“Wildland Coffee Company”

Wildland Coffee’s motto is:
“Why do things the hard way, when you could do things the easy way?”.

By Patrick Donovan – Author/Screenwriter
US Navy Disabled Veteran – 1980 – 1991
Seattle, WA (The Hollywood Times) 08/15/2021

“Game changer for coffee drinkers on the go. If you love coffee as much as I do and tired of the caffeine patch (equivalent to 12 cups of coffee) and you want that fresh brewed coffee tastes without the nastiness of instant, lugging coffee presses or a Keurig on your next camping trip, then GET WILD for Wildland Coffee!”

NOTE: The caffeine patch only exists in Meet the Robinsons but sounds cool!

– Patrick Donovan

About Zach Frantz:

He’s a life-long camper and got fed up with my French press when I was sitting in the middle of the woods, so I thought, “why not just put ground coffee into a tea bag?” As it turns out, that’s an amazing idea.  He launched in March of 2021 which is why you’re only seeing one product but our vision is to be the go-to coffee for everyone who loves the outdoors. His mission is to make amazing products that help people get outdoors more because frankly, we could all use a little bit more fresh air these days.

Zach Frantz is an entrepreneur, sales expert, and the founder of Wildland Coffee. Growing up in San Diego, he enjoyed two things starting from a young age: camping and the idea of being of an entrepreneur. In fact, he started his first business, Cakes By Zach, at age 9. Through his e-commerce site, customers could order custom cakes and have them delivered right to their door. After making only one sale (from his neighbor), Zach shut down his cake-making business and later went on to study Entrepreneurial Management at San Diego State University. There, he learned about everything from sales and scaling a business to building a team and managing employees.

After graduating, Zach further honed his tech and e-commerce skills by working for two software startups in Salt Lake City. While living there, Zach and his wife enjoyed many camping trips but would get fed up trying to make good-tasting coffee with a French press. He knew there had to be a better way to make and enjoy coffee while on the go. As it turns out, there was. In hopes of inspiring more people to get outdoors, Zach launched Wildland Coffee in the spring of 2021.With the brand’s innovative Coffee in a Tea Bag, you can easily make tasty coffee wherever you are. His motto in both business and life is ‘rising tides lift all boats’, which is why he hopes, above all, to do right by his team, his community, and the environment. Outside of growing Wildland Coffee, Zach loves to enjoy the outdoors through skiing, hiking, and camping.

About Wildland Coffee Company

San Diego, CA – June 14th, 2021

Tired of complicated French presses and stale instant coffee when you camp or travel? Same. With Wildland Coffee’s trendsetting Coffee in a Tea Bag, you can enjoy fresh ground coffee with the same ease and convenience of a quick steep of tea.

Perfect for avid campers, traveling, or busy on-the-go lifestyles, Wildland Coffee can be easily turned into a delicious hot coffee beverage without sacrificing flavor or needing a ton of equipment. All you need is one of the brand’s coffee-infused tea bags and 8 ounces of hot water. For a cold brew, simply soak the bag in cold water for up to 12 hours.

Sustainably sourced from Cerrado, Brazil and 100% traceable so consumers can enjoy quality, ethical beans, Wildland Coffee’s medium roast is a creamy blend of tasty dark chocolate, caramel, and peanut butter. It’s so good some say you could even drink it black.

Coffee enthusiasts can also remain conscious of the planet while enjoying a cup of Wildland Coffee, as the tea bags are compostable and wrappers recyclable.

Wildland Coffee is currently available in packs of 5 and can ship across the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Europe.

Wildland Coffee launched their innovative coffee tea bags in March of2021 but is on a mission to make additional coffee products that get people outdoors. We all need more fresh air these days, after all.

Gift the lucky homeowners in your life with a trendy electric kettle and Wildland Coffee. The brand’s easy-to-make Coffee in a Tea Bag is a great gift for the perpetually sleepy homeowners. To relish a tasty cup of joe in your new favorite sitting room, pour 8 oz. of hot water in a mug with a coffee-infused tea bag. Let steep for 5 to 8 minutes and enjoy a creamy medium roast with subtle dark chocolate and caramel flavors.

Wildland Coffee roasts specialty grade coffee beans from Brazil, grinds them and packages them all within 4 days. We nitro-flush each pouch so the coffee stays fresh for at least 12 months.

COFFEE IN A TEA BAG!

• Easiest and simplest way to make coffee without equipment
• Compostable tea bag and recyclable wrapper
• Ethically sourced and 100% traceable beans from Cerrado, Brazil
• Tasty medium roast that blends dark chocolate, caramel, peanut butter

with a creamy body

• Each pouch is nitro-flushed to ensure freshness for at least 12 months
• Available in packs of 5 for $7.50

The Review:

I was impressed when I first heard about Wildland Coffee Company and being an avid coffee drinker, I knew I had to interview Zach.  I ordered my first 5 pack of his coffee and I used my Keurig to just spit out hot water into a mug with his coffee in a tea bag. I let it steep for 5 min like it says and low and behold, FANTASTIC coffee that tastes just like, if not better, then fresh brewed coffee.

I’m floored and thoroughly enjoyed my cup of coffee. I have a warmer, the old plug in kind, not controlled by an app but rather 110 Volts from your wall, and it keeps my coffee at a nice comfortable drinking temperature all morning.  I left the bag in the cup, again, as Zach suggested, and it keeps on steeping slowly.

This really is a game changer especially, like he said, when you’re going on a camping trip and you don’t want to lug around a French Press or metal percolator that you’d put on a fire to brew coffee which would probably tasted burned anyway.

No, Zach got this baby down 100!  He nailed it! So, without any further adieu, here’s the interview with Zach Frantz, founder, Wildland Coffee Company.  I’m going to get my coffee now, enjoy!

The Interview with the founder, Zach Frantz

The transcription is below and you listen to the full interview above.
NOTE: The audio is provided for our readers that have low vision or blind and the transcription is provided for our customers who have low hearing or deaf.

Patrick: Good morning, Zach. Thank you for joining me today. I’m with the Hollywood times I’m Pat Donovan. Welcome. How are you and your family doing after a yearlong lockdown, my friend?

Zach: Patrick. I appreciate you having me on you know, we recently moved to San Diego from salt lake city. We’re both, we’re both from San Diego. We were in the SLC for about eight years, moved back in February and we just got done with a 10, maybe 11-week remodel. So there’s been a lot going on, but San Diego is beautiful.

Patrick: I went to bootcamp there, which is a San Diego and Marine Corps boot camp is right next door. I guess they closed that base, didn’t they?

Zach: You know, I’m not sure, but San Diego definitely has a very large military presence.

Patrick: Yes, they do actually Navy band was there too. Talk to me about your early beginnings, where you grew up, what schools you attended, who was your role model? Those sorts of things, but most of all, when did you start drinking coffee? And there’s a lot to unpack there. So get started.

Zach: Yeah. So I just mentioned, grew up in, grew up in San Diego. My mom’s from San Diego. My dad is actually a Jew from New York and I actually remember the first time I ever started a business I was nine years old, and I had been cooking with my mom, my entire life. You know, when I was six months old, I’d be in the Fanny pack, and she’d be cooking. And so I just kind of grew up cooking with my mom in, in the kitchen and we would usually make a lot of cakes. So what I was nine years old, I discovered this service called Yahoo GeoCities. I don’t know if you remember that, but yeah, it was the first, I mean, they’re way ahead of their time.

Patrick: Right now we have GUI website makers. I think it was the very first interactive website maker, ever to utilize drag and drop text feels so far ahead of their time. It’s crazy!

Zach: Are they really?

Patrick: Oh yeah. Yeah.

Zach: Oh, that’s super interesting.

Patrick: Yeah, I interrupted you.

Zach: Yeah. Yeah. So, I thought it was over. Hey, I like to make cakes. The idea of a business… why don’t I make a website where someone could order a cake on the website? So I literally made it, I was probably, I say it’s kind of facetiously, but like, it actually might be true. I may have been the first. E-commerce cake maker of all time. I might have the claim to fame. I mean, it was 1999 when I did that.

Patrick: I actually, that was gonna be my next question about your cake business. So let’s just get into that cake business.

