Jordan Sadler joins Jason Spiess to talk about the genesis of Drag Up Coffee. Sadler, a former oilfield worker, shares his processing and experience of leaving the oilfield to become a CEO and business owner.
The opportunities that exist in the new marketplace are discussed as well as how his Drag Up Coffee product differs from others.
Drag Up Coffee is a Texas-Made, Oil Field produced coffee company. Sadler says they pride themselves on becoming not only a field hand in the field but now, business owners who can relate and connect with its customers.
Drag Up Coffee works with a Family Farmer who conserves nature and provides better livelihoods for the people who grow and process it. Drag Up Coffee is also organic and practices fair trade.
The two also discuss and tease a dark crude coffee roast potential for 2022.
Below is the raw, unedited transcript from our artificial intelligence translator.
Jason Spiess
and on top of the morning to you folks live from the Permian basin hiring events. M. C. M. Grand fun dome and hotel. My name is Jason speaks. I am with the crude life here and we are being joined today by Jordan's Sadler. Do we say that? Right? Sadler. Excellent, Jordan's Sadler. He's with drag up coffee, drag up coffee and it looks like you got a gmail address.
So that's a start up pal. Alright, alright good deal. So we gotta start up coffee company here. How's that going By the way? We'll get into your coffee shop, your specific coffee blend and why it separates from the pack. But you know the craft breweries and the coffee shops kind of scene. They went kind of around that same spike of momentum you know as far as startups go. And then of course Covid happened in the pandemic and and then of course people maybe didn't realize they didn't
like hops as much as they thought. So the I. P. A. Market kind of leveled out and same thing with coffee. Of course. You know people they try different kinds and so it's hard to navigate those first five years of a spike because so many people are trying different things and you don't know what to really go towards and everything. So uh explain how is the startup going where you guys at And uh I'll shut up for a while and let you talk. So
Jordan Stadler
we're based out of Houston texas. We started drag up coffee in october september 2020 about mid mid Covid. Um season I guess you would call it. Um I was
Jason Spiess
working
Jordan Stadler
Like August September of 20
Jason Spiess
20 so
Jordan Stadler
I was working offshore uh for a subsidy company and I told my wife that I wanted to invest the money into something coffee with something that everybody drinks. Everybody needs some sort of caffeine except for like the 1-2% who don't. And uh I actually ended up running into a coffee bean farmer. Like around the time I was coming up with the company and thinking and planning out how I want to do it. I ran into the farmer. So uh, it was kind of like a sign to me.
I cut out all middleman, so I go straight to stores and we do all small batch roasting. So um like I said, we work directly with the farmers in Honduras. So you get a coffee that's from farm to bag, not a bean that's been sitting around, not a coffee that's been sitting around after being roasted for a year or two and then being sold to you. So our coffee is literally one of the freshest you can possibly get
Jason Spiess
right. There's not a lot of middlemen.
Jordan Stadler
Yeah, well
Jason Spiess
that's, that's time, you know, and you know, I'm from north Dakota and we honestly, The state didn't even basically hear of an oil rig until 2008. Right? So, well it was all agriculture for so long because quite honestly the 80s and late 70s was the last oil activity in North Dakota. So you're talking 30 years of generations, right. Of no oil and gas experience at all. But we do have egg and here's what I know about egg is the minute you cut something off of the stock or the Divine,
there's an expiration date. It doesn't matter if it's a cucumber or a legume. And we've got a lot of legumes up in north Dakota. We, we've like number one and the pulse crop. So we talked about that quite a bit, you know, with these or when we have rail shortages and, and backing up trains and you know, and that sort of thing with the railroad. Um, that becomes problematic. And then you put middlemen in there and all of a sudden now you got that.
Jordan Stadler
So they have any sort of issue within their company. Then you have to deal with that in that time frame extends and so on. And so it's a domino effect.
Jason Spiess
Well, let's talk about drag up coffee a little bit. I'm looking at the donut shop because for me, I'll be honest, man, I like me a black coffee. The bolder the better. I don't get too much into the flavored coffee. But you know what a few of the uh, friends I have and girlfriends in my past.
They don't get into the non flavored stuff. They, they like a little hint of pecan here and they like a little hint of a little irish cream. I don't know how you guys do it, but talk to me about the different varieties of coffee that you have.
Jordan Stadler
So the donut shop, I call the relationship blend. So it's normally one person relationship usually likes non flavored coffee, the other person tends to like all the creamer in the world. So with the donut shop, that's what it is. It's non flavored and with it being small batch roasted and freshly roasted, you get zero bitter bite. So when you're, whenever you put or your significant other puts in any type of creamer or flavoring whatsoever is what it's gonna taste like.
When I go. Do you know uh holiday markets and little farmers markets and stuff here and there, just to help get the name out there. I'll bring a fruity Pebbles creamer and anybody who loves fruity pebbles will understand, you know, that's amazing. So with the donut shop I would mix the fruity pebbles creamer with the donut shop and it would taste like a warm cup of fruity pebbles milk.
Jason Spiess
Where does one get fruity pebbles creamer? I've never heard of such a thing. The
Jordan Stadler
stores. I found it at all of our local HdB Kroger's, my goodness
Jason Spiess
boy, I tell you what, I'm living in the future folks, I can't believe, I honestly, what you just said that the what was it again? It was, it was fruity pebbles. I almost said tricks, I'm sure they have that to the fruity pebbles creamer reminded me of when I saw sour patch kids blizzard. I mean my teeth just hurt reading
Jordan Stadler
that like you scheduled a dentist appointment just thinking about it like go ahead and take care of how
Jason Spiess
many different colors of sugar can we put together? But anyway, sorry, I digress. But um, fruity pebbles creamer, you just blew my mind there right here live on the air.
Jordan Stadler
Like the what you're imagining is exactly how it's like
Jason Spiess
I said, my coffee actually stains stainless steel. Okay, so that's how black my mud is. So let's talk a little bit about, you know how this is done and you know, so you mentioned that the kind of the farm to table if you will of coffee. Uh let's talk about the freshness and the importance of that and how some of these small batches are so much more of almost like a craft or a quality than you know, sweatshop coffee because that's what I call it. Honestly, I call folder sweatshop coffee.
Jordan Stadler
Yeah, because they do quantity over quality. They try to roast as much as possible at
Jason Spiess
one and burn literally folks.
Jordan Stadler
So the deal with small batch roasting is literally like I say like look at a microwave, you put something in the microwave, usually the outside is gonna get burnt before the inside even starts cooking, right? So I say look at a large batch roasting like that, you're gonna overcook the outside and not cook the inside enough or you're gonna overcook the outside to where you do cook the inside enough and everything is gonna be burnt to a crisp and zero flavor and all bitterness.
So what small batch roasting is? It's just it's the definition, it's it's it's it's in the name of it, it's just small quantities even even roasting when you get a bag of coffee and you look at your beans, every bean is gonna be the same color or the grounds are gonna be the same color. I've seen bags of coffee where it goes from a light to a dark, you know mid bag. Um So that's like it's in its name, it's small batch roasting and it's roasted freshly weekly.
Um You know we roast batches of anything from our texas, pecan to our apple pie weekly. Uh everything you know I have here today with the crew life was roasted within the last 72 hours. So you know it's it's it's all about freshness and it's all about um just quality over quantity.
Jason Spiess
No you're out of Houston texas made, it says on your made by oil field hands and the donut on the donut shop, coffee has a hard hat on it.
Jordan Stadler
Yeah,
Jason Spiess
I don't know about the gloves if they're fr or not, I'll let you get into that but just keep
Jordan Stadler
that that coffee away from HSC so they don't check it
Jason Spiess
right. Exactly. Knowing them, they probably wouldn't carry it because of that reason close on that, you know, cartoon donut, then we'll carry it. Are
Jordan Stadler
those cut resistant?
Jason Spiess
Exactly. Uh, a little bit of the relationship that with oil and gas, because it's, it's quite obvious you're putting that front and center, so you're, you're trying to reach out to the oil and gas community, so reach out to them, you know, talk about, you know, your relationship with them and why you chose to go this direction because, you know, not everybody's going this direction right now.
Jordan Stadler
No. Uh, I mean, one thing I've always wanted to, I've always wanted to own my own company. I've worked in the oil and gas industry, you know, fresh out of high school, um, worked anywhere from the shops to offshore. Most of the time in the subsidies are in the oil and gas industry was in subsidy operations. Uh, but the one thing that kind of bothered me and I don't know why it bothered me so much was just the, the perspective of the oilfield guys, the, oh yeah, y'all make all that money and
you blow it and, you know, if you have to work every day of the week or you're not gonna be able to afford your lifestyle, blah blah blah and it kind of rubbed me the wrong way. I had a lot of, a lot of people out of family kind of talking mess about it and I was like, you know what, when I, when I start making that that real good money, I'm gonna invest in something.
