The Optimised Health Show

Ep. 15 | Is Coffee Helping or Hindering Your Health? With Special Guests, Exhale Coffee | Healthy Living With the Laws

• Ben & Sarah Law • Episode 15

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In this episode we talk all things coffee with founders of Exhale Coffee, Kirsty and Alex. We first met these guys at the Health Optimisation Summit and really connected with them as they share our values on health and wellbeing.

They have made it their mission to provide the healthiest coffee possible - organic, antioxidant-rich, mould-free and sustainable. You may not realise it but a lot of coffee is low quality and can actually be detrimental to your health

Tune in to uncover the truth about coffee and learn whether it is helping you achieve your health goals or doing the complete opposite.

We really enjoyed this one and hope you will too! Make sure to leave a review!

To learn more about Exhale Coffee:

https://exhalecoffee.com/
https://www.instagram.com/yourexhale/

To find out more about The Health Optimisation Summit:

https://www.instagram.com/timbiohacker/
https://www.instagram.com/healthoptimisationsummit/

Follow us on Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/benlawprimal/
https://www.instagram.com/sarahlawuk/

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Sarah:

This is Healthy Living with the Laws. Top tips on how to optimise your health. From what you eat and drink to how you live and think. With your hosts, Ben and Sarah Law.

Al:

There's been thousands of studies done on coffee, but the holy grail of studies was this one published by the British Medical Journal in 2017. And it was an umbrella review that covered 213 meta-analyses of studies. So it looked at basically every study that I'd done before it. Okay, and they concluded, in their words, that coffee was good for just about everything as long as you're not pregnant. Okay, and then they linked it to a huge uh reduction in the risk of contracting some of the biggest diseases.

Sarah:

Hello listeners, welcome back to another episode of what we called? Happy Living of the Rules. Can't remember what our own podcast is called Brilliant. It has been a while. Guests. That's what happened to us. Guests and summer. Happened before, but uh House Guests, not podcast guests. No, house guests, house guests. Last time summer hit and it all went wrong, but this time it's a bit better. We've done it's not only been a few weeks. We were travelling. That's why, as well. Yeah. Travelling back to the UK and rah rah. Anyway, you don't need to know about that. Boring. Um, but we hope you are all good. I'm excited for this episode. We are, because we have some fabulous guests on, haven't we?

Ben:

We have. Exhale coffee.

Sarah:

Yes, your exhale on Insta. So we met these guys at the Health Optimisation Summit that we went to, which was epic, wasn't it? We'll actually have to do a podcast on that. So that was the end of May. End of May, we went to Health Optimisation Summit in London. If you've not heard of it, go on to Instagram and look up Tim BioHacker. At Tim BioHacker. He is the the man behind the mission, isn't he? Wrong the Health Optimisation Summit.

Al:

Yep.

Sarah:

And he's incredible, and the event was just epic by all the best health brands you could think of. Incredible speakers. Just everything about them. And these guys were there, basically. They were there. We bought their coffee because we loved it. And we loved everything about them. Yes.

Ben:

So we love coffee. So we love them.

Sarah:

Yeah.

Ben:

Well come on.

Sarah:

Um, but we don't just love any coffee. You're a coffee snob. So we want, you know, we wanted to make sure that the people we had on the podcast were in alignment with our values and what we believe in, and Exhale Coffee is most certainly that. So they are going to explain a lot more on this podcast about coffee, about the health benefits, about why you should look for mycotoxin-free coffee.

Ben:

How their coffee is different from regular coffee, what they the process they go through. Which is epic.

Sarah:

So stay tuned for a fabulous episode with Xhale Coffee.

Ben:

So, what is your kind of background and kind of how did the how did you get started in this industry?

Al:

I guess the the whole idea was um I I was basically an accountant for 15 years. So as a as a very bored, deeply unfulfilled accountant for 15 years, and I kind of spent the last six or seven years trying to figure out how to get out of accounting. And I I basically, the whole idea kind of stemmed from me because I started developing an autoimmune condition and my health just started tanking. And like so many people who have businesses in health and wellness, it kind of started off with my own health journey, trying to solve my own issues. As more and more symptoms came up, the more and more kind of like closed doors I got from every hospital and doctor I went to see. I was like, right, got to research this myself and try and figure out how to solve my own health issues. Then it was around three years ago that I started. So I was taking loads of, I was drinking loads of coffee because I was doing loads of endurance sports. So coffee was amazing for performance. I was drinking loads of coffee for performance, and then at the same time researching about my health, and it was that research um around health where I started to realize that coffee kept coming up as being potentially really healthy as well as supporting performance. And that's when the idea of setting up a business that combines the two came up. So it was like a healthy for-performance coffee. Um, and then about a year and a half ago, finally launched the business after years of research.

Sarah:

So I love that. And it's so true, like you said, about like I think most people they end up where they are because of the journey they've been on, and it's normally through their own pains that they end up creating something to help other people, which is exactly what you've done, um, which is amazing. And I just want to say firstly as well, Ben didn't even say welcome to the podcast. So I'm gonna say welcome to the podcast, guys.

Ben:

I'm gonna miss it, none of that, none of that.

Sarah:

Straight in. Amazing. So a year and a half ago you launched the business. And what is it then that makes Exhale coffee different to just your regular Starbucks? I'm not even gonna say the worst. I mean, you can't even count Starbucks as coffee. So I'm not gonna say the word Starbucks, but a regular, like off-the-shelf coffee. What is different about you guys?

Kirsty:

Yeah, that is the best question, I think, that everyone asks us, just like actually, what have you added something? Have you done something different? I think like that's the kind of key to it.

Al:

Yeah, so from the basic level, like all coffee can be healthy. So there's been thousands of research papers into coffee, and coffee's been associated with reducing the risk of all sorts of different diseases. So all coffee can be healthy. So we've basically gone through this process to find a coffee that is ridiculously healthy, as we call it, like exceptionally healthy. So we basically put our coffee through nine different independent lab tests to find a coffee that's especially high in antioxidants and polyphenols and certain vitamins, and it's also organic and tested-free from mycotoxins, pesticides, and any other potential contaminants. So that's the old green beans you're talking about, yeah. Exactly. So it's kind of we don't add anything to it to make it healthy, we don't chemically modify it in any way, but we just basically do a lot of lab testing. We tested 45 coffees from every corner of the globe to find the one that was naturally highest, then took it to the roastery, roasted it loads of different ways to find the best way of retaining all of that natural goodness as possible. Um, so so yeah, it's kind of it's just straight up coffee like any other, but it's just our processes just locked in more of the good stuff than anyone else.

Kirsty:

And the difference that we found with our current coffee is I think it's 55%. I always get that wrong, but 55% more of the good compounds, the polyphenols, than the the kind of 40 others that were tested um that are on the market. So that's the kind of difference you're looking at. So there are polyphenols in other coffees, but ours is is much, much higher.

Ben:

What is it with the uh the the processing, the roasting method? Then how how do you retain that goodness in your in that process?

Al:

So roasting has a huge impact in it. So every stage, there's three main stages from the sourcing, how it's grown at the plantation, that has a big impact. Then the roasting has a huge impact, then the brewing. So there's three different stages, and we've tried to standardize every one of those three stages. The roasting, so there's loads of different compounds. Part of our kind of research was trying to figure out which compounds in coffee it is that are associated, that are given it its associated health benefits. Okay, so and each one of those compounds reacts differently in within the roasting process. But the main one is the polyphenols, chlorogenic acid, right? Chlorogenic acid starts in its highest concentration in the green bean, and as you roast it, it slowly drops off, and then as you get to a medium dark roast, it drops off a cliff. So we roasted it lots of different ways and plotted those to figure out where the drop-off was, and then we just stay just shy of the drop-off. But then there's other compounds which are developed through the roasting process. The melanoidins, for example, are developed during the myelid reaction in coffee, and they start you, there's none in the the green unroasted bean. So as you get to a medium roast, that's when the the my the melanoidins peak. So you want to maximize those and minimize the loss of others, and yeah, it's a balancing process, find a sweet spot.

Sarah:

It's technical, isn't it?

Ben:

Like so, is there is there a sweet spot then, or is it some better lighter roast and some better darker roast?

Al:

Yeah, well, I mean, there's potential that you could take this business in the future to go, right? What is your specific health condition? So if you went for a light roast, for example, you would maximize a chlorogenic acid, but you wouldn't have as many melanoidins, but you might have more caffeine carriol. And you could look at the different health conditions that each one of those are associated with, and you could go, actually, um, caffeine and carriol have been linked with a reduced risk of prostate cancer. So if you go for a lighter roast, you're gonna get a coffee with more caffeine and carriol.

Sarah:

So I could geek out on this all day.

Al:

That's like that's like next level, so we're a little bit more.

Kirsty:

You wouldn't necessarily want that because then you get more of the fatty compounds of uh like you could literally for most people though, medium roast seems sort of the the happy medium.

Al:

That seems there's something, but but it's kind of it's it's deeper than just going for a medium roast because there's different phases of the roasting process that you need to speed up and slow down to develop the internal bean more than the external and all this kind of stuff.

Sarah:

So wow, a bit different to what you used to do at home. So Ben actually used to um try and roast his own beans at home. First, he started with a popcorn maker maker. It was completely burnt this shit at the house bank, and then you moved on to a property.

Ben:

I did buy a little uh home, I can't remember what it's called now. Yeah, but it's a home roaster thing, which span it around, but that was wasn't great, it didn't taste great. It was hard, very hard to get it right, like it's 30 seconds over and it was black.

Sarah:

And it depended on on the weather as well, didn't it?

Al:

Like if it was warmer in the room or that's that's with any coffee roasting, right? It just depends on the intense process. We actually went um when we had our last debut, we took it, we went travelling in Kirsten's maternal maternity leave for six months, and we took a bag, two kilos of green and roasted beans with us because we were so I was so worried that we wouldn't find good coffee where we went. So we took two kilos of green beans and we wrote every week we'd roast them in a frying pan on the hob.

Sarah:

Well, that is that is dedication to the bean. There's many people who have uh the belief that coffee is bad because the way it's portrayed and the fact that obviously an excess of caffeine, just like anything, can screw with the adrenals and all these different things. So what are the health benefits of coffee? Like if someone is thinking that coffee is bad, what what actually tell us what is actually really good about it?

Al:

So, first of all, I'd say you can probably jump on so PubMed is the best database for any research studies. So you could literally jump on PubMed and search for coffee and any condition, and you would find dozens, if not hundreds, of studies linking coffee to that condition. And you know, 99.9% of them would all be favourable. So literally, you know, you could think about any health benefit that you want from coffee, and there'd be some study to spot it out there, or lots of studies. But mainly, so like I say, there's been thousands of studies done on coffee. Um, but the holy grail of studies was this one published by the British Medical Journal in 2017, and it was an umbrella review that covered 213 meta-analyses of studies, so it looked at basically every study that had gone before it, okay. And they concluded, in their words, that coffee was good for just about everything as long as you're not pregnant, okay, and then they linked it to a huge uh reduction in the risk of contracting some of the biggest diseases. So I'll just give you a few of them here. So pretty significant ones. So around the liver, it's really protector of the liver. So there was a 50% reduced risk of uh liver cancer, 65% reduced risk of chronic liver disease, and 31% reduced risk of cirrhosis of the liver. So it's charge reductions, and then around the brain, it's really protector of the brain. So Parkinson's was a 36% reduced risk, and Alzheimer's 27%. I'm like, get me a cup now. The list of then like metabolic disorders, like metabolic disorders, so like type 2 diabetes, 30%, um, leukemia, 37%, gout 50%. So basically, all of these different diseases, like huge reductions. And this is looking at you know tens of thousands of studies. Um, and they concluded that um so there's one one figure which is called all cause mortality, which is your chance of dying from any any disease, any condition. And they uh concluded that coffee, if you drank three to five cups a day, gave you a 17% reduced risk of all cause mortality. And that was the same for decaf as well, interestingly. So it's caffeine. So, yeah, some pretty broad um benefits there.

Ben:

And this is these studies what what type of coffee were they using? Was it any type or that's any type of coffee?

Al:

So that's just like normal coffee. So when we say all coffee has polyphenols and antioxidants and health benefits, they really they do.

Kirsty:

But instant, not so much. So I'm not not for this study, but there was a recent study that came out, I think it was in in May or something this year, where it looked at all different types of coffee, and instant showed no benefit at all. Um I mean, you can't even call it coffee to be fair, can you? That's it. So I think it's not surprising, but weirdly, people do, you know, people are, oh, I've heard it's good for you, but I drink instant. You're like, well that's not it, it's not the same.

Sarah:

No, no, exactly. So that's interesting about the decaf being the same because one of the one of the major reasons I normally drink decaf is just because of my my adrenals and not being able to process it particularly well. Um, but I do know that if I have coffee not on an empty stomach, it's a lot better than if I was to drink it black on its own with no food in my stomach. I'm like crazy woman. But it's interesting to know that with with the decaf process, then you still get the same a lot of the same benefits.

Al:

A lot of the same. So the ones around the brain, though, you kind of lose out quite a lot. And so it seems that it really is the caffeine that protects the brain.

Sarah:

Damn it. Maybe I should start drinking the caffeine.

Ben:

Explains a lot, it explains a lot.

Kirsty:

I know maybe what you said about on an empty stomach, because I think that's the thing that we do say to people is everyone processes caffeine differently. And I think people are like, Well, will I be okay with your coffee? And we're like, Well, it is still coffee, you know. We can't, if you can't take coffee, you're still gonna um have some issues. But because of the high polyphenol content, a lot of people report that it gives you less jitters. So we've got a sort of blog on why you get less of that adrenal rush um on a high polyphenol coffee, uh, but also eating before. So I don't eat, I like the feeling of the caffeine hit in the morning. So I purposely have a glass of water, which is really important for coffee, and then have a coffee and I love it.

Ben:

Is it black black coffee?

Kirsty:

I don't know.

Ben:

Yeah, and sugar. Oh right, in the end of podcast now.

Sarah:

And what are your thoughts what are your thoughts if people do have issues with their adrenals um with regards to drinking coffee? Is it something that they should be mindful of or are they are they good to go?

Al:

No, I think you should be mindful of it. Everyone has their own individual kind of uh health conditions that they need to they need to temper everything in their diet uh with relation to their own conditions. So if you have issues with your adrenals, I'd say drink, I would say drink decaf, you're gonna get most of the benefits. Yeah, or even you could have we have half calf in our house where we we mix our decaf and our regular 50-50, and you get half the caffeine and it's just a tiny little buzz from the coffee, you'll get that like slight more like you know, activity, but not as much, not enough to be yeah, to taxi a drink or too much. But yeah, you can still drink decaf.

Sarah:

Amazing.

Ben:

Obviously, the negative side of bad coffee is mold, yes, mycotoxins.

Sarah:

Mycotoxins explain those because I bet there's a lot of people listening who have no idea what a mycotoxin even is.

