Aerosmith drummer Joey Kramer has traveled the world many times over, but couldn’t often find a tasty cup of coffee. “My wife Linda suggested, ‘Well, why don’t you do something about that?’”
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Aerosmith drummer Joey Kramer has traveled the world many times over, but couldn't often find a tasty cup of coffee.
“My wife Linda suggested, 'Well, why don't you do something about that?'” Kramer told Mainebiz during his March 17 visit to a customer, Hannaford, in Scarborough.
“And I said 'that's great, what am I supposed to do, open a coffee company?' She said 'yeah.'”
Kramer mulled it over. That was five years ago. “Here we are today in 3,000 grocery stores and having a meeting with Hannaford. We just came from a meeting with Sysco and had a meet and greet at our restaurant in Newry last night. And I was the keynote speaker at the New England Food Show last Sunday [March 13],” says Kramer, who drinks his coffee black. “Things are moving along.”
The company started with a small batch roaster, but couldn't keep up with demand. So in 2012 it signed up Comfort Foods Inc. of North Andover, Mass., to roast the beans.
“We went retail for the first time in August 2013,” says Frank Cimler, co-founder of Rockin' and Roastin'. “We thought it would be great if we were in 100 stores by Christmas, but we were in 1,000.”
Today, the company sells its USDA organic certified, single-source Ethiopian, Guatemalan and Sumatran coffees for $7 to $9.99 a bag through retailers like Stop & Shop and Hannaford, as well as through big-box stores, including Costco, as well as restaurants like the House of Blues and resorts and golf courses.
“We're growing our food service and retail businesses across the country,” says Cimler.
Kramer, Cimler and former Hewlett-Packard Co. executive Ron Mann co-founded the coffee company, which also plans to add coffee cake and potential other products in the future, Cimler says.
Layering the business
Kramer's newest venture is a 13,000-square-foot restaurant, café and entertainment space across from Sunday River Ski Resort that is run under a separate corporate entity but uses the same Rockin' & Roastin' brand. Another café that will operate seven days a week is scheduled to open in North Attleborough, Mass., in May. And shortly, Rockin' & Roastin' plans to have coffee kiosks in various locales, Kramer says.
The Rockin' & Roastin' Café & Restaurant, across from Sunday River's slopes in Newry, opened last December. It was founded by Kramer and former Sunday River owner Les Otten, who is also a former vice chairman of the Red Sox. At the Newry location, some entrée names play on Aerosmith songs, like the “Living on the Wedge” iceberg salad, and the menu is diverse for families.
Cimler says Otten used to live in a part of the building that is now the restaurant, which can serve 500 people and has a private party room. Downstairs is a more casual, relaxing café. The décor upstairs includes photos of Aerosmith and other celebrities, a large mural of Kramer playing the drums behind a bar with Pearl drums fashioned into lights. Other Aerosmith memorabilia include a full drum kit of Kramer's from the Aerosmith “Global Warming Tour” that is hand-painted and glows in the dark.
The front of the main restaurant was extended with a prow with floor-to-ceiling windows that overlook the slopes of Sunday River, which are lit at night. At other times the restaurant offers front row seats to fireworks displays.
About 30 people work in Newry full- and part-time, and about the same number will work in North Attleborough. Contracted labor is used for the separate coffee business.
Kramer and Cimler didn't want to discuss financing, though they did say it's a combination of money from Kramer, friends and family. In early March the company sold out a $500,000 private placement to investors on SECGems to grow the business. Kramer says he's considering another round of investment over the summer to add products and stores for the coffee company. He'd like to eventually franchise the café.
“You have to spend money to make money,” says Kramer.
Cimler says sales have doubled every year since 2012, and the coffee is poised to sell retail coast-to-coast within two years.
The fund raises, customer management meetings and future planning may seem unlikely choices for a musician who for the past 40 years has created the beat for a world-famous rock band nicknamed “The Bad Boys from Boston.” But Kramer sees the business as a blessing in disguise.
“Not only is it a distraction that keeps me fresh to my drums, but it's something that helps me to give more to people to enjoy. I get to entertain people. I love working with people,” he says.
“In a place like Hannaford, they all get a charge out of me showing up at the meetings because everybody thinks that I'm just like every other celebrity that puts his name on a product and then just backs off and collects the money. I'm very hands on. It's my baby,” Kramer says. He designed the packaging for the coffee and he and his wife designed the interiors for the restaurant and the cafés.
Business language
Kramer admits the transition from being a musician to a businessman is difficult, but he loves coffee and cafés and wanted to be an entrepreneur. His father also was in business — in advertising specialties like novelty pens — but Kramer says he didn't take to business as a kid, and still doesn't enjoy the mathematics part of it.
He credits Cimler and Mann with nursing him along and learning business etiquette, especially during the business meetings with customers.
“Otherwise I'd be calling people a**holes and using the word s*** where I'm not supposed to,” Kramer says. “I enjoy the social part of business, even if it's a business meeting. I find it interesting to listen to what each guy's take is on a particular thing.”
Dressed head to toe in black leather and adorned with silver jewelry and well-worn tattoos for his upcoming meeting with Hannaford managers and a meet and greet with employees in the headquarters' cafeteria, Kramer acknowledges getting a kick out of sitting at a table with a bunch of businessmen and knowing all the while that they're all thinking about what he is doing there.
“They walk in with their suits and ties and I walk in looking like I look and they get a charge out of that,” he says. “Nine out of 10 guys, whether they want to admit to it or not — businessmen, doctors, dentists — everybody wants to be a rock star. And now that I've had 40-some years of being a rock star, I'm ready to get down to business.”
Does he want his business to become big, like his band? Kramer says he's playing it by ear as to whether Rockin' & Roastin' will turn into a conglomerate.
Says Kramer, “I aim to keep the quality control. That's one of the things I will always insist upon.”
He says the only overlap of being a businessman and a rock star is dealing with people, and he's a people person.
“This [business] came from wanting to do and give more. I've been doing what I've doing musically for a long, long time. The band has been around for 45 years. I started playing the drums when I was 14 and I'm now 65,” Kramer says. “When I'm not playing or we're not touring, doing other things and getting away from the drama and the rhetoric of the band and the traveling is what helps keep it fresh for me.”
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