How Your Morning Coffee Could Kickstart a Student’s Career - Mike Franz, Co-Founder & Chief Innovation Officer at ShopFloor Coffee

With coffee fueling the shop floor, can it also fuel the future of manufacturing?

This week, Matt Kirchner is joined by ShopFloor Coffee Co-Founder Mike Franz as they explore the intersection of coffee, manufacturing, and workforce development. What started as a side project quickly became a nationwide movement to support technical education and career awareness in manufacturing—all through a product that shop workers already know and love.

From the early morning rituals of manufacturing professionals to the power of branding that truly speaks to the industry, Mike shares how ShopFloor Coffee is brewing up more than just bold blends. With 20% of proceeds going directly to workforce initiatives, this isn’t just about coffee—it’s about investing in the next generation of makers and doers.

Listen to learn:

• Why coffee is more than just a drink—it’s part of manufacturing culture
• How ShopFloor Coffee’s fundraising model outperforms traditional school fundraisers by putting more money back into technical education programs
• The branding strategy behind blends like “Red Shop Towel” and “First Shift” that instantly resonate with manufacturers
• Why Metallica is making a surprising impact on the future of technical education and workforce development (hint: it’s not just about the music)
• The surprising number of robotics teams in one U.S. state (hint: it beats high school hockey!)

3 Big Takeaways from this Episode:

1. Coffee culture runs deep in manufacturing.
Early mornings, long shifts, and breakroom conversations—coffee has always fueled the shop floor. That’s why ShopFloor Coffee uses it as a bridge to workforce development, helping manufacturers invest in the next generation while enjoying a better cup of coffee.

2. Workforce development has an awareness problem.
Despite countless initiatives, many students and employers don’t know about the programs designed to connect them. ShopFloor Coffee is directing funding to organizations like FIRST Robotics, FAME, and Metallica's All Within My Hands foundation to help close this gap—giving educators new opportunities to introduce students to careers in manufacturing.

3. Branding matters—speak the language of your audience.
When manufacturers hear Red Shop Towel or First Shift, they immediately recognize something familiar. ShopFloor Coffee’s approach proves that technical education programs can better engage students by framing opportunities in ways that resonate—whether that’s through pop culture, industry traditions, or hands-on experiences.

Resources in this Episode:To learn more about ShopFloor Coffee, visit:

 shopfloorcoffee.com

Remember, 20% of all proceeds go toward workforce development!

Connect with ShopFloor Coffee Online:

LinkedIn  |  Facebook  |  YouTube  |  Instagram

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Transcript

Matt Kirchner: 0:00

Matt, welcome into The TechEd Podcast. It is Matt Kirchner. We are going to talk today about one of the absolute most important raw materials in all of manufacturing. That's right. We are going to talk about coffee. Coffee has a huge place, and drinking coffee has a huge part in the culture of manufacturing, starting the day early, enjoying that cup of coffee, spending time in the break room. Coffee is ubiquitous and fundamental in many ways to manufacturing it. So it was that I spent some time at IMTS, and I walked by a booth and it said shop floor coffee. And I was like, I have to learn more about shop floor coffee. Today we are going to do that. Mike Franz is the co founder and Chief Innovation Officer of shop floor coffee. Now I have to tell you, this is a company that is not just, quote, selling coffee to manufacturers. This is a company that has an incredibly huge mission attached to their work, and that mission is to do everything they can to help educators, particularly technical educators, STEM Educators, to deliver the absolute best in STEM and technical education to their students, sharing a huge amount of their benefits and proceeds with educators across America, we're going to learn all about that great mission and how they're doing it through the use of coffee with Mike France. Mike, it is such a pleasure to have you joining us here on The TechEd Podcast, and thank you for taking the time to be with us today.

Mike Franz: 1:41

Matt, couldn't be happier to join you today. Thank you for the opportunity.

Matt Kirchner: 1:44

Looking forward to our conversation about shop floor coffees. I mean, the first question is the obvious question, what is it? How did it come about? Get us started.

Mike Franz: 1:53

Well, taking you back about a year and a half ago, almost two years ago, and I'll keep it brief, there's a consulting firm up here that puts on an event every year called the state of manufacturing. I've been going to that for 15 years. Every year, it's virtually the same thing where manufacturers come together and they talk about issues that they're dealing with on a yearly basis. And every year it's almost the same thing, broken record style, where workforce development and finding good folks for your shop is ours in the top three issues that arise. So Amy and I kind of looked at each other while we were there and said, What in the heck can we do about this? We hear about the same thing every year, over and over, and I've been toying around with some ideas about just doing a side project of a Coffee Company, a drop ship Coffee Company, and then as soon as we started talking about the idea, it kind of clicked. And here we are, shop floor coffee it started out as a drop ship Coffee Company, and now it's grown to a point where we're selling nationally to help support workforce development. We actually give 20% of our proceeds back to workforce development programs here, locally, but nationally as well. That's the gist of it. We make great coffee and we give back money to a great cause.