Kirsty:

I know.

Al:

Yeah, so this is um a bit of a hot topic. I basically, when we launched the business, I focused on the real positives in coffee and the health benefits it can bring and the antioxidants and polyphenols, and most of our process was designed towards maximising those in the coffee while at the same time ticking the box of avoiding the negatives, and I'd never paid too much attention to the negatives. But then recently I actually wrote an article, I kind of researched it and wrote an article a couple of months ago on it. So I'd suggest everyone have a read of that. And I never thought it was a massive issue, I have to be honest, until I researched it properly. And it does appear I was wrong that it is a bit of an issue, and basically, mold so mycotoxins are the toxins produced by mold within coffee, and the main ones are aquatoxin and aflatoxin that you get in coffee. Um aquatoxin and aflatoxin are pretty severely cancerous, they're terrible for your health, you know, in large quantities. Um that's generally accepted by the World Health Organization and everybody. Um, so you want to avoid them, but they're floating around in the air, they're everywhere, like these molds and toxins are everywhere, just in small quantities. And in small quantities, your liver cleanses your body and can clean them out, and you know, is pretty w uh adept at doing so. However, in large quantities, they're pretty nasty. So there's a lot of research into the quantities of them in coffee, and some of the one study concludes that coffee contributes 12% of your total exposure to mycotoxins from anything at all, 12% of your total exposure from coffee. Um, and then there's other studies which show um that basically the government set uh safe guidelines for the the limits, the levels of mycotoxins that should be in foods, which if everyone kind of stuck to those safe limits, then most people would be okay. But there's some studies which show there's up to four or five times a safe limit in coffees because they're just not it's not practical to test every bag of coffee on a two-mic shelf. And if a coffee's roasted and ground like weeks or months before, the chance of contamination gets pretty high. So you just have to be brinding freshly roasted, freshly ground coffee wherever you can.

Kirsty:

Even if it's not our coffee, we say the key. Well, a key is organic, you know, even if it's not ours, but fresh, because the moment it sat in that packet, you know, aluminium wrap packet for ages, it will start.

Ben:

So kind of even your coffee could develop those moltoxins if it's left if it's left, yeah, too.

Al:

It's unavoidable. If like if someone bought a bag of our coffee and just left it sitting around for months, then yeah, definitely. Which is why we roast fresh every week. We roast fresh and we grind it immediately before we post it out. So it's kind of and we encourage rather than selling kilo bags of coffee or big bags of coffee, we encourage people to get a more frequent subscription so they're getting the coffee regular, and and also that maximizes the health benefits because polyphenols start degrading from the moment it's ground and roasted. Um, so if you're getting freshly roasted, freshly ground coffee, you're getting more polyphenols and fewer mycotoxins.

Ben:

Yeah, I literally just bought a kilo of coffee. Well done, you. Yeah, but you that would last you two days.

Kirsty:

I drink it, I just get through. We have this massive tub I'm just looking at in our kitchen of coffee, and we will get through that very quickly.

Sarah:

Yeah. We've got guests coming, so we yeah, we have got guests. But it's interesting, you said about the the mycotoxins. I did a mycotoxin test last year, didn't I? Because I started having lots of health issues and then developed an autoimmune condition myself. And I was like, right, what is the reason for this? I'm finding the route, and my aquatoxin was through the roof, like through the roof. And we don't know whether it's come from potentially a bit of a fun journey, isn't it? Like a water damage, water-damaged building. So we had a house tested. Um, and one company came back and said it was absolutely fine, but then we did an ermie on the house and it came up as the highest risk you could possibly see. Um in the UK. Yeah, yeah. One of the reasons we sold it, because I was like, I cannot live in that house, get me out. Um, but there was no mold anywhere in the house.

Ben:

No visible mold.

Sarah:

No visible mold, it didn't smell like mold. But but the hard thing as well with mycotoxins is you don't necessarily know where the sources come from and you don't know whether it's a past exposure or a new exposure because there's no test just to say whether it's current or not. So it's it's been interesting, hasn't it?

Al:

The mold you see on your windowsills growing, like the black mold isn't necessarily the bad stuff, you know. That's a tricky thing. Yeah, hard to know.

Ben:

So who knows whether I just there's a a roaster's in um Ibiza Meke coffee. Okay, and they roast they roast fresh every week.

Sarah:

So I I buy it as fresh as they do, but if you guys could instead come out, I would love that.

Ben:

Because yours is better, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's not tested for I don't I don't think it's tested like that. No. How you guys test it. No, definitely wouldn't be. It wouldn't be.

Kirsty:

It's interesting because it's um other things we test for are things like pesticides, yeast. So we did recently a test on our new Dcaf, and you know, we were testing lots of different all organic, so really good high-quality coffee. Like we don't test any low-quality coffee because it's not in our interest. We all keep it high to start with, so then we start sort of whittling down from there. And the yeast content was so different in all of the different um um in all of the different coffees, the kind of pesticides, because obviously coffee is one of the most spray crops on the planet, so it's kind of you know making sure that that's not coming through. So there's so many different things that could get into the bean.

