Today we’d like to introduce you to Oguzhan (Ozzy) Guragac.
Oguzhan, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
Coffee has always been a passion for me. Thanks to my duty in the Navy, I had the privilege to travel to many different destinations and to visit over 1,000 coffee shops – which was one of my favorite activities when abroad.
Following my active duty in the Navy, I was assigned as the supply chain manager of the catering services of the Navy and that position opened new horizons to me giving me the courage to become an entrepreneur and bring my lifelong passion of running a coffee business into action.
I leveraged my extensive experience in food and beverage industry, combinıng it with my passion for coffee to found Barbarossa Coffee and set out on the noble mission of serving the best coffee brewed with love in Texas.
Barbarossa Coffee has become a popular brand and been embraced by a huge number of raving fans in a short period of time, and is continuing to expand ambitiously in its sector.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc. – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
I took the road less traveled by choosing to become an entrepreneur after my duty in Navy, which was an occupation without many ambiguities and uncertainties – everythıng was very regulated. Being an entrepreneur, I went through many hardships and challenges of course. I always see such hardships as motivating factors and opportunity windows to grow my business as well as myself.
Among many hardships I went through, I can definitely say that getting my business up and running took more time than I anticipated in the very beginning. When I was trying to get the coffee shop off the ground, I became a father and had to concentrate my focus both on my family and on my business.
Here I must mentıon my beloved wife Ebru because she supported me a lot in this endeavor. Another challenge that I had to overcome was to develop a system and a set of standards from scratch that is going to guıde Barbarossa as we open new locations in the future. I’ve always believed that Barbarossa Coffee would expand and understood that growth means stretching my means.
Preparing my business and myself for such an expansion in advance was a big challenge that I had to work through. I have to admit that planning skills, unwavering discipline, and principle of standardization that I gained in the Navy helped me a lot to get through these challenges.
So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the Barbarossa Coffee story. Tell us more about the business.
Barbarossa Coffee is a specialty coffee shop where you can taste 20 different types of single origin coffee brewed by six different methods (Chemex, Syphon, Aeropres, V60, Turkish and of course Espresso). This is no different than a wine tasting facility in Toscana, Italy; because each coffee bean has its own taste characteristics stemming from the geographical properties of where it was grown.
While you may get an intense chocolate aroma from one type of coffee bean, you may taste an intense floral notes from another. You can only experience the difference by tasting several different coffee beans in a short time. We at Barbarossa Coffee offer this experience to our customers. Barbarossa Coffee not only serves its customers great tasting coffee but also gives them the opportunity to find their own favorite tastes and to get to know about what type of coffee beans they enjoy having.
Coffee comes to our tables after going along a value chain from the harvest to consumption. Parties that play a role in this value chain are the farmers, green coffee buyers, roasters, baristas and of course the consumers. Within this value chain, Barbarossa Coffee positions itself as a green coffee buyer, roaster and barista. Each type of coffee bean has a cupping note, and Barbarossa Coffee always serves to its customers the best coffee beans with 85+ cupping notes.
We roast coffee beans in small batches and schedule the roasting process in a way to totally consume the roasted beans in maximum one week time while they are still fresh.
This guarantees that our customers always have the freshest and the highest quality coffee at Barbarossa. Beyond all of the above, there is one thing that totally distinguishes Barbarossa from the crowd, and that is everyone who works at Barbarossa is also a loyal customer of Barbarossa. Indeed, all of our employees have been the customers of Barbarossa prior to their employment.
Our crew is passionate about coffee, and they do what they do not only to earn money but also with the pleasure of working for something they are passionate about. This makes an art out of coffee. As Da Vinci said: ” Where the spirit does not work with the hand, there is no art.” Therefore, we say: “We brew with love’.
Has luck played a meaningful role in your life and business?
Actually, a major factor that could well be considered ıs the role of luck hidden in the nature of our business, although I believe luck never knocks the door of the unprepared.
Inasmuch as our business is to serve premium quality coffee, our customer segment is usually the people who are conscious of what they eat and drink, who therefore have high self-respect. This in return makes people we deal with daily more than customers but people that we share the books we read, celebrate birthdays, play bowling, do business together; in short, people that we share life with.
Our electrician is our customer, our architect who is going to design our new locations to be opened in 2019 is also one of our valued customers. This exactly is our luck according to me. It is priceless for us to bring pleasure to people’s lives who contribute to the success of Barbarossa Coffee which they willingly share the excitement of and understand the spirit behind. As I mentioned in the beginning, luck knocks the door of the diligent, the prepared.
Thus, we could establish an amazing mutual connection with our customer’s thanks to our dedication to serve them the highest quality service, to give back to them more then we receive from them. Not to mention that we always believed in doing our business passionately and walked together with a crew who share the same passion and excitement with us, and having such an amazing team has made all the difference.
Pricing:
- Espresso: 2.90
- Latte: 4.05
- Breakfast Bruschetta: 9
- Waffle: 7
- Acai Bowl: 9
Contact Info:
- Address: 9222 Louetta Road, Suite 106 Spring, TX 77379
- Website: www.barbarossacoffee.com
- Phone: 8324804213
- Email: coffeeman@barbarossacoffee.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/barbarossacoffee/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Barbarossacoffee.roastery/
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/barbarossa-coffee-spring
Image Credit:
@erguvanphoto and @jacob.grumulaitis
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