Matt Kirchner: 3:17

Yeah, I love that. Let's talk about the culture of coffee in the world of manufacturing. Now I'm going to start with a number, and that number is 508, and if people don't know what that number is, and nobody probably does, that was the time that my alarm went off every morning that I was in manufacturing, and that was assuming the phone didn't ring at like, four in the morning because there was some kind of problem going on at the plant or what have you. But you know, manufacturing is an early morning business for a lot of folks. A lot of people don't recognize that. You know, you have a first start. Typically for first shift, I should say, starts at 7am you know, seven to three is a typical first shift in manufacturing. But that doesn't mean that people are showing up at work at seven. That means that production for first shift is starting at seven. That means that we've got supervisors and planners and quality people and business leaders that are in that shop, usually by six o'clock at the latest. So that was my morning. My alarm would go off at 508, I would get up. My plant for a lot of years was about 18 minutes from my house. I get up, I take my quick shower, I put my clothes on, and I'd head off to the manufacturing plant and spend, you know, a lot of long days in manufacturing, super, super rewarding days in manufacturing. But, you know, you roll into a manufacturing plant at 830 in the morning, and the day is kind of a third over. It's an early morning business. Talk about the relationship between manufacturing and coffee. I

Mike Franz: 4:37

mean, you kind of described it there, and everybody needs kind of a boost right away in the morning. I mean, I see you sipping on something there, and I'm indeed assuming there's coffee in there.

Matt Kirchner: 4:47

Yeah, that's actually, it's a Sumatra, by the way, I just ran it on the Keurig behind us. But next time around, I promise it'll be shot before coffee. Go ahead. Thank

Mike Franz: 4:54

you. I'm gonna hold you to that. Okay. Anyway, the relationship is there. I mean, I'm surprised you. Said that you have an alarm. So I've been getting up at 430 in the morning without an alarm because I've been so excited about the business for a couple years now. But yeah, awesome. The relationship is there, Matt. I mean, everybody knows you get up. We actually want to not to plug it here. But hey, we're here. One of our coffees is actually called first shift. As you can see, we tried to make a little bit of a play on words to that was relatable to shop environment. So, I mean, the relationship is definitely there. You get up, you want something to wake you up. A lot of people live for that morning coffee, or couldn't get started without it. And like you said, it's an early morning business. You know, you're there at eight o'clock, you're you've missed half the day. So and even at break time, it's a way to bond with your fellow employees. You're sitting by break room, you're having a cup of coffee, you're talking about life, and that's one of the things that we're really focused on, too, is not only getting the jump start on the day, but also maybe providing a little bit better cup that's normally served in a shop environment, right? And something to bond over, build a better relationship with two teammates, and really help support that employee satisfaction and making it more family environment, those types of things. So we know that, especially in small, mid sized shops, there's a lot of that family atmosphere that's trying to be brought into it, right? Nothing helps a little bit more than a nice cup of coffee to have a chat about. No

Matt Kirchner: 6:25

doubt about it, coffee's come a long way. I remember in my early days of manufacturing, having the, you know, the big coffee machine, right, where you'd press all the buttons and remember the cup with the poker, the cup poker, right? So you'd have a, you'd have a card on the bottom, and then you kind of figure out who won the poker game at the coffee table, but, but you're right, that whole gathering around break time, so the bell goes off, everybody steps up into the break room. And it really is. I mean, that's a lot of time your opportunity to engage with your friends, to maybe do the crossword puzzle, to have a chat about the football game that was played the day before, what have you. I mean, everybody's doing that in manufacturing around a cup of coffee. You really, I mean, you deserve a lot of credit for finding your way into this, you know, this particular relationship between manufacturing your coffee and having just an incredible tagline like strap floor coffee. The one that grabbed my eye at IMTS is, you're gathering. I am a coffee guy. I just, I love my coffee. I love good coffee. I can tell the difference between, you know, a great cup of coffee, and what I call Lutheran church basement coffee, which is kind of like that, that water down, yeah, brown water. There is a difference in coffee, and no doubt it's all about quality. Talk a little bit about how

Mike Franz: 7:31

the production works. We are partnered with a local roaster that the head roaster for that roastery had, and was the lead roaster at caribou for 25 years, and he branched off with others to start a company that was more focused on mission driven coffee brands like ourselves, they saw the value in starting a company that really gives an opportunity to People who care about stuff in general, and want to use coffee as the gateway to get into the industries and to support different causes. So they've been a huge help, a huge asset to us, as far as helping us navigate exactly the processes and the business of coffee. It's like any other business. It's like any other manufacturing business that I've been involved with over the past 20 years, there's logistics, there's getting materials in, there's the machinery, there's maintenance, there's operations, there's all the different things that go into that that are very similar to any other manufacturing operations. But yeah, we partnered up with them. They have and are growing. We're not the only ones that they help support, but they know what the heck they're doing and make a great cup of coffee, absolutely.

