to do here. And so he called me back and he said, I talked to David Boyd up at Boyd's, and they're willing to roast coffee and keep your guys product going.”
2023-06-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dutch Bros. Coffee: Travis Boersma · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I said, okay, and so I ultimately still had confidence that they're just going to put the fire out and everything would be cool. And the smoke was so dancing and so much in there they couldn't get a hold on it. And it just got away from them. And we literally lost everything, including the roasters.”
2023-06-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dutch Bros. Coffee: Travis Boersma · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And we literally jumped out of the pool and board shorts and headed down to the warehouse. And when we got there, what I saw was this giant trash dumpster that we had that's made out of plastic melted against the wall on fire. All of a sudden, here came the fire department pulling in and the one chief came over to me and he was like, hey, listen, you know, we're going to do the best we can. Is there anything that we need to know? And I said, well, the number one thing is to save the coffee roaster out of there if that's the only thing that made it out. That'd be the thing that's really important for us. And I said I'd like to go in and get that. And he goes, you cannot go in here. You're not allowed. If you do, your insurance could be voided. Trust me, do not even, I know it's tempting. Sit here, let us do our job.”
2023-06-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dutch Bros. Coffee: Travis Boersma · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, it was Aug state, it was 108 degrees out that day, and I'm over at my sister's house, Carly's house with her husband, Brian, who works with us at the stage and we're swimming in their pool and we're literally, you know, maybe half a mile away from where our headquarters is located. And my mom comes driving up the driveway at a pace like that looked dangerous and she slams the brakes on and jumps out. She's like, there's a fire. We need to go.”
2023-06-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dutch Bros. Coffee: Travis Boersma · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I remember the first time that it was brought to our attention, we were in this local Mexican restaurant that we love called Taqueria in Grants Pass. And we were just having lunch. And Dane's wife Sandy came in and we were talking and she goes, how much have you had to drink? He goes, nothing. And she goes, Well, why are you slurring your speech? And I was like, well, that's weird. He is kind of slurring his peach. That was the beginning of something that we had no idea of what to imagine.”
2023-06-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dutch Bros. Coffee: Travis Boersma · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Alright, 2004, you've got a lot of growth ahead of you, and it's a good place to be. You're 34-ish. Dane's a little over 50. And this is going to prove to be a really challenging time, actually. It's challenging as an understatement. This is going to be a rough few years ahead, which you did not yet know. But I guess around that time, you started to notice that your brother was slurring a speech. What do you remember?”
2023-06-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dutch Bros. Coffee: Travis Boersma · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We're roasting our own beans. And so that really became a cash cow for us, and it became the lifeblood of the company for our own growth, our own investments, and paying Marty off.”
2023-06-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dutch Bros. Coffee: Travis Boersma · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They were like, man, how can we get in? Can we take this over to Roseburg? Can we take it to Clyborne Falls? And so Dane wrote the first franchise agreement And I wrote the operations manual. And franchise owners would take all of their own money invested into a fully equipped mobile unit. And that didn't require any capital from us. And we would get a franchise fee of, say, like 30 grand. And then we'd get royalties and they'd buy the beans from us that had a profit margin built into them.”
2023-06-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dutch Bros. Coffee: Travis Boersma · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Also, we had these really cool buildings that Dane designed. And as we continue to grow, the demand for wanting to franchise the business was there with friends and family and customers that”
2023-06-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dutch Bros. Coffee: Travis Boersma · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And Dan and I were taken home just to live on. I think it was like three grand. But we had kind of formed a belief like if you're not growing, you're dying.”
2023-06-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dutch Bros. Coffee: Travis Boersma · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. You know, Dana and I looked at each other and we said, you know what? This is a long play and we're going to grow. And I think we can do it better if Marty wasn't here. And maybe we should be buying Marty out. So finally, we just said, you know what? Let's talk about that real number of what it would take. And he finally threw out, I'd do it for 1.2. And had we had a financial advisor at that time, they would have said, no way, don't do it. How many years is that going to take to get your money back? Yeah. But we took the plunge and we give him, he carried the paper $1.2 million at 7%”
2023-06-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dutch Bros. Coffee: Travis Boersma · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, in a nutshell, you and Dane were disagreeing with Marty about some pretty fundamental things. I mean, clearly you guys wanted to use your revenue to grow the business, and he didn't. And I guess all that got so challenging that you started talking about ending the partnership, right?”
2023-06-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dutch Bros. Coffee: Travis Boersma · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it really was. We cared so deeply about the product and how we did it. And so Marty was kind of in a different place. I mean, he didn't have the commitment, the way of living real frugal. He wanted to take more money and we wanted to roll the money back into the organization. So there was some challenges in those years. And we got to a place where like, okay, we've got to grow here. We want to invest. We want to go buy a coffee roaster. And we talked to Marty and he didn't have the money to continue with expansion, let alone grow and invest into a roasting operation. So we decided, well, you know, if we just do the roaster on our own, we can sell coffee to the business that the three of us are partnered in still. And then that created a little bit of a rub.”
2023-06-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dutch Bros. Coffee: Travis Boersma · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I think it wasn't too long into the gig. Maybe it was six months to a year into the gig. We all sat down and talked about this idea of partnering up and growing both Medford and Grants Pass. And we were all in like a third, a third, a third.”
2023-06-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dutch Bros. Coffee: Travis Boersma · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so Marty was coming in and Marty was like, man, this is so unbelievable. I would love to take this concept to Medford and do it myself. Would you guys be interested in sitting down talking about it and legitimately, he said, look, I'd be willing to give you $500 a month to use your name and I'd sign a business license agreement if you want. And if you guys teach me how to make everything, I'll use all the products and buy them through you and let's take the plunge and see what pans out.”
2023-06-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dutch Bros. Coffee: Travis Boersma · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So when we opened and we had that drive through experience, we also had our old school walk up experience that you could park your car, walk up, sit on a bench underneath the tent, have a cup of coffee, warm your hands by a Mr. Heater if you want to talk with us. But the drive-thru line that started form was incredible. And once we had the location open for maybe a couple months, we realized like this is just where it's at. This is our niche. And it started to exceed volumes of three to four hundred dollars a day.”
2023-06-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dutch Bros. Coffee: Travis Boersma · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, it wasn't a thing. And I think, you know, for us, when we figured out that that was going to be the niche for us, it was a game changer.”
2023-06-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dutch Bros. Coffee: Travis Boersma · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Got it. So, but like drive through, I don't think there were drive-thru Starbucks. I mean, they were drive-through McDonald's and you get coffee there, but. Drive through espresso places. It was not a thing.”
2023-06-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dutch Bros. Coffee: Travis Boersma · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A unique custom trailer like a Wells cargo trailer and put the push card in it and we were able to have it all enclosed and have a drive-thru where you could drive through and we could serve you from a window or just an open air space just like any drive-through would serve anybody. But it was a mobile unit”
2023-06-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dutch Bros. Coffee: Travis Boersma · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Bonniehead had a drive through. So Bonnie had a trailer there. When Bonnie left, she took her trailer that had the espresso machine in it with her. So it was just a pad sight. So Dan and I decide to build our own custom trailer outfitted with the coffee equipment in it”
2023-06-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dutch Bros. Coffee: Travis Boersma · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT