A conversation with co-founders Paul Barreto & Jonathan Ma. Edited for brevity.

On the name Out of Office —

PB The name came out of a trip. I was with my wife and some friends. We were traveling and we were actually in Mexico City. I'd always been into specialty coffee and we were on this trip and I was fascinated as it was my first time in a coffee producing country. We were going to all these roasters and talking to baristas and they super excited to tell us about what they were doing. We really felt welcome. We had some moments here back home where the coffee culture felt very exclusive; but in Mexico City, I felt welcomed.

We were talking about names. It was spontaneous. My wife mentioned how one of her favorite things about vacation is putting her out of office notice. We all kind of sat and thought about it. I work as a nurse in the hospital, so I don't have to do that, but everyone else felt the name worked really well. There’s a lot more meaning now between Out of Office for us as a company.

JM The office part of it represents the feeling of being boxed in a cubicle, you're just a cog in the machine. You're moving through the motions. There's no individuality, no purpose. There’s a moment like that there is something more. And for us it's coffee. It’s  that passion for coffee. Moving out of the office for us is the concept, thinking outside the box and of these societal norms of being Asian American. Our parents are telling us to become doctors, lawyers, and engineers. I actually became an engineer, but realized it wasn’t really working for me. It’s thinking outside the box  and thinking of what is authentically you. Really coming out of the office, “being you,” and pursuing those passions.

On the challenges of being a micro-roaster —

PB With roasting itself, we realized that it wasn't feasible to try and roast with this one pond roaster at a production level. We had to figure out and try to be creative because the cost of an actual roaster itself is already in the $30 to $40,000 on the lower end. That doesn't even account for the cost of installing it, going through city with permitting and going through air quality management. I had done the research and saw that the barrier to entry was so high.

We have a good friend over in Baltimore, she is like a sister to my wife. She had been roasting and she did have to close her cafe during COVID, but maintained her roastery. We had met before and like, we're always like, we're like really in good communication. So we asked her if she could help us. She doesn't roast on it 24 hours of the day so I asked if she could help us with production roasting. That was a unique pivot that allowed us to produce coffee at a good scale. We’re sample roasting here so we can get the taste and relay it back. We’re still maintaining that product that we want. In this relationship we've had, we want to give a shout out to her. Her name is LieAnne Navarro and she runs Dear Globe Coffee Roasters in Baltimore. She does all of our production roasting and helps with packaging. She’s been such an integral part to our team as well while maintaining her own her own business.

On what’s on the horizon —

JM On the immediate horizon, we're launching our Out of Office artists program. We are partnering up with Asian-American and Pacific Islander creatives and artists to essentially display their work on our coffee bags. If you imagine a coffee bag with four sides: the front will be a completely blank canvas, a white canvas, and we're commissioning different artists to produce work to highlight themselves and their experience of moving “out of the office.” We're highlighting them and trying to like uplift them.

PB I remember the first time I met a Filipino American coffee roaster down in San Diego. We were talking about roasting and he was telling me about his story. I think that was a big moment for me because it made me realize that I could do this. I haven't seen someone who looks like me, who can go ahead and move into this coffee space and be very successful. And it inspired me to do it. And I hope one day, to give that feeling to someone else that they're not restricted.

On the coffee from Antioquia Colombia —

 PB It’s a washed process Colombian coffee coming from one of our importers based in the DC area. Coffee itself is from the Antioquia area. It's about hour and a half, two hours from Medellin, Colombia. It's Arabica Castillo and yellow Castillo, a very nice coffee. A lot what you would expect with Colombian coffees. It's a nice, sweet coffee. A little bit crisp with apple notes but also a layer of chocolate that you can see in a lot of Colombian coffees. The flavors aren't too extreme to one end and it has a nice balance to us.

On how they got into coffee —

PB There was a TV show. Back in 2014, I had finished college, was watching TV at my parents' place. And there was a show called Dangerous Grounds. It was on the Travel Channel. It was a sensational portrayal of the owner of La Colombe. I remember my first place that I bought specialty coffee from was Kean Coffee in Newport Beach. They're brothers, the Diedrich brothers. They're pretty famous in the coffee community because one brother opened this cafe and the other brother, he owns the company that makes all the famed roasters that you see in most coffee shops here in the US. The Diedrich roasters. They own a coffee farm in Guatemala, but then it was, I believe it was a Costa Rican coffee and I bought a Chemex. You're going to every single coffee shop, wherever, getting your hands on any type of anything new. You dig a big hole, but it's so fun because you've never tasted anything like it.

JM Coffee for me was fueling me through grad school or late night study sessions, just keeping me awake, filling that basic need. There's a moment I think for me where coffee kind of shifted in the sense it became more than just the beverage. It became part of my identity. I started to see my own story within coffee itself. A lot of Asian Americans had the experience of getting asked, “Where are you from?” And then, I'll answer “I'm from California.” And they're like, “No, where are you really from?” Our parents came from Korea and it's that weird moment. Similar thing happens in coffee: you pick up a bag and this coffee -- it's from Columbia. It's the perpetual foreigner All the parallels with the Asian-American experience and coffee, they're so intertwined I think at this point for me. We can tell so many more stories using coffee as a medium to tell those stories.