21 in 21: Joe Carlo on How Bitcoin Changed Pink Owl Coffee Forever

Joe, welcome to Presidio Bitcoin. Thank you for having me. Yes, I'm so excited to have you here. Joe Carlo is the co-owner of Pink Owl Coffee, a cafe that started in San Rafael, California, and now has three different locations.

Joe and his partner, Sandra, founded Pink Owl with a mission that runs deeper than great coffee. They also donate a portion of their revenue to breast cancer research. Pink Out Coffee is also one of the first businesses to adopt Bitcoin payments via Square as part of their strategy to hedge inflation and build value. So, this is very exciting that you're here.

And Joe is also here tonight to attend our Builder Meetup, which we're about to go to after this. Right after this. Yes, it'll be fun. I'm excited.

Yes, me too. So my first question for you is, Joe, can you just tell us a little bit about your story and how you and Sandra decided to start Pink Al Coffee? Yeah. So, Sandra was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2018.

And I was in the finance corporate world and she was in the holistic medicine world. And it was kind of hard for her to continue to do her field. so we said it would be really cool to come up with this community coffee shop just a one little stand or location and we can both work at it together that's how Pink Owl was started we wanted a name that no one had so if you went to New York, you went to London, you went to Paris or anywhere, there's another Pink Owl coffee in the world so a couple bottles of wine And we came up with the name Pink Owl and we, January 2020, we opened up our first location.

Yes. And your first location is in San Rafael, which is actually where I'm from. And I have been to the Pink Owl many times. So I was very excited to see that you guys were a very early adopter of Bitcoin.

Yes. So how did you actually get interested in Bitcoin? Yeah. So, um, I think back in 2014 is when I first got involved in Bitcoin.

Um, just for my own personal, it was like, uh, it was another tool to, uh, I, I own some stock, some gold, some mutual funds. And it was just another thing I can, you know, kind of invest in. There was a lot of buzz about it. It was a little difficult to buy back then, but definitely when the bigger companies like Coinbase, Gemini came about, it was easier.

They kind of made it easy to acquire and purchase. So I think that really is what got a lot of people involved in it because it was so easy to transact at that time if you weren't super techie. Totally. And then kind of at what point did Bitcoin turn into something that you used as a personal investment to now being part of your business and wanting to be part of your business?

Yeah, so a person I just always bought and stored and held Bitcoin for my own personal retirement. But I think the question you're asking is, in 2023, Square allowed businesses to allocate a percentage of their sales towards Bitcoin. and we jumped the bandwagon and we went all in and said, you know, this is a really good, this is like way before like treasury companies or anything. We're like, you know, we don't know what we're going to do with all this Bitcoin, but we're going to, they take a percentage and, you know, DCA every day.

It just automatically, it's set it and forget it, you know, and that's what we did. Did you have any hesitation from kind of turning Bitcoin from a personal side to actually being part of your business? Or did it feel kind of natural from the positive experience you had had in the past? It felt natural.

I mean, when I got involved in Bitcoin, it was, I mean, I think on the low, it was like $300. But I think really like when I got involved, it was like $4,000 or something like that. And you just, you see that hedge against inflation, just, you know, you see Bitcoin just rising. And it's just such a great store of value that I knew it would be really good for the business.

I didn't know at that point what we could do with it. And I think that's what a lot of people are still figuring it out. But I know that it's helped us out tremendously. And, you know, there's times that we've had to, you know, to get rid of a little bit of it, to upgrade or to transact in different ways.

But, you know, it's been a safe haven for us. That's amazing to hear. And yeah, I think that that can be hard for, you know, Bitcoin has already kind of defined this value proposition of being a great store of value. But in terms of, you know, being money, being a means of exchange, it's still kind of it's getting there, right?

Yeah. Yeah. So how long have you guys been accepting Bitcoin as payment? Yeah, so we have been accepting Bitcoin as payment for probably like around like, I don't know, like four to six months with Cash App, you could, you know, accept Bitcoin as payment.

And so when Square did that integration, maybe it was a beta for them, but it wasn't on their interface. Everything went over to Cash App. So your daily out allocation whatever percentage 5 10 went over to Cash App Now everything on their interface So we were able to accept because it a wallet so we could accept Bitcoin as payment back then. But since Square is released in this new product, we'll be pushing and accepting Bitcoin as payment a lot.