Al:

How do you actually tested it? So these are all we do nine different independent lab tests, and one of the trickiest things about launching this business this business is finding companies that can do all these tests, and I used three different labs in Europe that are send off for different tests to, and uh most of them would phone these tests, food testing companies, and they'd say, Oh, do you do a test for like Cafisol and Carbion? And they're like, What the hell are you talking about? What?

Kirsty:

And they're all expensive.

Al:

I've never heard of it.

Kirsty:

You know, most of these tests are really expensive. So we have a kind of um business issue that once we've tested and found a coffee, we don't want get through it too quickly right because then we're gonna have to just do all the testing again so when people say oh I found this cafe you might want to supply to we're like well we don't we equally don't want to just like sell to a big cafe that's gonna like go through it in a couple of weeks then we'll have to do all the testing and the the kind of investigation starts again so that side of it is a nightmare yeah because we we test all our stuff now in with EuroFINs in Europe and oh yeah we use Europhones we're gonna yeah yeah it's very you like you said it's very expensive and you have to get every batch done and it's sending stuff off and getting back it's but I'm getting that's why the listeners need to know this stuff because it shows why your coffee is different like again from anything out there because how many companies would go through what you've gone through to produce what you produce they just don't so people want the best quality then they they need to know what it takes to get that.

Al:

Do you test it after it's roasted as well just like yeah some before some yeah some before some after so some of these tests like chlorogenic acid we test the green bean um to see which coffee's got the the most kind of inherent potential for the polyphenols you know we test the green beans then we roast it and test them after they're roasted as well to see how it's affected during the roast process you'd actually send it back off again to be to these labs.

Kirsty:

Yeah yeah well that is a small bag there the dollar signs like it's not hundred quid a bag it should be exactly and it tastes like it's 100 quid a bag it's amazing we loved it didn't we're bought some but not after every roast roast you know that'd be yeah that would be fine the roast profile and then we stick to that roast profile and we've got an amazing um but I think that's where it's so interesting isn't it about price because obviously we would love our coffee to be accessible to everyone and that there'd be absolutely no issue and it's three pounds a bag but there is literally no way on this planet you could buy organic coffee and test it and then have a high Q grader roaster roast it and and keep it at three or four pounds a bag. So I think that that's the kind of thing we'll always struggle with. We're not going to be like high street coffee.

Sarah:

Yeah same with same with but I think it's again isn't it it's like your market is the people who do care about their health that extra bit. They want that extra you know product that is is more in alignment with what their values are with regards to health. And for me like I mean our number one priority is health isn't if you look at where we spend our money it's all I mean the amount we spend on food is ridiculous. Like it we we're sometimes even shocked like how do we do that?

Kirsty:

Like how on earth we it's like my mum used to feed a family of five for about a third of the what we spend a week but it's because our priority is the quality of the food that we eat that we're always going to spend money on the things that are towards health and for a lot of people that's their priority and for other people it's just not and if it's not that's just not where you're aiming is it but really interestingly like obviously being part of a startup and both of us working on it our like income from city jobs is very very different to our current income and still like so what we've cut out is things like going out for dinner or like the holidays or whatever. But actually you know the the quality of the food and like the supplements I'll love supplements which is why I know you guys but like the quality of supplements and things like that are still there.

Al:

So we've kind of kept it's interesting what you choose to kind of cut back on and what you choose to spend on and we still absolutely um you know choose to spend on on the health products yeah yeah that's amazing love it so what are your future like with the with the business what are your future plans with it so so take over the world exactly world dominating everyone will love coffee I have this tight dream of building the business up to be uh the next Red Bull address I'm gonna say that but basically like a Red Bull type business for the kind of more healthy more sustainable generation so everything that we do on on that we've discussed around health the health of the coffee we're doing as much on making it the most sustainable coffee we possibly can but then at the same time we're building up the the brand image and reputation as being like a real sporty outdoorsy active brand so if you look at our Instagram we have a team of ambassadors who are snowboarding base jumping ice climbing running ultramarathons and stuff and we're going to loads of events and we're serving our coffee at like ultra marathons and different kinds of sporting events so and eventually hopefully we'll start organizing our own or partnering with people to organize our own. So just kind of moving and doing kind of as much as Red Bull do for kind of extreme sports but doing them for our own kind of blend of sports and and health and stuff.

Kirsty:

So yeah it's that kind of business yesterday sums that up yesterday we all we went for this breath work session with these amazing guys and then followed by an open water swim led by Carrie Ann Pain who's a GB um Olympic medaler swimmer. And then we all did the swim she gave us little tips and then we all had like a coffee afterwards and sat there and we're like oh my god these are like all the best things that we want the company to do about you know like the breath work the community the cold water swimming led by like leading professionals and then having a coffee and a chat like this is perfect I love that and you know what I think peep that's what people are looking for nowadays.