I'm gonna start, I'm gonna start my own company doing my own thing. And the one thing I haven't seen is anybody really from the oil and gas industry taking their money and putting it in for themselves and doing something for themselves. You know, you see all other types of companies, uh you see better known companies, you see all kinds of, all kinds of different niche owned companies, but you don't see oil and gas and um I don't know.
I just, I kind of wanted to show that We're not just blue collar guys. I've never went to college. I've I've turned wrenches my entire life. Now I'm a ceo of a company like I've always told people we we do 90% of the blue collar boys do 90% of the work. We just Gotta learn the other 10%, this was the other 10% and I'm gonna learn it. And then um I'm done. This is my job now.
Jason Spiess
How do people buy it? Can they, can they obviously you've got a website
Jordan Stadler
I imagine. So drag up coffee dot com and we shipped globally. We've shipped everywhere from Ireland to Canada and we should obviously ship coast to coast. Uh so drag up coffee dot com. We have everything from an apple pie and pumpkin texas, pecan, coconut vanilla irish cream and donut shop, We also have a apparel as well,
Jason Spiess
apparel. Okay, so shirts and sweat shirts and coffee
Jordan Stadler
mugs
Jason Spiess
and what kind of
Jordan Stadler
um,
Jason Spiess
ah, distribution do you guys have? Is it, is it primarily or just online? Do you have? Um, you know, any, obviously you don't have a brick and mortar, right? You don't, you don't have or even a kiosk one of those roadside kiosks. God bless that worker for working in that. I mean, it's got, what is it, the size of two outhouses?
I mean, let's be honest here, it's not very big. I mean, it's the only place the toll booth guy can laugh at, right, because that's the toll booth kind of small. But it's like, that's like a plush palace compared to those roadside coffee kiosks. Oh, the human being, I thought about
Jordan Stadler
Making one. I thought about building one. I was like, I'm a big guy.
Jason Spiess
What I've seen actually kind of the trend is they'll take like a modified fifth wheel and they'll kind of turn that into a one of these roadside kiosks. Coffees, That's a great idea.
Jordan Stadler
I thought about converting a taco
Jason Spiess
truck to
Jordan Stadler
into a coffee shop and pull up on on job sites. Like even if I came out here and work to deal with with some of these, um, these drillers about where I can pull up on the job site, like a taco truck with coffee, but that's, that's future. That's future. That's next five years. I
Jason Spiess
honestly do believe that a mobile coffee shop would do. Well, I really do. And here's why I say that is because I don't, a lot of folks you don't know this. I'm gonna let you into the little bit of the crude life past year because we're well, we're gonna be in our 10th year next year. Okay,
Jordan Stadler
Congratulations.
Jason Spiess
Well, thank you our first year, uh you know, one radio station, we had one uh lowly magazine newspaper kind of a thing called them. And we, this is no kidding. We were out in the back in before they had internet, like before the wifi came, came out there in the fiber optics. So we thought we were gonna have this social media presence back in 2012, Well there wasn't any y fire jet packs available and that sort of thing. So we were a food truck. So we had a food truck where we broadcast our
daily show from and our social media, we were gonna, do, you know, 50% of our platform is gonna be social media driven right because we're in the middle of nowhere. Well, because there was no wifi and all these problems that happened back then, we had to joke and just say on the radio come by the food truck, that's our social media, old school social media face to face. And now that's what people are salivating for. They that's why I think a mobile coffee shop work I've
Jordan Stadler
seen in like some of these bigger neighborhoods in the area I live in where they have on the neighborhood facebook page every day is a different food trucks come through the neighborhood like oh we got the lobster macaroni trucks coming through and be like say uh huh like yeah every thursday lobster macaroni comes through like the food
Jason Spiess
trucks a great business. As long as you don't have to drive it because as soon as you drive it you have a whole side business of maintenance and all this other stuff. It's kind of like podcasting. As soon as you leave your your room you might have to hire an engineer now and then there's a full time I. T. Well same thing with you as soon as you go to the next level you know there's there's there's there's new costs that come into it come into play. And so
Jordan Stadler
we're already looking at buying another roaster and hiring another roaster
Jason Spiess
C. And that's now there's all kinds of new responsibilities and there is a business owner And man I'm just telling you after 10 years my business model has changed three times. I've had to completely reinvent myself to where now I don't even know what we are. Um we're like a brand that we've thought about putting out coffee as the crude life. Could you guys do a crude life brand. Like like a
Jordan Stadler
oh ...