Zach: Yeah. I mean, no. So I only ever sold one cake to my neighbor, so it wasn’t even an e-commerce success. And then the $50 in seed funding I got from my mom long ran up. Yeah. And I, and I closed up shop. So that was kind of the beginning of, of my entrepreneurial kind of career and desire, you know, and throughout high school started a couple of clothing businesses. And then after college I moved to Salt Lake and the first company, I worked for I was the 11th employee of small, a technology company. Then I moved to another small startup. And, you know, started some businesses along the way. Nothing ever really worked out, but I’ve always been a big camper. And so that’s actually how I came up with Wildland is I camp a lot and I’m inherently, I’m very lazy with certain things. I can start a business, but like, don’t bother me with a French press. That’s so much work, but I’ll start a business.

Patrick: Like lugging a Keurig in your backpack.

Zach: Yeah. I’m not doing that. So yeah. So. I was camping a lot in Salt Lake and I kinda thought to myself, you know, this French Press thing is really frustrating when I’m camping. There’s got to be a better way to do this. And so I was just thinking like, man, like, I mean, they put tea into tea bags, why not just put coffee? And it turns out it’s a pretty good idea. And it works!

Patrick: Who ah thunk it? Right?

Zach: Yeah.

Patrick: That’s so cool, man. Who was your role model when you grew up anybody in the business world or just in general?

Zach: Man. That’s a really good question. Who is my role model? I honestly, like, I, I can’t think of anyone that, like, I really looked up to when I was growing up as weird as that sounds.

Patrick: No, it doesn’t sound weird at all. We can get into the whole Inside the Actor’s Studio if you’d later on with James Lipton and yeah. But anyway,

Zach: Now, like, I say this and like, I’m not always, I don’t totally love this person, but in many ways, he is my role model is Jeff Bezos, just because of how customer focused he is like. To me, so I’m, I’m all about like, that’s I do this for my customers. Like, I’m trying to make my customers happy. I want to make it easy. Like, everything he’s done with Amazon from that perspective is like, so admirable to me. And it’s like, it’s, it’s, you know, it’s changed the world.

Now, there’s a lot of pieces of Amazon I’m not a fan of. And so I’m not going to carte blanche, just follow Jeff Bezos, but yeah. But in many ways, He is absolutely an icon and a role model for me

Patrick: As a software engineer, myself, and as a disc jockey, I have always been laser focused on customers number one! If they’re not happy, then I’m messing up and they are our best advertisement. Right? So if we do good by them. You’re drinking coffee. Right. See, it’s gotta be something really good as I knew it. Gosh, darn it. But yes, customers, laser focus has gotta be number one, we treat our customers. Well, that’s the important thing, right?

Zach: Every company today says that, that they’re customer focused. You know, they’re like, yeah, you know, free shipping, you know, free returns. It looks like, that’s BS. I think being customer focused means when you, when you acquire a new customer, you send them a thank you. And these are just examples, right?

Like you send them a handwritten note, or you send them a customer video, or when someone mentions you on Instagram, you respond to them, maybe, you know, it could be a message. It could be a voice message. A lot of my content on my Instagram is user generated content because I want to put my customers at the center of the story.

Right? It’s about my customers. It’s not. And I even tell, because I’ve been starting an ambassador program and I even, I tell my ambassadors, when you’re shooting content, put yourself at the center of the story. Don’t just take photos of the bag with the mountains behind you.

That’s boring. And that’s what every company does. Right. Put yourself at the center of the story, a company that does it’s really good is Yeti. If you look at Yeti’s Instagram and their advertisements and just how they position themselves. Some of the photos don’t even have the product.

It’s all about the customer. It’s all about the experience and what they’re doing. And I mean, the Yeti’s practice is not unique and, and frankly, people have been doing my product in Asia for 30 years. I’m not gonna say I’m the first one to ever do this, but the way Yeti has marketed and positioned themselves and put their customers at the center of the story is why they’re so successful.

Patrick: Is that Yeti.com?

Zach: It’s, the cooler company. I’m not sure.

Patrick: Oh, okay. Cause this is not the right one. No worries. But anyway you know, I know what inspired you to start wilding. But long before you got into the notion yeah, I need to do this. And no one else is how much research and development went into the process before you actually launched back in March.

