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Christian Kar, Laura Walker, and Matt Weissenborn of Silver Cup Coffee and The One Cup Project       1 | 2

CIB director John Terrill and CIB intern Donovan Richards sat down with Christian Kar, Laura Walker, and Matt Weissenborn from Silver Cup Coffee to discuss shifting business frameworks - including a trend toward generosity on a global scale - and Silver Cup's newest venture, The One Cup Project.

John Terrill: Christian, you've been in the coffee business for 20 years roasting coffee and brokering the acquisitions of espresso carts and drive-thrus. What triggered the shift in your company from a strictly for-profit model to a more-than-profit enterprise?

Christian Kar: Although the shift in our company has been a gradual process culminating in The One Cup Project, it began when I became a Christian in 2001, about 11 years into the coffee business. After my conversion, I started to have questions about business and faith. Am I the rich young ruler who needs to give away all my possessions or am I able to do business in a way that glorifies God? I needed a new measuring stick in order to answer these difficult questions.

I did not want to just write checks; I wanted to participate in helping the local and global community. So the company started to get involved locally with Big Brothers Big Sisters and various homeless shelters. As I got deeper and deeper to where God was taking me, I took part in a mission trip to Kenya. While there, I began to wrestle with the idea of where God was taking the business on a more global level.

JT: Did your trip to Kenya bring clarity to your calling as a business leader?

CK: Yes. God really opened my eyes to the idea that I have business wisdom that can be employed elsewhere; it can change lives and someone's trajectory in an emerging country.

While I was in Kenya, I participated with Kenyans in an asset, self-discovery process, trying to find what their assets were for individual and community development purposes. There were a lot of people farming peas, carrots, cabbage. It was a saturated market. I realized that these farmers could grow pears and plums in their soil. So, I encouraged them to get out of the peas, carrots, and cabbage business, and instead, get into the unique commodity of growing pears and plums (and cut flowers, too).

As we talked, these farmers learned how to maximize business potential with what they already had. My time in Kenya planted the seed in me that Africans are not as destitute as we think they are; they have so many resources and gifts. They are smart and they know how to adapt their business when encouraged to do so.

JT: Was there a shift in the way you saw business because of your trip to Kenya?

CK: Yes! Silver Cup used to do a trade show every year that was an expensive ordeal, but it was fun and exciting. At the last trade show that I did before I stopped going to them, I felt like I was just going through the motions. I realized that the only fun and exciting thing for me was helping somebody else. My role was not to continue what I was doing for another 20 years; instead, the freedom I enjoyed in my business could allow me to participate in helping others in business.

Previously, I shaped my goals and ambitions around the next buck. But, I was discovering that I didn't love business for bottom line results only. I wanted, rather, to help foster other people's business and career paths. I started to notice more acutely the humanity of my employees. People are more than a profit machine; they are physical, spiritual, emotional, and intellectual beings.

JT: How has your changing understanding of business altered internal operations?

CK: We had 18 stores at one time (and over the years, we've had about 2,000 employees). In these stores, there might be half or more employee turnover in a year. Getting burned made me want to not let people into my personal life. For example, I was afraid to let employees see my home. If they saw that I had a big home, they might demand more pay.

Over the course of the last three or four years, however, the company began operating much more like a family than it did in the past. In the past, we had a defined corporate structure and a more formal way of doing business. Now, we are a tight group of people recognizing each other's humanity.

We realize that everybody has a private life and we want our employees to flourish in their lives as a whole. This change is illustrated by the fact that employees are comfortable enough with each other to be willing to share from their personal lives.

Laura Walker: I feel like the company is so different now. I have been at Silver Cup for five years. When I first started, Silver Cup was a corporate environment with a lot of egos and a lot of talking big and acting big; it felt contrived. It's nothing like that anymore.

Christian's leadership made the change happen and it has been very organic. Caring about the whole humanity of each employee has been very important in the shift to the new Silver Cup. Each employee is a whole human being, not a profit-making machine. It's a more holistic view on life.

This new outlook affects the conversations between employees. There are some really important conversations about the lives of employees during the workday. Before we wouldn't talk about it because it's not directly related to business, but now we can say that it's important to take the time to engage in conversation because it's about our whole lives, not just the portion of our lives directly influencing business.

Read part two of CIB's interview with the Silver Cup Coffee team.