Matt Kirchner: 8:46

So they're doing all the roasting they're doing. You're on the marketing, the awareness, the that side of things. And obviously, you know you're responsible for producing, or at least providing a really, really quality product, but you manage to create a model where you're leaning on somebody else to do the to the to the actual production of the coffee. That's and that's a great model, and I think it's a good lesson, actually, for our listeners, that when we think about supply chain, and a lot of times, people think that companies are managing their entire supply chain, from sourcing raw materials and doing the R D to delivering the product to the customer, and slicing out a typical area of the supply chain where we can be the absolute best in the world at the particular area. That's a really, really good but business model is, we have a lot of students that listen to this podcast as they're thinking about being young entrepreneurs and understanding how they could be successful in the world of business as certainly you have been slicing out a specific area of that supply chain can be really, really important. The other part that can be really important is the whole branding side of things. And I know that's been really important to you. Really important to you. You already mentioned first shift as being one of the blends that you offer. I know there's some other ones, like red shop towel. And for anybody that's worked in manufacturing, that immediately resonates. I know exactly what you're talking about there time and a half without a doubt. So let's talk a little bit about how these names came about and what you're hearing from. From people working in manufacturing is you create really, really relatable branding for them.

Mike Franz: 10:05

Yeah, it's been it was just a quick story. So when Amy and I came back from the event that I mentioned earlier, where the evolution of the idea started to take shape. One of the most fun portions of thinking about the business was coming up the list of names that were relatable to manufacturing, right? And there's some that you can use correct, there's some that you might want to stay away from. But we had a blast coming up with the names, and we had a list of about 130 names that we came up with had to narrow it down. That's one thing, Matt. We wanted to make it relatable. And the people that we've shared the names with, or have found us however they've come across it, have all been very positive about the names. And, you know, everybody comes up with their own ideas and says, oh, you should have named one this. So you should name one that we're like, Okay, well, consider it. Thank you, right? Yep, exactly. I'll take that under advisement. Just such great ideas, but it's been a really fun. Portion of how we've put this thing together is getting the feedback from people are out in the field, but the names definitely resonate. Awesome,

Matt Kirchner: 11:19

super, super relatable. You know, red shop towel. I mean, everybody in a manufacturing plant, just for the folks that don't know exactly what that is, you've got, I don't even have them. Know how big they are. They're probably somewhere like 10 inches by 10 inches. They're these little red shop towels that you use for everything, right, for wiping down equipment, for cleaning off production parts, for cleaning up the coffee that you spill. I mean, that's, that's, they are ubiquitous, and then they go in a bin, and a company will show up and take them off and launder those and bring them back. And so that's somebody outside of manufacturing would be like, What even is that? But, but inside of the world of manufacturing, it's obvious that exactly what that is. One

Mike Franz: 11:53

quick story about that, Matt too, is that so prior to IMTS, we were ready to, you know, that was kind of the the unveiling of, yeah, you know, the brand, and being in a very heavily manufacturing, populated spot at the trade show was, was a good thing, yeah? So I actually took, my aunt helped me out. It was a pretty big family affair for us to be at IMTS. Amy's mom and brother helped us out the booth. And we're my aunt actually made I took an old sport coat, and she used red shop towels to kind of do patchwork over the top of it, and turned it into a red shop towel sport coat that I wore around. And the compliments I got on that at IMTS, I mean, there's five or 10 people that came up and said, I want to order one of those immediately. I went to my aunt, and she's 90 years old, and I said, you got enough energy to whip out 10 more of these things? And she said, Nope, no chance. This one took long enough, so I have a one off version. Maybe we'll auction that off someday. Who knows? Or what we

Matt Kirchner: 12:56

should do is find a textile company that's willing to make 100 of those and then sell them for a bazillion dollars. Let's

Mike Franz: 13:02

talk afterwards. I've got some ideas around that too. Okay, absolutely, absolutely perfect

Matt Kirchner: 13:06

story. You've mentioned Amy's name a couple times. Tell us a little bit more about who she is and how you got connected.

Mike Franz: 13:10

So Amy to it's no secret now, but her and I are together, so we're a couple, and we started this as a couple as well, but she has a great manufacturing history as well. So she worked for stratas I'm sure you being up here, and yeah, all over the country. No stratasy 3d printing company, you bet 3d printing company added in manufacturing. And yeah, she's been in around that for many years. And so it was just kind of a natural fit. That's her background. The best thing about our partnership in this is she is so good at the organizational and getting things done, aspect of the business where I'm more of the loose cannon. She comes to ideas and Hey, we should try this. We should try that type of thing, the kind of the EOS model, where I'm the outside the box thinker, type person and the innovator, and she's the one who gets stuff done, so we both try to do our best when it comes to getting stuff done. But she's definitely

Matt Kirchner: 14:09

right. No, I know, and I don't I know the feeling Melissa Martin, our producer, is smiling because she knows that my wife and I actually worked together in several businesses as well, and when we did the personality profiles a number of years ago, the person that was doing that work said, Oh, I understand how this relationship works. Matt goes through life making a mess, and Renee cleans it up. And that's I mean, so it sounds a little bit reminiscent of the relationship that you and Amy have as well. So so glad to hear that that is as successful as the company is. That's terrific. Let's talk about company success, and then how you're sharing the benefits of that success. Now, you mentioned earlier in the podcast that you're taking 20% of proceeds and putting that toward workforce development. So talk about that. You know, how are you making an impact on the manufacturing economy and the manufacturing community? And why is this mission so important to you? Well,

