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[Music] It all starts with a visit to Rogers Arkansas.

[MUSIC] There's this concept that I love called a palimpsest.

It's an ancient manuscript where writing is scraped clean.

The things that were there before never really go away.

They have these layers of time and layers of things that have been written.

They show up through the newer pieces of writing.

[MUSIC] Over time, you rewrite, but always the past is there.

You can see the way that all the things that came before it are still present.

It's about the layers of the past influencing our future.

[MUSIC] When you come to downtown Rogers, the nostalgia is everything.

Buildings have been here forever.

Just the storefront tells a story.

You've got the Daisy Museum.

Down the street, you have what could be and should be a Michelin star restaurant.

You've got a huge span of everything to really a more modern and more metropolis type of experience.

Rogers downtown probably kicked off and set the standard and expectation for other downtowns in this area to be like, "Okay, we see what you're doing.

You're preserving, but you're growing."

They have their finger on the pulse.

There's a skill in keeping the charm of a downtown, making it what everybody wants while keeping it what it is.

- Thank you.

How's your shift been so far?

Yeah.

[MUSIC] Thinking of Andrea's strengths.

She has a posture of hospitality with people.

And I like that it's authentic.

She genuinely cares, for everybody.

[MUSIC] She's like kinda the real heartbeat behind everything we do.

[MUSIC] - Thank you.

- This is geometry?

Can I drink it?

- Yeah.

Thank you.

Okay.

Thanks.

I loved growing up here.

The first part of my life, I lived in town.

We had in town and then we had the farm.

[MUSIC] And the farm felt like it was so far away.

And it took forever to drive out there and there was nothing, just fields and fields.

It's been amazing to see the growth here.

[MUSIC] Part of the core goal is to have a cafe location in the downtown of the towns and cities around the area.

[MUSIC] Rogers has a really cool downtown structure.

[MUSIC] It has a downtown that has existed for a long time.

There's also a lot of people organically living in the area.

Downtown Rogers is just, amazing.

[MUSIC] There's definitely something special happening in Rogers.

We don't have a lot of industrial downtowns.

We don't have a lot of old factories, if you will, that were able to be flipped into really neat things.

Rogers has that.

[MUSIC] The 1907 is just such a beautiful building.

They're using the original infrastructure there in a way that is wonderful.

[MUSIC] We felt excited to have the opportunity to add to what was already a thriving community down here.

[MUSIC] Now people are like, "Oh, yeah, I know Northwest Arkansas."

[MUSIC] Earlier in my coffee career, I would travel and I would have to explain sometimes where Arkansas is, which is, I think, in some ways enduring, in some ways felt like a hurdle to overcome.

[MUSIC] Now the main question I get asked is, "How did you know Northwest Arkansas was going to be?"

and then fill in the blank.

I don't know.

I was just born here.

[BIRDS CHIRPING] A small business is a huge community in this part of the state.

Small businesses are what keep us rocking and rolling around here.

Very supportive of each other.

Small business in Northwest Arkansas is everything.

[MUSIC] 11 years ago, I was a barista in my college age.

I moved to the U.S.

I always keep the feeling that I want to serve people coffee.

Dreaming about opening a coffee shop.

Now people really support us, which I'm really grateful.

I really want to bring a unique coffee menu for the community.

With the best quality of coffee, of course.

I think that people love our concept as well.

I personally really love to collect letters in special occasions.

The letter concept was born from there.

People would come here, buy a cup of coffee and a letter package.

They write their self a letter and we provide wax seal, stickers, stamps.

We have a 365 mailbox and then customer can pick a day specifically in the next year and then we mail the letter back to them.

They can celebrate themselves and have a meaningful moment with the letter.

I'm focusing on serving people.

That's my goal.

My biggest influence is my dad.

He's a really hardworking, high integrity person.

Over the years I've just learned a lot about business and family from him.

My dad is my hero and my inspiration.

If I call him, he answers the phone no matter what.

Looking back, I don't even know that I've ever called him and he didn't answer.