Zach: So like I mentioned, there they’re having companies that have been doing this. So the, the research and development piece was more around finding the right coffee roaster, really. Because I have and so the product is, you know, it’s kind of the product right now, but it’s really about making sure that you have really, really good coffee, because what I’m, what I’m trying to overcome with this process is people assume it’s going to be watery, it’s going to taste like tea because it’s coffee in a teabag. So the automatic assumption is watered down. And so there was quite a bit of work in finding the right roaster that really could nail the flavor. Because you have to have a really, really killer flavor that translates. So you’re cause you know, you’ve got to overcome that those preconceived notions.

Now the other thing that I’ll say is how much thought went into it. Like before I started the business, frankly, I’m of the camp that feels like, if I’m solving my own problem, I’ve got no data on this, there’s at least a million other people that have my same problem. Let’s just say there’s at least a million people, right.

That’s a very niche market. And so if I could solve the problem for me and 1 million people, I’m doing pretty good for myself. And so. I don’t put like, too much thought into, even in my previous businesses, like, oh, what’s the market this? I don’t go do a ton of research. Because I think if I’m solving my own problem and I’m, I’m putting myself as the customer, I’m going to make other people happy too.

Patrick: Right. That makes sense. You know, I look at things like the other day, you get some guys cutting grass, cutting it on a 30-degree angle. And he’s leaning this way to counterbalance him from falling over.

And I’m saying, well, why don’t we have a lawnmower that does this while the wheels are here and it raises up him to keep him straight so when he does this and it turns and it rotates the bottom portion. It’s like being on a Navy ship. It’s the same concept. I was steering the USS Yellowstone and in high waves and seas the ship is doing this, but my knees are going up and down while my upper torso remains steadfast.

Same concept. So you have an automated lawnmower that does that. So yes, there it is. I’m thinking of it just like you trying to solve a problem that affects me that’s going to affect millions of other people that have writings. You see what I mean?

Zach: Yeah, exactly! I think there’s some, and, and this might be more like the VC community where, you know, they, they want to see what’s the market opportunity and this and that. And like, I hear some, some entrepreneurs trying to be very analytical about their business in that way when they’re just getting started, this is just my opinion, but I feel that is a very stale, maybe sterile is the better word.

It’s a sterile way to start a business. Like. I think the reason that entrepreneurs are successful is because we’re passionate about what we do. Now that doesn’t mean that you should go spend 50 grand before you launched the business. And we can talk about that as well how to, you know, doing things slowly and validating your idea where you go spend a bunch of money. But yeah, I, I’m just a huge believer in and solve a problem for yourself and yeah. You’ll likely have a pretty decent business as long as you can execute. Of course, but

Patrick: It, it takes you to that next question. You said we can get into that later, but you’ve, you’ve spoke about VC venture capital. Did you seek that out? Did you seek out private capital funding or did you self-fund how did that all work for you?

Zach: Yeah, I mean, so far I’m self-funded.

Patrick: Wow.

Zach: Yeah, I mean, I’m. You know, I’m relatively early, still. So getting VC funding is definitely still on the table and it’s something that I definitely have considered. But you know, I want to see how far I can take this with my own money.

Patrick: Yeah.

Zach: That is one of my big priorities right now is making sure that… because once you take someone else’s money, then it’s easier to grow in a unprofitable way and that’s where big trouble. And I want to see how far I can go with a very small budget. I want to see how far I can go with my own efforts and really, if I can position myself in a place where it’s like, Hey, like, you know, if I had a couple million dollars, I could just blow this thing up very quickly then I think that’s the appropriate time to go, to look, to go look for some capital. But right now I’m a little early for that.

Patrick: Sure. Talk to me about nitro flushing. What’s that all about? Don’t give away trade secrets here but is it a patented process or something you created or something even more.

Zach: Yeah. So natural flushing is actually pretty common in the coffee industry. I wish I could say that I invented it, but So what nitro flushing is all about is coffee beans go stale relatively quickly. And if they, if you grind them, they go stale even faster. We’re talking three days. Now, you know, depending on what you’re used to drinking, you might not even notice that it was stale, frankly.

Because if you’re thinking about the Starbucks of the world, they’re not serving you quality coffee, that’s not their thing. But yeah. No Starbucks is low grade coffee.

