S3: Overflow Coffee Bar of Chicago – Episode #67

Overflow Coffee Bar – Brandon & Amanda Neely – Chicago Season 3 kicks of with a great social enterprise out of Chicago’s South Loop. Get to know owners Amanda and Brandon Neely and listen how they overcame fears, built community, and decided that free is no good! As they sourced ethical coffee, they built a business and even took on a PRI!   Romy: Welcome everyone to our official kick-off of Season three! This is Romy, and I want to thank you for hanging in there with us while we worked to prepare some episodes ahead of time. We have about 20 good episodes lined up for you this season. And today, we are starting off with a bang! You will meet Brandon and Amanda Neely, the owners of the Overflow Coffee Bar in Chicago’s South Loop.  They share some candid thoughts on overcoming fears such as public speaking and perfectionism along with great ideas for community and customer engagement. They even give some of their definitions of ethical sourcing and why ‘free is not okay!’ Stay tuned until the end to listen to a great Detroit artist, Astray, and his song “Dance with you.” Before we get rolling, let’s see what Jenzten has to share with us about some of the urban legends around the history of coffee in our episode’s Fun Fuel….   For the Full Transcript – click here Read Full Transcript Full Transcript Romy: So welcome Amanda and Brandon to The Bonfires of Social Enterprise. Amanda: Hi. Brandon: Hey thanks for having us. Romy: I'm excited to talk to you guys. We met maybe two or three years ago when I was in Chicago? Brandon: I think it was three years ago. Romy: Yeah. I've been following your progress. And you'd been open at that point I think about a year or a year and a half? Brandon: Yeah. We've been open about five and a half years now. Romy: Yeah. Well we should tell the listeners that you guys are married and running not just a coffee shop, Overflow Coffee, but we're going to hear today about a ton of cool things that you guys have in the works. So let's anchor everyone that doesn't know you right now about Overflow Coffee. So what is Overflow Coffee right now for Chicago? Brandon: So Overflow Coffee Bar is the third place, we call that the third place, where you would go as home, work, and then you go somewhere else, like your grandma's house or something. And we wanted to really create a third place in the south loop of Chicago, and that's where we came up with the idea of Overflow. Building community, and then also, the reason we started more of a social enterprise as ethical economics, coffee is the second most widely traded commodity in the world, and Americans, the number one consumer. And so as we were thinking about this years ago, we were like, we want to build community but we also want to change the world for the better, and what better way to do that then buying ethical coffee, so bridging community building and ethical economics and then we started the idea of Overflow Coffee Bar, and then in the place where we're at, there's a whole lot of space around us, which Amanda will share about, that we're housed in. So we're a part of a school that meets in the building, actually owns the building. And then there's a bunch of non-profits that are here as well. Romy: So you got some natural traffic there, and just for those that don't know, would you guys mind giving some definition to what ethical coffee means?...