Sarah:

I think especially since COVID and lockdowns people want businesses that are more community based where there's it's not just that they're buying something from someone they don't know they want a community feel they want to get to know the people behind the brand it's it's the world has changed so much in that respect which is awesome. And I noticed that you guys are um B Corp pending as well. Yeah nearly nearly full actually a week or two away I reckon that's amazing because I know how hard it is to get B Corp certification. It's insane. Have you gone through it have you gone through it um so the company I'm an ambassador for yeah they're they're a B Corp and I know the the amount of work that it takes and the amount of stuff you have to submit and it's intense but incredible because there's it's a massive movement and that the UK is the leading yeah country with the B Corp movement.

Kirsty:

Yeah we think it's as hopefully like two or three weeks away we've got like the final question. So you like you submit your application which is the beast and then they come back with any questions on some you know bits of it.

Sarah:

Anyone listening who doesn't know what a B Corp is do you want to explain a little bit about that because obviously I know there's a lot of people who are really hot on sustainability of the planet and things like that and I know B Corp is huge for that. So yeah just explain a little bit about what a B Corp is yeah so a B Corp is like a a new wave of business.

Al:

So I guess traditionally it was charities or or social uh community interest companies or whatever who actually did some good in the world and then there was businesses. But B Corps are this new wave of business that are that can have shareholders and are are kind of driven by profits and trying to become a profitable money earning business. But at the same time you've had it written into your legal documents you you've made a commitment to equally prioritize um alongside profit your impact on the environment and your impact on society um and you're kind of like legally uh held to that and it's a real strict process it's a real strict assessment process um where you have to score points and you have to score over a certain amount of points and it's it's like a couple of year long process or at least a year long process to get fully certified.

Kirsty:

But basically it's the call it I think so many things you can kind of remote it and you can say oh yeah my packet's recyclable and that's a tick and that's enough like this is so in depth and it covers not just say the packaging or not just your you know the courier we use is like the screen that so when we're we're moving our coffee we use a certain type of vehicle we say from from the like the what we're doing yeah the policies with our employees with or every like area is covered so there's no I think it's look there's always an element of you know there's so many questions and you kind of go through it going oh god you know what do we do here but they that it's so comprehensive that you feel really like comfortable with it by the end you're like wow we are doing all of that.

Sarah:

Yeah yeah exactly what yeah yeah absolutely and it is it is that balance isn't it of the planet people and profit all like in coming together in a company essentially which is amazing.

Al:

And they say it's yeah using business as a force for good yeah they're yeah amazing you say you like you want to take over the world obviously we all do but I guess I guess the issue you like scaling up like that is um uh how do you how do you maintain the freshness and the kind of obviously you want like we were saying you want people to have it almost roast to order I mean that I mean that comes very tricky when you try to scale scale um yeah unfortunately there's you know there's companies that are much much much bigger than us who do exactly that so our next step is so we were meant to be opening a roastery in Tottenham was the original plan but then uh lockdown kind of ruined that dream so now we roast in a day a week in someone else's roastery so the next step would be open our own roastery and then we would have full control over it and you can get huge size coffee roasters and there's people you know there's um you know the the probably the the best example is a company called Pat who a lot of people are familiar with and I think they have something like 80 000 subscribers and they roast to order so literally you know you will place your order and then they'll ship it out within a day or two. So if they can do it to that scale us at 4,000 subscribers we have a lot of room for growth yeah yeah I used to use has beans in UK exactly we sort of fell in love with coffee because of um has been I feel like he was like he's called Steve Latin that's the guy yeah yeah I I feel like he we always forget about that I feel like he was quite pivotal in like us falling in love with coffee because he kind of yeah he's so passionate and he's so like I spoke to him quite a few times that when we went to Costa Rica he put us in touch with a speciality coffee farmer over there and arranged for us to go and visit him so yeah because he's got a real passion for the farmers and that side of the coffee industry which is really which is really inspirational. So that's definitely you know that's guided us a lot in that side he seemed to like roast the day before I used to be like roast yesterday yeah it's like quick go more prime pan that's quite an exciting new next step for the business is kind of where we'll be open that roastery and we're like right if we're like this sporty outdoorsy brand we're like where's where would be the most on brand place to have a roastery and we kind of like the dream is to open somewhere on a on the coast like on a on a cliff overlooking the ocean in Dorset where we have our own roastery with like a kite surfing school out of it and then a rock climbing wall inside and then a yoga studio in it.

Ben:

I'll be there I'll be there so you'd so you'd never do kind of supermarkets and that because I guess it could sit on the shelf for a year.

Al:

Yeah that's the problem not with this current product so we are you know potentially we would develop we are looking to develop other products which have more of a shelf life but our current products it all has to be super fresh. So yeah powdered coffee or something yeah not not a powdered coffee instant but like you know like I mean like even like you could use in supplements I guess I'm trying to get out like oh yeah that's good I guess stuff like coffee in a can you know like cold brew coffee in a can yeah yeah yeah yeah that yeah that can like hold on to retain the freshness if it's like a nice old flush can and then but it's shelf stable for like a year or something you know so that kind of product would work really well with supermarkets but but not the freshly roasted coffee really.