Patrick: I didn’t know that. And you speak about grinding. So I grind a whole bunch, put it in the thing and seal it, but that’s why we just bad. So go ahead continue.

Zach: Yeah. So, so what we do is, is we put the coffee into the tea bag. We seal the tea bag, and then we put the tea bag into an individual pouch. And there’s obviously air in that pouch. And so we use nitrogen to get the air out. And that way, when the pouch gets sealed, there’s, it’s a, it’s a no air environment and the coffee will stay good for at least 12 months. If we didn’t do that, you would open the bag and you’d have a stale bag of coffee.

Patrick: That’s amazing. Now I’ve heard about decaffeinated coffee one they decaffeinate they use water to take out the caffeine? Is that correct?

Zach: Yeah. So they, what they do is they basically pressure wash the coffee. I mean, I’m, I’m oversimplifying it.

But they basically pressure wash the coffee and it takes the caffeine out. So it’s actually like, I mean, if you think of like, from an environmental standpoint, there was quite a bit of water that goes into it. So it’s, you know, it’s not the best, you know, from that standpoint, there’s probably, there’s a decent amount of wasted water. But yeah, there’s, there’s no such thing as a decaffeinated coffee bean in the wild.

Patrick: No, it doesn’t happen that way. So coffee and a teabag. Did you have an issue with teabag creators or did they come after you for using a teabag thought or. Just kidding actually, but seriously teabags break. Right. And it happens. So how did you overcome that with your coffee in a tea bag approach?

Zach: Well, so what we use is a compostable fiber. It’s actually a corn fiber and it’s quite strong. Now if you put like a bunch of pressure on the teabag, yeah, it’s going to break.

But like, I’ve literally, like, I mean, I’ve, I’ve been doing this for a couple of years now and if I just do it regularly, I’ve never had a break. Not one time! They’re pretty strong a quality product.

Patrick: Okay. Great. Great. All right, good. I’m opening up something I wanted to actually get more information, but I love the pictures the way you put the coffee bag and everything, or the pouches. And you know, so I have another question here. Have you got more flavors planned? You’ve got the chocolate caramel one. Is there more flavors because that’s all you see is one on your site right now. How what’s the future of the coffee, you know, variety.

Zach: Yeah. So, and I just want to just make a clarification that, and maybe I should clarify this potentially on the website.

There’s obviously some confusion. So the, the, the coffee is not flavored. It’s it has like tasting notes of chocolate. If that makes sense.

Patrick: Yeah. Yeah.

Zach: I should probably clarify that on the website. So right now we just have a medium roast and again, that’s, that’s along with my strategy of starting small.

I’m not trying to get too much of my money tied up in inventory. I want to prove out the concept, which I’ve done, but I want to continue to prove this out until I’ve got, you know, consistent sales and then I’m going to be releasing other flavors like a dark roast, a light roast, and then I’ve got a lot of plans to put other things in the teabag.

Patrick: That’s great. I see you got a lot of cool merch and cool stuff. And we just talked about planning in the future and putting other things in the bags, which is great. And we’re not going to talk about that because it’s coming up, but are you thinking maybe brick and mortar eventually, or is that not going to fit your model?

Zach: It absolutely fits the model.

Patrick: It does.

Zach: The outdoor world, like REI. REI is the ultimate. Right. But then there’s like Bass Pro Shops there’s I mean the names of hundreds of, yeah, exactly Cabela’s and, and all these other places. I potentially could see myself in a Whole Foods one day, but frankly,

Patrick: Yeah.

Zach: I’m really laser focused on the outdoor market. And so any retail that, that I do go into, which I will eventually be in the outdoor space.

Patrick: How about kiosks, where you could have people outdoors serving this stuff. I’m just thinking, you know, at a park you have a park, you have these kiosks, people could be there and eventually, but I’m just, I’m thinking that’s the way my mind works. I’m a visionary, but that’s your business not mine.

Zach: Yeah, no, you know, I think reasons that I love about starting a business is I have a blank canvas and I can do whatever I want. You know, if I want to pivot the business and I want to have a little coffee shop, I can do that. If I want to, you know, if I want to shut it down, I can shut it down. You know, but I’m not going to do that.

Patrick: No you’re not.

