Today we’d like to introduce you to Oaks A.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
I’m Oke, though in the coffee world most people know me as Oaks, the Coffee Guy. I run Everyday Beans, a coffee education brand that lives across YouTube, a podcast, and a newsletter called It Smells Better Than it Taste.
I didn’t come up through a fancy café or a barista competition. I got here the slow way, by roasting my own beans and selling coffee at a farmers market, making cup after cup for strangers and getting a lot of it wrong. Most of what I understand now came out of those mistakes. Standing behind that table, I noticed the part that actually lit me up wasn’t selling bags of coffee. It was the conversation, the moment someone tasted something and I could help them understand what they were tasting and why.
That’s the turn that became Everyday Beans. I stopped trying to sell people coffee and started helping them understand it. The name comes from the realization that ties everything together: coffee almost always smells better than it tastes. Aroma over-promises. If you trust your nose, you’ll get fooled, so you learn to trust your palate instead. That idea is the whole brand in one line.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
No, not smooth, and I don’t think it should have been. The farmers market stretch was the hardest part. I went in believing that if the roast was good enough, people would find their way to it. That’s not how it works. Selling coffee like that is fragile, the margins are thin, and a slow Saturday can wreck the whole week. I learned that the hard way, more than once.
The other struggle was more internal. For a long time I chased precision instead of understanding, exact grind numbers, exact temperatures, thinking that was the answer. It wasn’t, and unlearning that took longer than I’d like to admit.
Then there’s the struggle that’s still ongoing, honestly. Coffee content has a loud, technical, gear-heavy corner to it, and staying calm and curious instead of chasing that noise means slower growth. I’m fine with that trade, but it is a real one. The struggles didn’t stop when Everyday Beans started. They just changed shape, into things like patience and staying on-brand when the louder approach would probably move faster.
We’ve been impressed with Everyday Beans, but for folks who might not be as familiar, what can you share with them about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
Everyday Beans is a coffee education brand. It lives across a YouTube channel, a podcast, and a newsletter called It Smells Better Than it Taste, and it all points at one idea: help everyday coffee drinkers stop guessing and start understanding what’s in their cup.
I didn’t come up through a high-end café or a barista competition. I’m an engineer by training, and that background is a big part of how I approach coffee. I like taking things apart to understand why they work, the mechanics underneath the surface. I got here by roasting, brewing, and failing at coffee long enough to start caring about why it behaves the way it does. That’s the lens I teach from, but the job I give myself is to take that engineer’s need to understand and translate it into something plain, so a regular coffee drinker gets the why without needing the technical background I have.
What I actually make is understanding. Most coffee content hands you a recipe and a shopping list. I go one layer under that, to the variables, grind, water, ratio, temperature, technique, and how each one changes what you taste. The problem I solve is the quiet frustration of the person who follows every step and still can’t say why their coffee came out good or bad. Once you understand the variables, you stop depending on recipes, and you stop depending on me. That’s the goal, not a bug.
What sets Everyday Beans apart is the tone. Specialty coffee can be intimidating, gear-obsessed, and a little gatekept. I keep it calm, curious, and grounded. Failure isn’t a deficiency here, it’s feedback. And I hold one hard line: knowledge is given freely. Anything I ever charge for is implementation and access, never the information itself.
What I’m most proud of isn’t a number. It’s the message from someone who says they finally trust their own palate, that they fixed a bad cup themselves without looking anything up. If a reader takes away one thing, I’d want it to be this: coffee isn’t a test you’re failing. It’s something you can actually understand. The easiest place to start is the newsletter, It Smells Better Than it Taste, where I go deep on one idea at a time.
What were you like growing up?
I was always a curious kid, even if that’s the thing everyone says about themselves. It showed up early and in strange ways. I once put honey outside just to see what would happen, and what happened was every bee in the neighborhood showing up while my mom lost her mind. I was also fascinated by cars, which eventually pointed me toward mechanical engineering, and then civil engineering. Looking back, it was never really about cars or structures specifically. It was about wanting to understand how things worked underneath the surface.
Coffee found me the same way. It gave me something with what feels like endless depth, more variables to pull apart than I’ve run out of after ten-plus years in it. That’s probably the real thread running through my life, not a fixed interest but a need to keep chasing the next thing I don’t fully understand yet.
Personality-wise, I’d call myself easygoing, and honestly an extreme introvert, which surprises people who only know me from being online. The version of me making videos and talking about coffee isn’t a different person, it’s just the curious part turned outward. Off camera, I’m a lot quieter.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://everydaybeans.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/every.day.beans/?hl=en
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/everydaybeans/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9qwpeQ_Vz_Kdf1Z3DycWxQ
- Other: https://itsmellsbetterthanittastes.com
