Sarah Lambeth - Pretty Coffee Roasters
Sarah has been in the coffee community for a long time. She owns two coffee businesses. She co-owns Whatever Coffee with her partner Charles. Whatever Coffee is a pop up coffee shop inside Steins Deli. She also owns Pretty Coffee Roasters and is the head roaster. It has been a real pleasure to see barista’s across New Orleans start their own company’s over the years. I asked Sarah about her experiences.
How do you start your day? What are the things you do to ensure you have a successful day?
Most of my mornings are very quiet, waking up before the majority of my neighborhood. No talking, no coffee until I get to Steins to open the pop up. I have moved into a new system for making sure the morning goes smooth, by handling anything that requires real thought the afternoon before. Any paperwork or coffee that needs delivery is sitting waiting next to the door before I walk out for the day. Taking time to prep when I have the energy, makes the most out of my longer days.
What are you most excited about that you get to do in your work?
Since I started to roast for my own project, establing reasoning at every level for “why” we do the things that we do is definitely the most exciting part thus far. When trying to put a pin in why I wanted to start a roasting project, I just kept coming back to the idea of only wanting to do business with people and companies I believed in. Specifically supporting other women in the coffee chain. Making a decision to reserve the majority of menu offerings for women produced and managed coffees has created an exciting standard.
What is your hardest fought win?
For sure not letting the pre - existing environment of what I wanted to do, scare me away. I took an interest in roasting when I still lived in Alabama. Turns out, the number of women who roast coffee is super small. Crazy, right? I dipped my toes in by volunteering my time after my morning barista shifts for a full year. No one took me seriously, assumed I was there to flirt with the guy roasting and for that whole year I could tell it was just a “cute” idea to everyone else working there. I am not really sure why roasting coffee is such a common career for men and so rare for women. Along the way it would have definitely been easier to just smile, and work the counter. Cupping coffee became more normal once I moved to New Orleans, thus I had moved closer to what I now know as “specialty coffee” and most of the cupping tables were surrounded by men. Plenty of experiences where my opinions were shot down, and being exposed to load of plain ol’ misogyny. I can type that out now, now that I have held my breathe through countless roasting situations of being the only woman present. Even when I wiggled my way to handling all the roasting for a company, I was still viewed on an unequal platform. Now where I am in my career, working for myself, it is easier to feel fully seen as a coffee roaster. I would not say I have won this situation, it is continuous, but am moving in the right direction.
What was your most successful failure in business?
Being myself. Having a stubborn personality. Being a hard headed woman. This has gotten me mixed results. By all means being wilful and not bending to what other people generically expect me to be, has been the instigator of many of my perceived failures.
What are you reading and listening to right now?
Currently I am moving a few pages at a time through a book about healing and understanding trauma, titled The Body Keeps the Score. I also read my horoscope in the local paper and do the sudoku daily. I usually only listen to music when I commute, and currently my playlist is full of moody lo-fi tracks.