Zach: I can do whatever I want. And it, it, it’s just about how do I want to, again, being customer focused and figuring out where are my customers buying things? Where can I meet them? Where they already are to lower the amount of friction and increase the chance that they’re going to try and buy my coffee.

Patrick: It’s so easy to carry too because you can put a whole couple of pouches for a weekend, camping trip in your backpack. And is therein lies the solution to the problem that you solved! Fantastic.

Zach: I mean, that’s, that’s literally what everyone says is they, you know, it’s just funny that the number one thing that I hear is this is way better than I thought it was going to be like most people and I, I’m not afraid to admit that because most people think it’s going to be watered down coffee. But you know, that’s what my customers, my ambassadors, you know, people I send samples to that’s what they all say is, is just so much better than I thought it was gonna be. And this is better than, than my Keurig. It gets better than my French press and it’s so much easier.

Patrick: I can’t wait to get my pouch. I ordered one and I’m looking forward to it. I got to Keurig, and You have to constantly clean it out, you know, and we got high mineral content in our water. So I had a pour a whole bottle of that cleansing takes 45 minutes, and it’s just, it’s a pain, but anyway, that’s, that’s that, but I’m looking forward to this and I want now to give you the next several minutes, we’ve got 15, but you don’t need that much to just talk about your goals, how, how you could influence people that are considering starting a business and what you believe they need to do to continue to persevere and never give up and the drive that you have to maybe influence that next entrepreneur, because they listened to this.

Zach: It’s a big platform. It’s a big question.

Patrick: So you got, you got 15 minutes to talk, so.

Zach: Well, so I’m going to distill that down into why should someone start a business? And when things get tough, how to persevere, is that a good way to distill that question down?

Patrick: Perfectly?

Zach: So for anyone who’s listening to this, who’s thinking about starting a business. I mean, the thing that I’ll say is in the history of mankind and the history of the world, It has never been easier to start a business.

Literally it’s never been easier. You have easy ways to get word, to get free marketing in. You got Instagram, Facebook, which are, you know, more pay, pay, pay to play now, but you can still get free. Right. You have Tik-Tok, which is amazing free marketing. You have LinkedIn, if you’re, if your product is more B2B focused you know, you can get a lot of free marketing there.

So it’s never been easier. You’ve got services like Fiverr, where you can find people make your website for really inexpensive. You have people who can make you a logo for very inexpensive. So it’s never been easier. And this never been less expensive now with that, right, there’s obviously going to be a lot more competition, but if you can find ways, just like a small way to differentiate yourself, you can be incredibly successful.

Like with my product, I have a lot of people say, well, why don’t you go after this market? Why don’t you go up to that market? Well, there’s a million markets to go after for every product and if you can focus on one market, one niche market and just nail the messaging, nail the product, maybe you have some unique features for that specific market, you can have competitors that are servicing other markets and you’ll never run into each other, never ever, not one time.

So that’s the first thing that I’ll say is like, it’s never been easier it’s never been cheaper now. It’s long hours. There’s, you know, there’s crushing disappointments. So, just last week I actually got a pretty public not so great review about Wildland Coffee, which it’s a food product it’s going to happen. Right? But 10 minutes later, I got an email from Gear Patrol, which is a very large website that reviews gear for a lot of different categories, and I made the top 12 best instant coffees. Now, I’m not instant coffee, but this was like fast coffee essentially for camping. And so, you know, you win some, you lose some.

And I think the way to persevere is to understand that like, nothing is as bad as it seems, and nothing is as good as it seems. So this is like what my dad always used to tell me: Just because I got a bad review or just because this has happened to me a million times, just because for example, my co-packer is a week late, it seems like a big deal, at the time, but I promise for anyone who’s listening to this, people being late; things happen.

It’s probably not going to tank your business. So you just, just have to remember. It’s never as bad as it seems, and it’s never as good as it seems. So this is something my dad always used to tell me as well, which is pride comes before the fall.

So when things are going well, don’t get too excited because when you get prideful, then things usually will start to go downhill. Then you kind of started this little circle of things going well and then these things happen. It’s just the way it is.