Amazing. Yeah. And do you have many customers coming in, like, wanting to pay in Bitcoin? Yeah, definitely.

Not only the customers that we've talked about, they seem to wear my shirt. Also, we posted already some social media. Our social media team, we have a couple, two or three people that run our social media team, have already created months ago content that we'll be accepting Bitcoin as payments and come on in and support us. And then other things like our meetup groups and, you know, friends and whatnot.

So we've gotten pretty good, you know, support with people coming in, paying with Bitcoin, which I was shocked because I'm like, people don't want to sell it. They don't want to get rid of it. And the true Bitcoiners, they do. They want to transact with it because they know like $4 is going to do nothing, $10 is going to do nothing.

And they know to transact, it's going to get more people involved, get more people excited, get more people comfortable. Have you seen that getting maybe some of your staff interested in Bitcoin or customers interested in Bitcoin? Definitely. I've definitely told a bunch of our staff members, and we're about to have like a holiday meeting or party.

I have told a couple of our staffers, I mean our employees, that I want anyone that wants to come to us to learn about what we know about Bitcoin, because you can get direct deposits. you know you transact as a matter of fact my social media person sage which is really good she's in school in washington i actually offered to pay her in bitcoin and she said no i'll take dollars and i said why she just doesn't know about it so i said why i just give you like a little bit of bitcoin you know let's see you'll get your feet wet get you started i think a little bit helps i mean uh yeah i mean i get paid in bitcoin and that was definitely a real shock when that first happened um i mean it's amazing but also it is very it's a very different experience yeah than getting paid in dollars there is volatility that you have to consider i mean you can get paid and then the price can go up and down when you're like asleep um so i guess i'm curious too like how has volatility like affected your business no i don't even look at it i zoom out i mean if you zoom out, even like people right now, you know, oh, you know, these people are getting liquidated and they're short in Bitcoin and they're long in Bitcoin and they're, I'm not a day trader.

I don't want to be a day trader. I just want to set it and forget it type of thing. You know, I love watching many different podcasts, many different, I learn something new every day, but I'll never truly like be a day trader or any of that. So for me to set it and forget and just DCA and has been a game change for me.

And I mean, yes, right now it looks like it's going to go down. Are we in a bear market? Are we in a bull market? It doesn't matter.

I don't care if it goes down to 25. I'm going to continue to do what we're doing. And this is going to go up to 200. This is going to go down to 70.

This is going to go up to a million. This is going to go down to 200 grand. This is going to go up to 5 million. doesn't matter to me like i don't i don't think about that yeah um i mean that's great that you don't think about it so something that we're thinking about on the spiral side is better promoting bitcoin to merchants and specifically communicating the merchant benefits and one of the main ones is credit card fees yes like accepting bitcoin how to that's just much better for you as a business owner, right?

Yeah, you don't have to worry about chargebacks, transacts fast. It's, yeah, there's no fees as of right now, at least I think for the first year, they're not doing any fees. And the fees can become really high when it comes to, you know, all the products and everything. So anywhere where we can save, and trust me, I reach out to our rep once a year and say, is there anywhere we can cut back Can you cut back here or there or whatever?

Because every dollar, you know, heads up when it comes to those fees. So, yeah, I think Bitcoin is going to be a huge way to transact. And you'll be able to do everything with it. We'll be able to pay invoices with it.

Or we'll be able to collect invoices with it. We'll be able to have our coffee club with it. We'll be able to wholesale with it. So we'll be able to get paid in it.

You know, it's going to be great. Yeah, saving fees is huge. And I feel like this is like such an easy win, especially for Square merchants, because Bitcoin is this feature is going to be, you know, GA very soon. It's such a simple way for them to save fees.

And yeah, I mean, fees up to like, you know, whatever, 3%, that can really add up. Huge. Thousands, tens of thousands of money in your business. Amazing.

another question something that we're also thinking about on the Spiral team is how to make it known that you accept Bitcoin as a payment what do you do right now to make it known that Bitcoin is a payment option for your customers we ordered some stickers that we're going to put out by the register Square hasn't like supplied those yet they do have like cute little stickers with their release or whatever but so we will put those out which we couldn before social media that another way that we put the word out there I hoping that like we probably do like a text campaign and an email campaign or something like that But I'm hoping that like Square with their database sends like a blast, you know, something like maybe here's $5 free in Bitcoin.