Mike Franz: 14:56

the mission is so important because there's a critical need for. For people, people to do jobs in manufacturing. I'll start with kind of that portion of it. But the one thing over the course of the last year and a half since we've been doing this, is that I've noticed across the country and talking with so many manufacturers. I mean, Matt, you talk to a million people, you know, the same thing. But the biggest challenge that I see, and I've tried to really narrow this down so that we can talk smarter about it, is that when it comes to workforce development, there's a huge awareness problem, and there's so many people that are trying to do good things and bring awareness to the industry, but it's very challenging, and it's kind of discombobulated, and there's so many very segmented, very segmented, and people are trying to do great stuff. There's not like a centralized this is how we're going to get young kids interested in it. This is how we're going to upskill people through certain programs. These are, these are just like awareness issues anyway, that's one issue that we're consistently hearing and finding, and to that point is, over the course of 2024 one of our main goals was to work with and kind of our go to market strategy with donations and The distribution of those funds was to initially, we thought it would be a great idea to start out with, working with AMT going to IMTS, starting at the high level national companies and organizations to gain more awareness, because manufacturers know of those organizations, right? Okay, then our goal over the next few years is to really push down that awareness down to more the local level and the state level, and be able to donate funds to where it's really impacting, the small to mid sized manufacturing companies. So we're starting to do that. So last year we were working with the big organizations. There was five that we particularly worked with, and this year, we've readjusted that to work with organizations and associations that we saw were pushing that down to the local and state level. And as an example that this is a little bit of the cool factor that I like about this is that we we started working with metallic is all within my hands, foundation as one of our partners, and we saw real impact they were making they worked with as of yesterday, when I checked, there was 60 schools across the country. So there's 60 schools that they've partnered up with and are donating to those schools two year and technical schools that are making an impact in the manufacturing industry. That's one other organizations. We're working with women in manufacturing. We're working with the Manufacturing Institute and their fame program. We're also very excited about working with robotics teams at the state level. So first and the Vex programs two, that's really where I'm super excited about the other ones are great also, but getting the kids involved is something that's really becoming more of a passion. Get them on a tour, get them to a facility, show them that, hey, you know, there's robots in these shops. There's so many cool things that happen in these shops. And getting them excited about that, maybe that'll click something in their brain that says, hey, I can choose this career path, and that's what it's all about for us.

Matt Kirchner: 18:26

And we're huge fans of that our listeners know as well, of Vex and FIRST Robotics, and in fact, separate from The TechEd Podcast, we support financially and doing judging and those types of things, a number of those programs across the Midwest and around the United States. Super, valuable. And I think, to your point, it lights that spark, right? It gets students excited about that technology. Mike Chico, who's the president, CEO of FANUC America, I think, is the all time leading scorer, as we say, on appearances on The TechEd Podcast at four. And Mike will tell you his team will tell you, Paul Aiello and others that these students get excited about robotics and automation through first robotics programs and vex programs. And Vex programs, and then they graduate into the kinds of robots they're going to see, whether that's a fan of robot or somebody else's, you know, industrial or collaborative robot in manufacturing. Really, really important way to get young people excited. So I'm glad that you said that. And big fan of the work that the Metallica is doing. We've actually got schools in Southeast Wisconsin, Gateway Technical College being one of them that's been a huge beneficiary of that program, in an open invitation, by the way, to James Hadfield, to come on and talk about that anytime he wants. And the let's see what we can do. Yeah, exactly the connection between rock and roll and metal and manufacturing is there as well. So never know where that goes. But really, like the way that you're thinking about, how do we get directly to the students, in a lot of ways, how do we get directly to the people that we can benefit the most? What criteria do you look for, and will you be looking for going forward, in terms of the kinds of organizations that you support?

Mike Franz: 19:50

That's a great question. And Matt, quite honestly, we're figuring that out. 2025 is going to be significant for us from a growth. Standpoint. So we're going to really take a look at where the donation dollars are really making the most impact. So we can use, I guess, more than just gut feeling Sure, which we've kind of used to this point, yep, because not only do we like the programs, but we also love the people that are involved with these programs and the passion that they bring to it, and that's really important to us. And right now, I mean, between Amy and I, we just have the ability to kind of pick and choose who we're working with, which is great. Who knows, maybe someday when we're at the Starbucks level, things will change a little bit, but we got a little ways to go before that happens. But yeah, I mean, we're fortunate enough that we're when we've reached out to organizations, they tend to like the model. It's a little bit unique in the fact that we're very focused on manufacturing and the community. Those are two things that we have going for us. Like I said, we've just been fortunate to be able to kind of pick and choose who we've worked with