Jason Spiess
could you we promote that every day. Especially for you? We would promote that every day. In fact we gotta, we gotta work out a deal for a promo code and we'll just start doing like I do with my pillow. We'll work it out and get people uh, will be a distribution for you. Why not? Hey, I mean if, if, if it's about just getting in front of people and and shipping it to them, we'll help
you out with that. That sounds great. And let me try this donut shop coffee a little bit later and let my girlfriend try out the irish cream and other girlfriend try out the,
Jordan Stadler
if you're, if you're a fan of
Jason Spiess
my Oklahoma girlfriend try out the texas, pecan. And how many more bags you got? I got a few more states we got,
Jordan Stadler
we have a pumpkin and apple pie that I'm currently. So we're roasting right now as we speak back home, we're literally shipping off the roaster with the fall blends out right now. They're selling like hotcakes. So we literally ship. So if you're getting anybody on here, orders a bag apple pie or pumpkin, you're literally getting a day old coffee.
Jason Spiess
I'm serious about the crude life roast man. If you, if you would do something like that, I would be all in about helping that thing as much as I can because Yeah,
Jordan Stadler
well I try to launch a new yearly blend every uh first quarter. So like last year, This year I launched the coconut vanilla, the beach as a new yearly blend. So for 2022 the first quarter, I wanted to launch a dark roast. It's been one of the ones I've been asked for the most. So I mean, I think the crude life, that's a perfect name for a dark, we've
Jason Spiess
already got three shows booked for next june, so I mean you got three public appearances right there with the, where, where we can, we can debut it and figured out a few other, who knows? Maybe we can start serving some of it at conferences. I mean there's all kinds of, see this is what I love about small businesses is you get a couple of business owners together and all of a
Jordan Stadler
sudden
Jason Spiess
and we can get a cocktail napkin out and come up with the next million dollar idea.
Jordan Stadler
I had a guy on Tiktok live, the next million dollar idea.
Jason Spiess
How's that going for you? It is, you know, here's the thing. Okay, so we did an event in Watford city. I'm just looking at the time here folks. Uh, we didn't event Watford city where we brought in a social media expert. Okay. She actually taught at the college and expert, whatever educator, you know, and we had her just give everybody an update where we're at, and it was actually kind of meant to help kind of scrub some pages, you know, like, hey, you know, you and H Vac instead of using
this word and use this word because I'm a professional writer. So I was gonna help out too well. We got on tick talk and didn't get off it like literally within the first three minutes, Tiktok came up. The first question was about Tiktok the next hour, we didn't leave Tiktok because the advancements that Tiktok had made with becoming a new facebook and a new twitter, there's a new platform. They're not music videos,
Jordan Stadler
you know, and it's the first real platform where you're broadcasting worldwide. Exactly.
Jason Spiess
And that's, that's why we're actually the crude life. We moved into a new studio this last month actually two weeks ago. So I came right from the Permian, Went back, moved my studio for a week into this big shop with the drain, 20 ft overhead ceilings. Right? And we're actually putting a greenhouse in there because it's the industrial forest studio because we're combining the crude life in the industrial forest to do Tiktok videos.
That's what we're doing next year. That's our big launch next year is, we have to focus on Tiktok and I didn't see that coming six months ago. We were going to figure out how to use twitter again. Uh, and then duh well because we actually have a journalism, Ben between be with our and so twitter is really good with journalism, but it's not really that good at the oil field, but we gotta remember,
we're a journalist at first. So we were doing well anyway. So the point is folks, the Tiktok is doing well. What do you want Tiktok? I don't even know the handles. How do you
Jordan Stadler
find
Jason Spiess
drag up D. R. A. G. U. Up
Jordan Stadler
U. U. U.
Jason Spiess
P. So I tried to say charlie, charlie sheen. And Emilio Emilio estevez are brothers one time and I said Amelia Esther brothers because I speak way too fast before I think drag up coffee. Okay. Donut shop irish cream texas, pecan the beach. And you mentioned you have an apple pie
Jordan Stadler
and a pumpkin, pumpkin
Jason Spiess
and pumpkin. Um Do do you have a universal prices? It marked different.
Jordan Stadler
They're all 1299.