He's a surgeon.

Just knowing how busy he was.

It's not just me.

People would call him at night, on the weekend.

He would give our house phone number and his cell phone number to pretty much anyone and just say, "If you need me, call me."

Does it feel annoying that people call you all the time?

He just said, "No, it feels good to be needed and I want to help.

I want to help is like his whole thing and so it's cool to be the beneficiary of someone that cares so much and just like answer or call no matter what.

I love people and I want to be known as a mom.

I want to be characterized by love.

that I'm improving or adding to.

spaces I'm involved in.

Our team, I have all sorts of people that are in all phases, all walks of life.

Those people have real needs.

I want our spaces to be more than just this space where you come and clock in and clock out and go home.

I want people to come and learn something here and give something and get something in return.

For me, there's no separating business and hospitality.

Our business is coffee, but hospitality is like the modality by which it works.

Hospitality is about meeting people where they are.

It's about people feeling known.

I mean, we all just want to be a regular somewhere.

One of our trainers told me that when she first moved here a few years ago.

She said that I was like, "Oh my gosh, that just sums everything up so perfectly."

The actual just intangible nature of that just tells me that most of us are not getting that at other places.

This might be the only place that someone is actually being treated with kindness.

Even just know that someone likes an oat latte or something.

It's really simple, but it's really powerful, especially in a culture where we're constantly being reminded about why we're all wrong or why we're all different.

Maybe if we can identify, things that we have in common or the things that bring us together.

Isn't that maybe a better way to go about it?

John and I, we started really dating, I think, for real when we were 18, 19-ish, and we got married when we were 25.

I've spent the majority of my life with him, then without him, which is fun.

I think he and myself, we both have the desire to really do something.

I think in the beginning we were hoping to be able to make a mark on coffee and just pay our rent.

The integration has always felt fairly natural because it started that way.

I can't envision doing this without her.

It actually feels impossible.

The idea of work-life balance, which I don't even think I believe in.

I believe in balance.

I don't know that there's a clean line of delineation.

Maybe that's our own life.

Our work is meaningful to us.

We want to show that meaning to our children, too.

Our whole family has sort of encompassed in some of this.

At the same time, I think we both knew that we were pretty ambitious.

There was a weird jump in the phase of step one is, "Can we eat and survive?"

And step two is, "Great.

Then can we change the industry and put our fingerprints on it?"

[MUSIC] I've known Amber for a few years.

It's been really neat to watch her build confident, see her develop her roasting program.

The passion that she brings to the industry is something that we need more of.

I'm grateful that my first go-round in coffee did not work out.

I come from a business background.

And when I first came to coffee, I didn't understand, coffee as a culture.

What I understood was how to build big businesses.

[MUSIC] When my first opportunity came to build something in coffee, that's what my focus was.

I didn't think of all of the aspects that are involved in coffee.

[MUSIC] Had that worked out, I never would have understood that.

[MUSIC] My first trip, I went to Costa Rica On the last farm, Ceci Genis, she was like the only woman that we spent time on her farm.

She owned this land and she owned the processing.

She was milling coffee and she was talking to us about so many different things.

And I remember thinking, "My family is in farming."

Being on the farm and talking to her, and I was like, "Oh my gosh, this is kind of a weird full circle moment."

This really was what it was like to grow up.

[MUSIC] I didn't even know this was something that I could do.

I would love to learn more and I would love to help any way that I can.

Letting people in the United States know all of this coffee is coming from real people in real communities.

I really think from that point in 2019 to today, I have such a deeper appreciation for the entire value chain of coffee.

My life changed a lot after that trip.

My first job I ever had was at Onyx.

That was my first job in coffee.

My first day at Onyx, I'll remember it forever.

Andrea was just going through the current offerings that they had.

She was making me pour overs and talking about them.

And I'd never heard anybody talk about coffee that way.

And I remember drinking coffee with Andrea and she was like, "What does that taste like?"

And it was mind-blowing.