Matt Kirchner: 21:06

well. And I love it when somebody finds a business that kind of creates a flywheel where it's just like this circle, right? So we all like to run businesses that are financially successful. There's benefits to that. There's nothing wrong with that. You know, capitalism, free enterprise and the free market is a key part of what drives manufacturing and what drives their standard of living here in the United States of America, and no apologies for that whatsoever, right? But when you can find a business that is also doing incredibly good work benefiting students, and then you think about the reason you're able to do that is because you're really solving for a problem in manufacturing and then using a product that manufacturers use all the time, which is coffee, to our earlier points, and you just kind of create this circle of, okay, people in manufacturing are going to drink coffee, they're going to buy coffee. Somebody's going to have to make that and sell it and deliver it. And that's you. And, oh, by the way, the biggest challenge in manufacturing, and you've mentioned this a couple times, is finding a quality workforce and finding the next generation of workforce and manufacturing. I sit on the board of directors of the Wisconsin manufacturers and commerce, which is our I live in Wisconsin, statewide Chamber of Commerce and our statewide Manufacturing Association, so just had a board meeting this week where our CEO, Kurt Bauer, was presenting the results of a survey that his organization did of the Wisconsin business landscape, 63% of employers in my home state of Wisconsin. And this is ubiquitous and pretty much the same thing you'll see all over the country, 63% so almost two thirds of them said their number one problem was finding people, finding great people, and that's actually down a little bit from what it was a year or so ago, but it's still two thirds of companies, that's their biggest problem. So here you come and say, Look, you're already buying this product. We make an amazing product. You're gonna love it every bit as much, if not more, than what you're buying someplace else, but we're gonna take a significant part of the proceeds from the business that you're doing with us and reinvest it right back into the community. I love that message. I love that business model. It's brilliant. I've got to believe that manufacturers think it's brilliant as well. As you go out to manufacturing companies, whether it's a CEO, whether it's a supervisor, a VP of Operations, the people who actually do the work, as I say, the people out on the floor that are working in the factories and plants across America, building the products that we're using all over the globe. What are you hearing from those folks about your business model and

Mike Franz: 23:22

the work that you're doing, the idea, the concept, the model that we have, this is going to sound maybe a little bit cocky or whatever, but everybody loves it, just for example. And you mentioned a significant amount of the proceeds go towards it. One thing that we found with doing the fundraising for the the robotics teams and the Lego League teams, is that the percentage that we're giving back is significantly higher than other fundraising opportunities. So, you know, kids would go out and sell pizzas and bags of popcorn and that kind of thing, right? And they get X amount from that to go back. But what we do is we, we wanted to do it kind of twofold, is that we give a portion back to the actual teams, but then we remain consistent and give an additional portion back to the actual first program, so that they both benefit from that. But that's just one example. But yeah. I mean, what we hear from just about everybody is, Hey, we love that model. That's so great, and partnerships have been such a big portion of the model. My background is I worked for Kimberly Clark for years, and there was we sold through distribution, and I saw the multiplier effect that could be done with that through a sales team in a sales organization, when you bring in distribution to it. So we wanted to bring that model to it, we've partnered up with two, almost three soon, hopefully knock on some wood, okay, of the biggest distributors across the country, and that really allows us to get into those facilities and have to give them a real opportunity to provide a unique product model, opportunity. To manufacturers across the country. So I hope that answered your question there.

Matt Kirchner: 25:03

Yeah, no, for sure. So I mean, it sounds like the feedback we're getting from manufacturing is that we love the model. What better opportunity to give back to whether it's an employee at a manufacturing company or somebody drinking coffee at home, having a quality product? It's such a key part of the American of Americana and of our culture here, I can see tremendous value from that standpoint. And frankly, these are the kinds of things where manufacturers can be, in some ways, putting their money where their mouth is. And we talk a lot about the importance of manufacturing companies supporting their local technical education programs, supporting their local STEM programs, being involved with their regional technical or community colleges. These are the people who are responsible for creating the next generation of the manufacturing workforce. And this is just another way for manufacturing companies and for any of us to reinvest in the future manufacturing making sure that we have a free flow of really good talent into manufacturing in the ensuing year is really important something

Mike Franz: 25:58

to that point. Matt is that and I talked about awareness before, but a little known fact, and this always surprises people here in Minnesota, that there are 200 plus robotics teams in the state of Minnesota, and that's more than Boys High School hockey teams in the state of Minnesota, which, if anybody knows about Minnesota, right? The state of hockey, which is crazy to me. So there's, there's a shift in a popularity that's growing and growing. It's a groundswell of those types of programs that are coming up. And there's also back to manufacturers, is that they're not necessarily aware of that and of the opportunities that they have to maybe make an impact on a kid's life, to help them maybe develop an idea around being a manufacturer someday. So, yeah, those are, those are cool things. Awesome

Matt Kirchner: 26:52

statistic. I'm going to use that right. There are more first robotics teams in the state of Minnesota than there are high school hockey teams in the state of Minnesota,

Mike Franz: 26:59

and Boys High School hockey teams, okay? Because women's hockey is gaining immense popularity as well. So,

Matt Kirchner: 27:05

yeah, absolutely, it's a great statistic, and it really just shows how this is growing. And to your point, manufacturers have this awesome opportunity to be engaged with their local school districts and with their educators in ways that a lot of them aren't. A lot of them are, but a lot of them aren't. And I get it right. I mean, I ran manufacturing companies, and I'm worried about the line going down. I'm worried about getting my orders to my customers. I'm worried about that corrective action request that came from the customer last week that I have to get on, or somebody's sick, or I have to hire a new supervisor. The list goes on and on and on. Manufacturing folks have a ton to worry about. The partnerships with education, important, not urgent. In other words, you really have to have that discipline and make it a point to reach out and engage and in a lot of ways, you're creating that bridge between the manufacturers and the students. Speaking of those students, I asked you, what you're hearing from manufacturers? What are you hearing from the students that are benefiting from the work you're