Use it at these merchants or whatever. Anyone that, you know, except Square, you can use this $5 or allow dollars to automatically be converted into Bitcoin, something like that. Yeah, to make it more obvious. Yeah, to make it more obvious.

If there was something that you could put by the register, say maybe a plushie or something smaller, would that be fun? Yes, definitely. What would be the, the plushie's kind of large, right? That takes up a lot of counter space.

I mean, yes and no, you know. I think it'd be cool if they had like a like a latte orange or something maybe like a pumpkin spice or something with like a bee and you know and I think that'd be because we're a cafe yeah but yeah like something that's like customized for each type of business like you know if it's like a pizza maybe like a pizza shop if it's a burger pizza or some fries or something if it's like an ice cream place like a little cone like something that fits with your business to want to put it by the register So someone's going to think about this and become like a VFriends.

They're going to create some type of a Bitcoin plush series for restaurants. Yes. Yes. Okay.

Good idea. Something that we will take into consideration. Yes. What kind of questions and feedback have you gotten from other merchants in Marin about accepting Bitcoin?

Have they been positive, negative? You know Marin. I do know, Brad. There's a lot of old money there.

We're slowly transitioning into this new era of digital capital and digital money. And I think it's going to take a while. I think we have BlackRock and all these big institutions buying Bitcoin and ETFs and the words getting out there. I think that we need that to happen first before a lot of these merchants because they're so used to doing what they do.

I think that some of them that use Square are automatically going to transition because they'll see videos and they'll see releases and they'll see all these things that they're doing and they don't want to be left behind. I know that with Square, almost every single product that they release, some of them are a flop, but 90% of them are really good and they actually help our business. and time is money. It's a great thing.

So I think that a lot of businesses will adapt to it. We got to like kind of get this ball rolling and like really be the front runners of the industry and let other businesses know that this is a cool thing. It is a cool thing. And I mean, yeah, going on podcasts is great.

I'm curious to see how many businesses, like as you'll have to turn on the feature to accept Bitcoin payments or to do Bitcoin conversions. So I'm curious to see how many merchants do it. Yeah, we, I feel like a lot of businesses will do it once there's more Bitcoin being accepted as a payment. Because then they'll see like, you know what, hey, I made like $13 last month in Bitcoin with like whatever, like, or $300 with 50 transactions.

And it's like, oh, if I could just allocate 1%, 3%. I mean, again, all these institutional investors saying, put a percentage towards Bitcoin. I mean, if you're heavy in gold or treasury bonds or whatever you're doing, why not put 2%, 3%, 5%? We put like 100%, but why not put a percentage and see?

And I think you'll see it's the best performance asset. even from today on, it's going to outperform everything. There will be trillionaires with this space, and you can never say that with any other industry. Crazy.

Well, I'm very excited to see another aspect of kind of, you know, getting Bitcoin used as money more beyond merchants accepting it is getting Bitcoiners to pay with this. And we were kind of briefly talking about this before is a lot of Bitcoiners don't, they don't want to on their Bitcoin. It's kind of, but to be fair, it is kind of a shift in what Bitcoiners are thought to believe. I mean, there was just like, you know, the hodl, like don't sell your Bitcoin narrative.

And now we're like, no, use it as money. How do you think we can get people to use it as money more? Is this merchants wanting it? Is this awareness we can spread?

I think it's a little bit of awareness we can spread. I think that merchants are going to like give incentives. Like one of the things that we're going to do is we're going to let offer like 21% off if you pay in Bitcoin. So it's like if you have the Bitcoin and it's like $6 for a latte, but you can get it for 21% off if you use Bitcoin versus fiat.

I mean, you can buy Bitcoin with your fiat and save 21% with a coffee. So I think it's going to be strategies like that and creative solutions that is going to help out. I think so too. The adoption.

Yeah, I think there's going to be some time that it takes. We're kind of also talking about something that I'm interested in maybe better communicating is if you're a Bitcoiner or you hold Bitcoin, maybe you are part of the sailor crowd and you just buy Bitcoin purely as an investment. using Bitcoin even just 1 or a tiny amount will help your investment because it will help adoption and it will help you know get the brand more awareness So that really just helps kind of the Bitcoin you have Yeah And it helps network security Mm So hopefully we see a bigger push of that I think so.

