Today we’d like to introduce you to Nathan Hamood.
Hi Nathan, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
DOCR began as a family business in 2009, at the downturn of the economy, with the initial focus of bringing people together with desserts and live music. At the time it was just me and my family, working together behind the counter. I was 13 years old back then and began to fall in love with the coffee side of things. I felt like we could apply our attention to detail to our coffee program as well, and do and be so much more as a company.
I sort of became obsessed and began trying to learn as much as I could about coffee, which led me to save up to buy our first roaster. It was a tiny little rotisserie oven converted to a drum roaster (it was my life’s savings at the time), and that’s what I learned to roast on. I was learning and improving, and we were getting a great response, which led us to buying a larger, more professional roaster – the very same one we roast on today. It was at that moment that coffee became a large focus of the company (and when we tacked on “Coffee Roasters” to our name). We began receiving recognition and winning some awards for our coffee, and really growing what we were doing. I dropped out of college to pursue the growth of the company, opening a location in Detroit in 2015. After building that location, we opened our location in Royal Oak, and have since expanded into some wholesale, ecommerce, and are continually pushing to grow the company further. This determination for growth is fueled by our goal of better executing all the things we have set out to be as a company – things that take scale to achieve, but ensuring that we never compromise on the things that make the company what it is, as that would be counterproductive to our reason for pushing for growth in the first place.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
I can’t say it’s always been a smooth road. There have been many challenges and obstacles along the way, and we still face challenges every day. As a small business, truly bootstrapped, with ambitious goals and without any large financial backing, it takes creativity and grit to find ways to accomplish these goals. That’s meant doing buildouts ourselves, strapping ourselves financially, and applying everything we’ve got to this business. But I can’t say I’d have it any other way really. It’s perhaps cliche to say but these are the types of things that build the character of a company, and I believe this sort of spirit has been truly foundational to our business and its authenticity and ethos. The pandemic brought unprecedented challenges as well, of course, ones that we were well aware could’ve upended our entire operation, but in it, we gained a lot of perspective as well and used it as a learning opportunity in many ways to work to try and build back stronger as best we could.
Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
DOCR has been my life’s work and will continue to be. We are a craft coffee roaster, passionate about creating exceptional experiences through our coffees, our desserts, the ambiance of our cafes, and the hospitality and high level of service we provide. We source coffees from small, quality-driven producers across the world, bringing in small microlots, roasting them in small batches with great care to bring those coffees to light, and taking a very deliberate approach to brewing and serving those coffees to customers. I’m incredibly proud to represent the work of the farmers in the coffee we serve, so we take very seriously our role in the process from seed to cup. We’ve received awards for our coffee program and our coffees which has been an absolute honor and means a ton to us. We’re also passionate about creating an exciting work culture for our team, partnering with our team on growth opportunities, and being a responsible business in the communities in which we operate. We believe a good business can be a force of positive impact through its operations, and I’m proud that this ideal guides so many of our actions. I’m also just proud of our team, who works so hard and grows alongside each other to create amazing experiences. We stay super focused on the things we do well, rather than extend to things haphazardly.
Separately, I have an indie hair product company I founded in 2016, called Ace High Co., largely as a moonlighted sort of business I’d work on with my business partner in that company, after-hours and such wherever we had the time. We focus on small-batch, handcrafted hair products and over the years have grown that business as well on the side.
Do you have any advice for those looking to network or find a mentor?
I think it’s important to not force networking. To me, really forced networking just feels like exchanging business cards with people with more shortsighted goals, but I’ve always preferred to just create authentic relationships and connections with folks that inspire or have shared values, often without an end goal in mind of what either party can do for the other. Creating relationships comes first, and then perhaps something comes up down the line where one party can help the other, and ideally it’s mutually beneficial. I’ve been really fortunate to meet and get to know so many people that know so much more than me, and have been willing to let me bounce ideas off them, and willing to give advice me and such over the years, and I’ve always been open to doing the same for others. I think there’s an importance of just connecting with people and never being shortsighted on the value of people and authentic relationships.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.docr.coffee
- Instagram: dessert_oasis_coffee_roasters
Image Credits
Sylvia Jarrus
Ben Lew