Mike Franz: 27:58

doing? One thing that is definitely interesting. We mentioned the all within my hands metallics, all within my hands Foundation. We were at an event at the end of last year, at end of 2024 where they had a couple students come up and talk about the impact that it's been having. The funding. Now, there's multiple companies and organizations that donate to that foundation, so we're not the only ones, but as a part of it, hearing their reactions and saying, there's steel toe boots that are required to be part of this program, there's PPE, there's training materials and things that kids wouldn't otherwise be able to afford to get into these or to be involved with these programs, and to hear them say that I didn't necessarily have a path that was, you know, the standard path for me to go get into a four year school. I didn't really like school. It wasn't for me. I can't concentrate all the things that you hear. And then to me too, Yeah, same. And to hear them get up in front of a crowd of 150 people and say, I love this, and this is now the path I'm taking in life. And I don't come out of college with$200,000 in debt. I have a job that's great, and I can't wait to it's waiting for me as soon as I graduate. Those are the types of things that are just unbelievable. So hearing that kind of stuff that's more vague and just kind of out there, but that's cool. One of the things that when, like you mentioned the first program, but there's a, there's a manufacturer just up in Monticello, which is just up the road from where I live, went up there, and they

Matt Kirchner: 29:38

hope you can plug the name if you want. Do you want to say who? UMC, so awesome. UMC,

Mike Franz: 29:43

they have an unbelievable facility. They have an unbelievable team that has created an environment and culture that's top notch, and they host and provide almost like a practice facility for the robotics teams to come and practice, which is a huge. Challenge for these teams to do. They don't have an arena, they don't have a football stadium, they don't have an ice arena that they can practice at. So anyway, UMC helps out with that. When you see the students that are involved with that program and see the level of passion that they have for it, it's very gratifying. It's really gratifying. It's like, there's hope,

Matt Kirchner: 30:27

absolutely, there's hope for, I mean, that's just to see one of the more, more interesting school board meetings that I attended, and we get to our share of them, given the kinds of work that we do, there was a student that got up and it was, they were trying to figure out how to how to spend some budget dollars. And the student got up, and it was a student who is super, super involved in STEM and first and so on, first robotics. And their line was this. They're like, look, we built this huge football field for the football team and the soccer team to play at. We have this amazing field house for the basketball team to play in. We have this awesome aquatic center that we spent all this money on for the swim teams to practice in, the diving team to practice in. And the student was like, that's all great, but he said his line was, what about us? Yeah, you know, what about this huge sea of kids that are in in secondary education, in high schools and maybe, you know, formal athletics isn't their team. They're like, could we invest some money in FIRST Robotics, and could we invest some money in our space as well? I just thought that was a really, really telling moment. I love sharing that story. I also have to tell you, we brought up Metallica a few times now on this episode of the podcast, somewhere in your future, there has to be some coffee tied to fade to black, right? So, I mean, it's like some dark roast coffee. Listen to you. Yeah, exactly. So we gotta, that's just an idea. I'm a fan of all of all kinds of music, actually, as our listeners know. So it's everything from y'all listen to the newest hip hop, the classic old 1950s rock and roll and everything in between. That's, that's kind of how I'm wired. You'll be

Mike Franz: 32:00

jealous of this a little bit. So they hosted, in the middle of December, the Metallica hosted a concert for all within my hands. Yeah, it was in LA, but it was at a very small venue. I mean, there was probably 3000 people, three 5000 people in there. Sweet, and we sat 30 rows up, and we're very close. So Sammy Hagar and other what's his name, Michael and Michael, Anthony from Van Halen, yep, and a couple other guys did some old Van Halen stuff and some Sammy Hagar stuff. Love it opened up for him. And then Metallica came on. They played an acoustic set, and this was the funny part. So they played an acoustic set after Sammy and Van Halen ish, right. Yep. Just jammed out. Yeah, Metallica comes on and plays this acoustic set where it was phenomenal, yeah, but it wasn't quite energy level. It kind of brought it way down, and it was like, Oh, is this what they're gonna do kind of thing? Yeah, then they took a small break and they did some foundation stuff, and then they came back, Matt and just absolutely rocked our socks off. It was unbelievable. Yeah, it was so cool, very, very cool. Just a super impactful music night. But then also raised a ton of money, and it was just fun. And now, you know, I don't know if you saw it or not, but they just gave half a million dollars to the people in and around LA that lost their homes to fire. So just, I have a lot of respect for not only their music, but for what they do. So it's pretty cool.