Okay. Switching gears. So I know you've been in the Bitcoin space for some time, but if you could be in a merchant's shoes right now, maybe who's, you know, doesn't have experience with Bitcoin, are there any books or podcasts or messaging that you would say to them that you think would help? Yeah, Broken Money, The Bitcoin Standard.

I think, and then plenty of podcasts, Natalie Brunel, I mean, Anthony Pompanoly, like just there's so many out there. But I think until you get your feet wet, until you buy your first stat and you're logging in and you're looking at it throughout the night and you're looking at the volatility of it going up and down and maybe you transact and buy a cup of coffee with it. And I think until you actually transact with it, you're never going to understand it. So I think that that's going to be the first thing that I would encourage every business and merchant to do and customer and people who want to learn about it totally a few more questions we're running out of time okay this is also not getting technical here but i'm very curious of your perception as a merchant so there's kind of this big conversation going on right now in the bitcoin community of how to best display the fractions of bitcoin so sats has obviously been around in the space for a while um but do you think it's important how we display the quantities calling it sats or just calling it bitcoin does that help the brand recognition i i think calling it bitcoin i like the stats the stats to me is like change it's like nickels orders dimes pennies 50 cent pieces so just the display so just split yeah oh you mean on the on the screen on the screen versus saying sats if it's just like the bitcoin the b yeah you know i i sometimes will switch my own the way i view it because i'd rather see how much bitcoin i have versus dollars you know so i think it's a psychology thing um but i think that being paid in satoshi or like viewing it as satoshi's might be better because it looks i think like more understandable versus like a cup of coffee is like 0.

00001 bitcoin you know it's however many stats a thousand stats or whatever for a cup of coffee i think that makes more sense more sense than like the yeah that long that's the psychology of people looking at understanding it do you think people get confused on what a sat is yes who haven't who have no understanding of bitcoin yes Yes. Because I think even Bitcoiners get confused because they are so used to Bitcoin. Like they want to be whole coiners and they want to just DCA into Bitcoin.

You rarely hear about people like, oh, I'm DCA into stats. That's going to happen, but you don't hear about it as much. you know good feedback good feedback um okay we're already getting through this i wish i had more time um so last question i guess kind of where do you see both pink owl coffee and also bitcoin you know in the maybe like five-year horizon yeah so um we're going to continue to build our small Bitcoin treasury pink owl company. And hopefully with that, it will open up a lot of doors for us to expand our business and have more locations, more wholesale, more coffee clubs, more of everything and just continue to grow.

That's what we hope for. We'll see what happens. but we're strong Bitcoin believers, so that's not going to change. I love to see it, and I love to see it that it's from San Rafael.

Yes. That's the best. We need to get more Marin companies accepting Bitcoin, and we want to get Presidio companies. I mean, they should, because we have all these Bitcoiners.

They're ready to go spend. There's a lot in Marin, too, and that's why we're hosting our very first, or in the process, there's already like the North Bay, but everyone's like, You get to start your own or whatever, but I mean, it will help our business because we can people always ask us when we've done them at our cafe before. Do you accept Bitcoin's payment? And we didn't in the past, but now all the Bitcoiners are a little group of 10, 15 people.

They'll all pay in Bitcoin and then that kind of spreads the word. And then a lot of times people like will come up to our group and they're going to be like, what are you guys doing? Like, we're Bitcoiners. Do you know about Bitcoin?

We'll start talking to them about it and whatnot. So, yeah. Amazing. Okay.

If our listeners want to follow you or Pink Owl, where should they go? TikTok, Pink Owl Coffee, Instagram, Pink Owl Coffee. They go to our website, PinkOwlCoffee.com.

You'll find us there. TikTok. You are the first person on the show that has said TikTok. And I love it.

Yeah. That is, we're getting more Bitcoin content on TikTok. It's like, that's how we reach the masses. Yep.

You have to use all the platforms. You have to use all the platforms. They're all different. Yes.

Well, thank you so much for coming on the podcast and you'll be speaking later at our Builder event if any listeners want to come by. Presidio Bitcoin. We have meetups pretty much every Thursday and Builder every month. Awesome.

Thank you. Thank you so much. Yes. I was super excited to be here.

Yes, me too. Okay. Thank you. All right.

Bye.