I have a daily meditation practice, I do yoga, or I work out in some way shape or form every single day and that definitely helps. You just have to want it; being an entrepreneur I mean. I think the desire to be an entrepreneur, I think, is born. You’re just made that way because you have to be willing to take risks. If you’ve got another job, you got to be willing to work until midnight or whatever.

You’d be willing to work the weekends. That’s your born like that, in my opinion. The skills to be an entrepreneur are learned. But if you don’t like risk and you want to, you know, not work on the weekends and you don’t want to work past five. That’s fine. No worries. Then being an entrepreneur is probably not for you.

Patrick: Exactly. So I agree. Well, listen, this has been an incredible conversation. I have one more question. I noticed you haven’t taken the, the coffee bag out. Is there a reason for leaving it in or does it steep more or just a habit?

Zach: It just continues to take flavor. So, and yeah, I mean, there’s obviously diminishing returns of course, but yeah.

I mean the longer, you have it in there the stronger you’re going to get. Towards the end of the cup, it’s really strong.

Patrick: Okay. Now I need to ask another question and we’ll just conclude, but can you put your cream and milk or sugar or whatever in there and leave the tea bag in and just keep stirring it up.

Zach: Yeah! Oh, yeah. Yeah!

Patrick: Okay, great.

Zach: Yeah.

Patrick: This is good. But listen, go ahead.

Zach: I’ve had a lot of people telling me that they don’t need a cream and sugar. Now I won’t be offended if you do. But a lot of people have said that they usually will take cream and sugar and. They don’t like Wildland Coffee.

Patrick: Well. I got my cup ready to go, as you can see, and I have one of those electric heat warmers. Remember that? That actually plugs in! It doesn’t require an app to run! How about that?

I’d seen the one for 90 bucks. I got the one at a five and dime for four bucks and look, you plug it in, you turn it on. How much easier can it be? Right. So sometimes, you know, old ways are best.

Zach: I agree. That said, I just bought two Wi-Fi electric locks. They were $200 each. And my wife requested it. So, you know, you gotta, you gotta make the wife feel safe and I get that, you know, happy wife, happy life. But yeah. I do think that there are some things where you don’t, I don’t need an app for everything. I don’t, I don’t need a subscription to everything. I’m good. Yeah.

Patrick: Yeah. The thing that kicked me is you just bought a Wi-Fi lock. How about all the people in Texas to have Wi-Fi thermostats that the Texas energy saying we’re turning up and refuse to let them change?

Zach: Oh, that happened?

Patrick: Yes, it did. During the heat wave, they were controlling their Wi-Fi thermostats. I have a regular mercury sensor thermostat. That’s it. I’m not going to go, having people coming in by Wi-Fi and controlling the temperature in my home. That is scary.

Zach: I don’t want to, I’m not conspiratorial, but I was thinking that because now Kwikset has the key to my house, to my house!

Patrick: Yup. And the other scary thing is just to let you know about these guys. What happened is my wife was with her doctor the other day. She was saying something, he said a key word in Google assistant says, great, this is all about, it’s why it’s listening all the time.

Zach: Yeah, dude, just last week, my wife, we were talking about Pepto, Pepto-Bismol as well, right? 30 seconds later, she gets an ad on Instagram for Pepto-Bismol.

Patrick: Wait, my wife got to same thing on her Facebook from this!

Zach: Dude!

Patrick: I was watching a news thing about Snowden who is still in Russia. That was the guy that cracked the NSA. He talked about how he opened his phone up and disconnected the mic. Just took it out. The other mic that, not this one that you talk on, but oh yeah, he does pull them out. Whatever he wants to talk. He plugs in. Now the iPhones don’t have jacks anymore. It’s all scary, man,

Zach: Man. Yeah. I know. It is…

Patrick: We’re slowly falling into my Minority Report that movie with Tom Cruise, where they can Precog your future and say, you’re guilty because you’re going to do this, but you haven’t done it yet. That was scary.

Zach: Yeah. I mean, I would say more 1984 than that. Yeah. But like they’re not mutually exclusive, you know? Definitely 1984. For sure 1984, though.

Patrick: Oh yeah. Big brother, man. This was a great conversation, man. So you have a great day. Enjoy the rest of your hot humid San Diego weather. Well, I enjoy the Pacific breeze that’s coming in my window.

Zach: All right, man. We’ll talk soon. Take care.

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