Matt Kirchner: 33:29

That's a great story, and I am jealous that would have been an incredible venue, by the way. This is my second Van Halen conversation this week. We were talking about Eddie Van Halen the other day. Yeah, obviously passed away. I would guess two or three years ago, I could

Mike Franz: 33:41

talk about Eddie Van Halen for a long time. Yeah. Another real quick funny thing about that show is near and dear friend of yours. I believe Tony Neary, yeah. So Tony, we kind of knew that we were going to be there, and we ended up running into her and her husband outside of the show. And then it turns out we sat randomly had our seats directly next to them in the actual show. So it's great coincidence. Just small world stuff. Yeah, absolutely

Matt Kirchner: 34:06

doing some great, great work with SMS, with Tony at a grand opening for for FANUC, not too long ago. So, yeah, all kinds of roads kind of lead back to the same center. So, so now I have the challenge of segway from heavy metal into you being a guinea pig for something. There's no good way for us to segue. So love it. Our listeners know our last question, or we'll get to that one in a couple questions. Our last question every week is, is to ask somebody what advice they would have for their 15 year old self. People literally hang on to the end of the podcast just to hear that, because we've gotten so many great, great stories, and in response to so many of our listeners, saying, Hey, we love all the content. We love all the conversations, but that standard question you ask every time, we'd love to hear more of that kind of discussion as well. So we're experimenting with a few more of those kind of standard questions and building that standard content. And just because of the timing of this episode, recording it early in. The year after we finish some of our strategic planning for 25 you get to be one of the first to hear these questions and to give us your thoughts. And so we're going to segue into that Mike and give you an opportunity to share some thoughts with us. And that first one that we're curious about. So many of us had an interesting education journey. I did. I was not a good classroom learner. There's probably not an episode that goes by that I don't mention that I, you know, I was, I would love the interactive stuff. I love the hands on stuff. I hated sitting in a classroom and listening to a lecture. And not everybody's like that. Some people, you know, some people learn that way, and that's and that's awesome. It was just never for me. But first question on these kind of, this new venue of questions for The TechEd Podcast, what's one belief that you have about education that would surprise other people.

Mike Franz: 35:43

I was trying to look at what's next and what's gaining steam as far from I mean, this is The TechEd Podcast. There's a lot of tech that is happening, no doubt. Right now, we're in an unbelievable time period of tech that's either been released, or is coming out, and there's things on the horizon that are just unbelievable. I think that's going to be a game changer as far as how the education system is going to evolve, and how kids are going to learn, and what that new norm is going to look like. Totally I'm super excited about it. It's so different of how I grew up. You know, you go to school and you're expected to do X, Y and Z and like you, Matt, I sucked at school. So one of my best friends, okay, won't mention his name, but he owns a manufacturing facility, been very successful. Yeah, we always joke about who is lower in our class ranking. As far as when we graduated high school. I tell

Matt Kirchner: 36:44

people, I was in the half of the class that made the top half possible,

Mike Franz: 36:48

good way to look at it, and we were definitely there too. It just wasn't the way that we learned the best and right hands on, like you said, hands on, and doing things and use doing it that way, and having ideas that are outside the box and thinking of different ways to approach things. I just didn't necessarily it was like square peg, round hole thing. We turned out, okay, I guess, right, yeah, yeah, we'll let others be the judge. But yeah, right. The other thing is that that's one of the awareness things that I keep going back to it. But the awareness portion is that now, moving forward, there's going to be so many other options for parents to talk to their kids about, yep, that are going to be impactful for the kids to feel more comfortable in their own skin and be able to run around and try different things, and that's going to be more acceptable, absolutely.

Matt Kirchner: 37:39

And you know, it's, it's amazing to me, and maybe it's just the space we're in, or the kind of conversations we have, how many people you know join us on the podcast and have that same story that I have in, that you had, which is just, what were we doing? I mean, you know, sitting in those classrooms for all those years with somebody lecturing from a chalkboard and I mean, that's not what life is about, hands on, interactive learning. And I agree with you 100% that we've got we've got some really exciting times ahead of us here as we look to the future of education, more hands on interactive learning going to be a really, really exciting time. Can I

Mike Franz: 38:11

turn that question to you? Because we sure? How would you answer that question? I'm

Matt Kirchner: 38:15

a believer that the traditional education model, whether or not it was right for the 1950s when we started making the kinds of classrooms that we have now. And we've had a lot of guests on the podcast say, you know, you look at the typical American classroom, and it doesn't look a whole lot different than it did 50 years ago. I toured my grade school a few years back when they were actually tearing it down and building a new school, fortunately, but they brought a bunch of the alumni back and said, Hey, take one last look at the grade. So I hadn't been in my school, in my grade school in probably 40 years, and had an opportunity to go back and check it out. It was a really, really cool experience, I bet, but I had this moment where I was like, oh my goodness, my fifth grade classroom hasn't changed since I was in fifth grade, and that was 40 years ago. They hadn't changed anything. So I'm just a huge believer that that traditional style of education, thank goodness, is going to go away and we are going to have way more self paced learning. We are going to have way more opportunities for students to explore different types of Applied Learning in areas that interest them. Right? I can learn the Cartesian coordinate system by looking at a bunch of 2d pictures in a textbook, and if that's the way somebody learns, awesome. I can also go program a six axis industrial robot, or I can go program a CNC machine. Learn the same kind of things in a really, really applied way that's going to resonate so that, to me is, you know, you asked me a question that, quite honestly, I could spend two hours answering, because we've got a lot of thoughts around this, but, but just looking at some of the things that are happening in and around high schools that are creating self based learning around emerging technologies like artificial intelligence, like machine learning, and doing it in a way that isn't just programming, coding and trying to understand algorithms and generative AI, but like, super, super interactive. I mean, those are the kinds of things that are the future of education, in my opinion, super, super exciting times. So you're really excited for the future. Also, I've. Two really quick questions for you related to the past, taking you back again to your education journey. Mike, every one of us, I believe, has a specific teacher. And in fact, I tell people, everybody can pick three that changed their life in some ways, right? You can look back on your education journey, whatever it was, whether you, you know, went direct to workforce, out of high school, whether you went on to Technical Community College, University, whatever you can pick three teachers, instructors, professors that had a huge, huge influence on your life. What is one thing you learned from a specific teacher that nobody else might have learned from