Kirsty:

Because we're even struggling we're on Amazon um but we we're trying to sort of find our way there and even that we're struggling to keep the freshness because we you know what Amazon likes is you pile them high and you stick them low in the warehouse that's how they do it. That's how they then they favor those companies whereas we're sending in 10 at a time because we don't want it to sit there because we don't want the quality to go down. So um the beast doesn't like it. They want you to just pile high you're actually selling sending into their warehouse FBA. Yeah you send into their yeah exactly into FBA and every week we send every week drips and drives and they and then the moment we send in they like it they sell those and then you know you could fulfill yourself but we call that way listeners are going to be like I have no idea what you're talking about I sold on Amazon for 10 years. Yeah but the listeners have nothing we might have to but it's it's all those things that are so we it's just quite complex when you're you want to be so fresh you know like is that the bit we're struggling with and we actually just um Al just did a blog on pods so that's an interesting one a lot of people ask us what do you think about pods is the biggest question is when are you going to do your pods and it was kind of a really big moment on Sunday we sent a newsletter and we were like never ever ever not and it was like we finally and we finally like laid our stake in the ground we were like never ever and like our big point was that the reason the planet is in the place it is because people want easy yeah easy easy doesn't cut it right now and so we literally like no no no and it's it's a good blog because it goes into why we're sort of against part not against it sounds a bit but why we're not going to be doing them and I think you know it just goes against our pillars of like sustainability health and taste after sacrificed massively just for ease and it's like changing that mindset.

Sarah:

Things don't have to be easy like enjoy the ritual of the plunging in the weight exactly yeah every every angle together but that's what I love about you guys as well and what you're doing is that you're you're not willing to compromise the values of what you do the company for profit just for profit or for convenience for what people want.

Ben:

It's like you're sticking to what your values are I probably wouldn't cut it with the B Corp though would it either like the little pods yeah I mean there are be there are composable ones with pods.

Kirsty:

Yeah with and it's the this is the thing that you know we all struggle with with sustainability. You could have reusable pods that's great they could be the best thing in uh sorry like um compostable pods it's great you can compost them but the energy to create those tiny little shiny just because you can compost them doesn't take away from the fact you had to spend all the energy to create energy and then energy to compost them. So it's like you could probably wiggle your way through it but you're still it's a lot of energy.

Al:

When instead the energy you could just use the energy it takes to lift a spoon into a pouch and then put use your own energy rather than the the energy are going to hate us they're like podcast off now they want to listen they're not our they're not our audience you're a pod drinker change so how can I ask actually how do you how do you make your coffee how do you prefer yeah sugar and milk I have run I have one black just for the record yeah no so I have a every morning I start the day with a double espresso so I got a sage in uh in lockdown one of the many lock one of the lockdown cliches everyone either got a puppy or a sage we what did we get I mean we got a lot of stuff yeah I already had a sage so I do sourdough start the day with a double espresso and I feel like that's kind of like a it's like a a good like wake up call it's like right time to go after it double espresso and then through the day we mostly have uh cafetiers but then when we go on holiday or traveling or camping we take the aeropressed because you love an aeropress indestructible yeah you can chuck that in a backpack and forget about it for days yeah yeah it's one of the best travel tools everything you ever do like bulletproof coffee oh you got back into it I'd spent about a year doing bulletproof when I was training for an Iron Man um and I swore by it I literally couldn't wake up without a bulletproof coffee I thought it was the best thing in the world and then on race day I was like right I'll have a bulletproof coffee before the event because that's how I've been training. Woke up in the morning and then because of the pre-race nerves literally I couldn't stomach the bulletproof coffee at all. Like I couldn't keep it down. So then after that I was like well there's no point in training with something you can't have on event day. So I ditched it and then I hadn't haven't noticed any sacrifice in performance or anything so I think it was a placebo slightly but then recently I've got quite into making um adding collagen mct oil and cacao powder so not butter but it was like a mid-morning kind of snack it's delicious.

Kirsty:

Yeah yeah that sounds collagen for me and I think a lot of people are sort of getting into like collagen but mixing collagen with coffee works really well for me because you can't taste it and it's like it makes it quite creamy and it's quite so I think that's like my go-to my number two coffee is always collagen first it's love life supplements collagen I was gonna say I've had your mctr before I think back in the day when I was doing my bulletproof coffees I think my MCTR came from you guys. I think I've bought literally everything from you from the star straps you were like my go to for quite a while actually didn't put two and two together because we've always had your magnesium like and I didn't actually know that was you guys until Alex literally yesterday was like I can't take any credit I do nothing I just pretend I do I get it now I can take what I'm given here's your list go thank you the magnesium is a game changer especially if it's someone who drinks a lot of coffee in the day you need that any help you can get the slate lower i'll do i'll do I do um double cream and mct in my bulletproof and cinnamon cinnamon and cacao how many coffees do you have today only two do you maximum two I'm swear all I see is you with a coffee sometimes two or three you do nerf it but I've never seen anyone drink a cup of coffee as slow as he does I've got an automatic coffee machine now so it's just press a button and out of clean like allow it well we want to sort of get a new name out there so I suppose bulletproof coffee came from bulletproof which is that the brand of coffee and yeah and we're like actually why are we calling it bulletproof coffee? This is this is not you know so no one's named the one with collagen and yeah because that's all they guess podcast listeners here's your challenge come up with a name for the for the color for the wonder coffee coloffee collofin it's not really got a good ring is it's getting worse so that yeah that's definitely I suppose because bulletproof that's what I mean they like it's obviously amazing that what they've done the the branding there is like that everyone just calls it it's a bit like Google it or Hoover you know the little size of bulletproof so if we can uh kind of kind of corner that UK market because you know that's actually the American our thing but you know yeah that's the mission that's the mission guys so any listeners if you want to come up with the name for us send them in we'll we'll do a draw for them yeah you get some coffee maxel coffee and we'll the best I could come up with was C4 which is the the four C's coffee collagen cinnamon and cacao C4 but then actually C4 is a pre-workout as well it's quite a popular one I could be used a pre-workout it could be a pre-workout so I know you've got to go soon just quickly how was the health optimization summit yeah it we went and loved I absolutely loved that I just you know because I actually don't like the events as much as Alex Alex loves it but I spent my previous world in a lot of events and I was like I'm not doing it again with this and this one but that one I just the people was so amazing and it's just everyone just kind of got it and it just felt like a real family of people with all the same mission. It was great.

Al:

Yeah that's the great thing isn't it going to something like that it's like you're just on the same way yeah everyone just like you said everyone just gets it and you're like oh we're not the only people that think like normally we get normally we go to events and like you kind of most people there have never heard of like polyphenols and they don't really know why they'd want antioxidants in their life so you kind of uh uh pitch our coffee at a very basic kind of quite shallow kind of level yeah but there everyone wanted to dive deep on into chats about kind of coffee and autophagy or kind of coffee and mitochondria or cellular health and all this stuff and I was like just loved geeking out on a whole new level it's brilliant buzz that a lot of um I suppose it was maybe the combination of having speakers and all that and people said they were amazing all those yoga meditation things and all the other like cool things that people were learning about but it had a real buzz in the in the yeah it did we came did we came away especially for that um we were back anyway because sort the house out sort the house out that we've sold the moldy house and then we uh that's part of it yeah I think I bought the last two bags of coffee of you like right the last yeah we were literally running around at the end going by we were getting kicked out where we find out I feel like I'm in a club but like you might just want in demand in demand everywhere literally running around like nutters at the end where we're just buying anything and everything we did we did uh body power one year and that was just a nightmare that was the legal audience wasn't that the audience that was completely which one sorry body power body power like the bodybuilder bodybuilders the bodybuilding one right not really health bodybuilders just yeah yeah that was an interesting health optimization we might we might do it next year yeah I think we'll be there I reckon we'll be back definitely there and anyone listening who doesn't know what the health optimization summit is google it because it is the best if you're into biohacking if you're into health optimization it is absolutely the place to be isn't it it's just epic loads of incredible speakers on all different topics and loads of great brands obviously like you guys there and the fortune greenfield but Ben Greenfield obviously was there um talking he was my uh hero back in the back in the day of listening listen to pretty much every one of his podcasts and and he actually um used our coffee to do a coffee enema on the night of the helicopter there is a claim to play on Instagram I've made it we did the big one we went up with um not many people can say that we we have that we made it when you got from there you know exactly amazing so well anyone um

Sarah:

Who is listening, he wants to learn more about you guys or find you, where is the best place for them to find you?

Al:

Yeah, so our website is uh exhalecoffee.com. But check with give us a follow on Instagram, your Excel, because that's where the kind of like the heart and soul of the business is, and that's where you you kind of you see us goofing around and getting up to all of our all of the fun things that we do uh out and about with the community. So yeah. Awesome.

Sarah:

And we will obviously pop all of your details in the show notes for anyone who wants to go and grab a bag and we can vouch for it's amazing, isn't it? Like we bought some back here, and when mine ran out, I nearly cried.

Ben:

I was like, No, just quick, just quickly just do you just deliver to the UK now at the moment, or no, we do ship internationally.

Al:

Um there's uh up to six bags at a time we can ship internationally, but there is like a a bit of uh you know, there's quite a hefty uh international shipping opportunity. But yeah, a lot of people kind of yeah, pay it. We we sell a lot to every corner of the globe, like from Australia to Canada to Scandinavia, anyway.

Sarah:

Well, that's good to know. So that means we can get more. Yay! That makes me very happy because I was otherwise when we come back to the UK, I was like, right, my suitcase is gonna be loaded. So when I come back.

Kirsty:

Actually, just coffee.

Sarah:

Okay through customs, they'll be like, uh, what are you doing here? Nothing. Amazing. Well, thank you so much for being on the on the podcast, guys. It's been amazing having you on. Um, and I'm sure everyone who's listening has learned a lot about coffee today and why they should ditch the instant coffee, chuck it in the bin right now and the pods, and instead start buying exhale coffee. So thank you so much, guys. Um yeah, now now we're gonna go and brew a big coffee.

Ben:

Cheers, guys.

Sarah:

Thanks so much.

Ben:

Cheers.