From the beginning of just her showing me, "Hey, there's this whole world of coffee that you've probably never experienced before, and that's what we do here and that's what we want to do here."

[MUSIC] Her coaching me and teaching me the way of caring about somebody across the bar, and about taking that person on a journey with coffee.

So many people have never experienced that and still so many people have not experienced it.

But it's so different when it's really cared for.

[MUSIC] We started roasting and we felt like we were doing a good job with our coffees.

Like, we can say it's good, but if we can't get into people's hands, then what's the gap there?

How are we going to show that we know what we're doing?

That's when John saw the US Barista Championship.

He was like, "Hey, I think you should do this."

[MUSIC] I don't need to prove that I know how to make a latte.

I'm really good at why I need to prove... you know, in sort of a weird, prideful way.

John was just like, "It's not about you.

We need to show that we know what we're doing."

If we're going to really do this, we need to do it, and you're the one to do it.

[MUSIC] I jumped in.

I think I got next to last place.

[MUSIC] It's like a TED Talk, so you prepare a presentation that's 15 minutes long.

When you visually watch it, from the outside, what you experience is the presentation.

And that's kind of where I was at, is I had watched a bunch getting prepared, and so I made a great presentation.

[MUSIC] But I didn't understand the way the sensory scores sheet work.

To do really well, you have to do both really well.

[MUSIC] In 2016, I placed second in the finals.

In 2017, I placed second in the finals.

[MUSIC] In 2018, I was pregnant with our second child.

I actually had originally decided to sit out the 2018 season.

I had a previous pregnancy, and the timeline of that pregnancy would have made it just really hard.

We lost that pregnancy about halfway through.

[MUSIC] I decided there's no reason why I shouldn't just jump in and do it.

[MUSIC] It was quite some time before I even realized that I was pregnant again.

You feel the joy and the grief at the same time.

[MUSIC] Gosh, I'm gonna be eight months pregnant in the finals, if I make it.

[MUSIC] In the finals, I literally had a pregnant brain moment, and I didn't say my tasting notes for one of my drinks.

My husband was just over there, just heartbroken.

By the time 2019 rolled around, I was really feeling like, should I keep doing this or should I stop?

I decided to do it again.

[MUSIC] I have to be so ready that I'm able to really I'm able to really just do all the things and make no mistakes.

We just laid everything on the line and we did it.

I won the competition on February 24th, 2020, and then two weeks later, just the whole world shuts down.

I got an email in the middle of the night in July of the year 2021 that just said the World Barista to Championship is on, in Milan.

I was four nights a week from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. in the lab.

I didn't see my kids much.

Sometimes I tell that story and I'm like, "I'm not telling the story as a, "Hey, this is what you should do," or, "Hey, moms, check this out."

It was more just like, "Okay, this season's gonna be insane."

We're gonna commit to do it.

We know it's three months long.

We're gonna go to the world, and we're gonna bring our best.

I placed number two in the world.

I think people in our area understand that Onyx makes good coffee.

I don't think they understand a lot of times just how good and just how impactful they've been.

What Onyx has done in the community is huge.

Things that they have done have shaken up the industry in the way that they have been transparent about things.

It's all in the name of a true hospitality welcoming experience.

You know, Rogers has a little bit of everything for everybody.

I always keep the feeling that I want to serve people coffee.

We're not in L.A. or in New York City.

We're a small hub.

There's opportunities for people to find anything that they're looking for.

I think women are built to do a lot.

Every space that you see a woman being successful in, there's a whole nother space to that woman that you do not see.

People ask me all the time, like, how do you maintain work life balance?

And for better or for worse, I'm like, I don't.

Sometimes I work more than I should.

Sometimes I don't work or I leave work early because I need to go do something with the kids.

There's no mold to fit into in this.

Even though I just think back on my life, when I was 20, I wanted to be a writer.

When I was 25, I wanted to, like, just get into graduate school.

I think things change over time.

There's no reason to put incredible pressure on one specific decision because as I get older and I look back, I just see the way that everything sort of weaved together.

To bring me to this moment.