Mike Franz: 40:32

them? Oh, boy. Okay, so as soon as you asked that question, there was, there's one lady that popped into my head immediately, fourth grade teacher, Miss winter, possibly forget her name, yeah, McKnight, elementary school in Wexford, Pennsylvania, wow. Like I mentioned, I did not do very well in school. In fourth grade, I was a nut case in the classroom. Yeah, I don't know. Couldn't sit still. I mean, I would, probably would have been diagnosed with all the things that they say these days, you know, sounds familiar, yeah, so, but she, she was able to not look at that as necessarily a super negative. I mean, I got in trouble and all that stuff, but she kind of let me be me in the classroom setting, which I don't know if that was good, bad or whatever, but good, she at least, kind of understood before, like all the diagnosis of these things were out there that was very impactful, as you can tell. Never forget her name. So she kind of left me, and I would imagine that she would have been a person that kind of considered my learning style. Yep, if I were to you know, she would have been there through the whole educational system of my my time. She would have helped guide me. Yeah,

Matt Kirchner: 41:54

absolutely so. Hats off to Mrs. Winter. I think it ties directly to this whole idea of technical education, hands on education, the future of education, and how we're going to find really, really creative ways to meet a much broader group of learners, rather than just those traditional classroom learners, which have their place in the world as well. But there's a lot of us that didn't fit into that mold that are going to benefit from this new way of looking at things, thinking of ways of looking at things. We want to ask you again to go back and look at your journey as a young person, maybe a little bit later in fourth grade, when you were probably nine or 10, and maybe turn the clock forward another five or six years to you're a sophomore, you're a high schooler, you're a young, 15 year old. Mike Franz probably weren't thinking at that time that sometimes, at some point, you'd be, you'd be a coffee mogul. But here you are, or maybe you were, I don't know, but if you could give one, one piece of advice to that young man looking back on your life, Mike, what would that be?

Mike Franz: 42:48

There's so many things, Matt, that you could tell a 15 year old first version, don't do this. Don't do that. Don't get in trouble here. Don't Do you know one

Matt Kirchner: 42:57

of our guests one time said, Don't go out with Beth from senior year high school.

Mike Franz: 43:06

Now, find something that you're passionate about. There's a couple lessons that my dad has told me from day one that I never it took me a while to comprehend it, but it's older people. The older I get, the smarter, you know, my dad gets, yeah, right,

Matt Kirchner: 43:21

exactly. It's amazing how much they learned in those years between when you're in but

Mike Franz: 43:26

he always says there's a couple things, getting there five minutes early is five minutes late, so always be earlier than five minutes

Matt Kirchner: 43:33

somebody. Time for us in Wisconsin. Go on.

Mike Franz: 43:37

Do what you say you're gonna do. Okay? I always stick to that. I mean, these are general things, but it's good stuff. Financially speaking, always pay yourself, pay yourself and don't forget to save some money. Those are things that have been stuck with me for a long time, but it took, you know, if I was 15 and took some money and invested in Google, that would have been very nice.

Matt Kirchner: 43:58

Yeah, absolutely. Or even Nvidia three years ago would have been not such a bad idea, but Hindsight is 2020. Your father's a wise man. That's some great advice, and really appreciate you sharing that with us here, Mike, appreciate you being with us on the podcast. We could go into any one of those three pieces of advice, I think, for probably a good 10 or 15 minutes. But sadly, we're getting toward the end of our time together. It's been a wonderful time together. I learned so much. Love what you guys are doing at shop floor coffee. Love the conversations we had about education as well. Worked in a little bit of music and Metallica too. So any conversation that can revolve around those three things, that's a good day. In my book. Mike Franz, the co founder and Chief Innovation Officer at shop floor coffee, has been my guest here on The TechEd Podcast. Want to thank Mike for being with us. It's been a wonderful time. Thank our audience for joining us as well. Be sure to check out those show notes. They will be at TechEd podcast.com/friends that's TechEd podcast.com/f R, A, N, Z. You know, we're all over social, so check us out on social media and say hello and don't miss next week's episode. Episode as well every single week here on The TechEd Podcast, bringing you the absolute best content in technical education and in STEM. Thank you for being with us, and we will see you next week. You.