Jason Spiess
Okay. 1299 for a bag. And that comes shipped
Jordan Stadler
1299. And we shipped direct to your doorstep, anywhere between. If it's one bag it's 499. If it's two or more it's 8 90
Jason Spiess
nine. That crude life hat looks gorgeous man.
Jordan Stadler
But we will ship direct to your doorstep anywhere in the country, technically anywhere anywhere in the
Jason Spiess
world. You guys do a coffee club yet.
Jordan Stadler
Yes we do have, we do have a monthly subscription and you get to save 10% off every bag of coffee when you subscribe. So if you subscribe to a bad coffee it's 11 69 I think instead of 12 90
Jason Spiess
nine. Okay. Um we'll talk about some of that off the air too because um that's another market by the way that I don't think people understand. They should have got into it four years ago.
Jordan Stadler
I just got into it.
Jason Spiess
We're into it next year as well. And we're actually gonna be launching it right around black friday time, depending on how soon I can get it done as I look. And I'm going I have to have something to the printer in the next 20 minutes, which needs to be for an event tonight at four o'clock we're having because you're
Jordan Stadler
Still thinking 10 months away too, though, it doesn't stop.
Jason Spiess
It's it's craziness. And then also you gotta make sure you're gonna be around. So that's the other that's the other hole part of it. Sorry folks, we had a little ceo talk there because uh here in the crude life we do a lot of existential energy, which is the 5000 ft view of the 5000 ft view.
That's what we call it here. But uh let's kinda wrap up a little bit and let people know once again, you know what you're about, how they can support your business purchase it, that kind of thing. You know, as we kind of do a nice summary of what we just talked about. All
Jordan Stadler
right, So it's it's drag up coffee. The website is drag up coffee dot com. We are a small batch roaster out of Houston texas. It's all small batch roasted roasted to order and we work directly with the farmers in Honduras. So it's from farm to bag the freshest coffee you can get.
Jason Spiess
Thank you very much, Jordan's Sadler, he's with drag up coffee, he's the ceo, drag up coffee at gmail dot com, drag up coffee dot com. My name is Jason Spacetime with the crude life and we are live here at the Permian Basin hiring events M C. M Grand fun Dome and hotel. It's the hiring event spectacular happening here. Of course myself, Jason speaks, ken Levine here on location. We'll be back with more interviews.
Submit your Article Ideas to The Crude Life! Email studio@thecrudelife.com
About The Crude Life
Award winning interviewer and broadcast journalist Jason Spiess and Content Correspondents engage with the industry’s best thinkers, writers, politicians, business leaders, scientists, entertainers, community leaders, cafe owners and other newsmakers in one-on-one interviews and round table discussions.
The Crude Life has been broadcasting on radio stations since 2012 and posts all updates and interviews on The Crude Life Social Media Network.
Everyday your story is being told by someone. Who is telling your story? Who are you telling your story to?
#thecrudelife promotes a culture of inclusion and respect through interviews, content creation, live events and partnerships that educate, enrich, and empower people to create a positive social environment for all, regardless of age, race, religion, sexual orientation, or physical or intellectual ability.
Sponsors, Music and Other Show Notes
Studio Sponsor: The Industrial Forest
The Industrial Forest is a network of environmentally minded and socially conscious businesses that are using industrial innovations to build a network of sustainable forests across the United States.
Studio Email and Inbox Sponsor: The Carbon Patch Kids
The Carbon Patch Kids are a Content Story Series targeted for Children of All Ages! In the world of the Carbon Patch Kids , all life matters and has a purpose. Even the bugs, slugs, weeds and voles.
The Carbon Patch Kids love adventures and playing together. This interaction often finds them encountering emotional experiences that can leave them confused, scared or even too excited to think clearly!
Often times, with the help of their companions, the Carbon Patch Kids can reach a solution to their struggle. Sometimes the Carbon Patch Kids have to reach down deep inside and believe in their own special gift in order to grow.
The caretakers of Carbon Patch Kids do their best to plant seeds in each of the Carbon Patch Kids so they can approach life’s problems with a non-aggressive, peaceful and neighborly solution.
Carbon Patch Kids live, work and play in The Industrial Forest.
Click here for The CarbonPatchKids’ website
Featured Music: Alma Cook
Click here for Alma Cook’s music website
Click here for Alma Cook’s day job – Cook Compliance Solutions
For guest, band or show topic requests, email studio@thecrudelife.com
Spread the word. Support the industry. Share the energy.
The Crude Life Podcast: Jordan Sadler, Drag Up Coffee