How I Ended Up Building a Business in Coffee Equipment (And Why It Still Feels Familiar)

 

My path into this industry started long before Coffee Equipment Pros existed.

I didn’t come into coffee from coffee.

I came out of a very mechanical world, from working on high-performance funny cars in the pits to industrial sandblasting with large-scale equipment: air compressors in the 1,200–1,600 CFM range, 27'-150' hydraulic manlifts, and major diesel engines—Cummins, Detroit, and Caterpillar. Big machines. Big energy. Environments where you learn quickly that systems either function properly or everything stops.

There’s no ambiguity in that kind of work. If a tolerance isn't spot-on, you miss the mark. If a compressor goes down, production stops. If airflow isn’t right, nothing downstream works the way it’s supposed to. You learn to respect systems because they don’t tolerate guesswork.

So when I eventually stepped into coffee equipment, it didn’t feel foreign.

It felt familiar.

What I Didn’t Expect

What surprised me wasn’t the machinery.

It was the people.

The passion in this industry is on another level: builders, operators, roasters, technicians—people who genuinely care about what they’re creating every day. Not just as a product, but as a craft, a livelihood, and in many cases, a deeply personal identity.

That changed everything for me.

Because once you see that level of commitment, you stop looking at equipment as the center of the story. Instead, you start paying attention to what the equipment makes possible.

And just as importantly, what it gets in the way of when it’s not working well.

That was the shift.

Once I saw it, I was all in. Not just on equipment, but on the relationships, the problem-solving, and the operational side of helping people move forward.

From Experience to Structure

Over time, that perspective turned into Coffee Equipment Pros.

But it didn’t start as a branding exercise or a traditional marketplace idea.

It started as a response to what I was seeing over and over again in the field.

Equipment wasn’t the issue.

The issue was everything around the equipment: how it was bought, how it was sold, how it was moved, installed, upgraded, and eventually replaced.

There was no real system for how all of that worked together.

So CEPros became an attempt to reflect how the industry actually operates in real life:

Buying. Selling. Relocating. Upgrading. Scaling.

Not as separate events, but as connected stages of the same system.

That’s still how I think about it today.

What Stays With Me

One of the most consistent signals I’ve seen over the years has nothing to do with sales volume or deal size.

It’s feedback from customers I worked with years ago who still reach out today.

Not because of a single transaction.

But because the process held up over time.

That matters more than anything else in this business.

Because equipment doesn’t just leave the system when it’s sold. It gets reused, repurposed, and put back into production somewhere else. And when it’s maintained and matched correctly, there’s often a lot more life left in it than people initially assume.

That continuity, the idea that nothing here is truly “one and done,” is one of the most important parts of how this industry actually works.

Staying Close to the Work

On a personal level, I’ve stayed very hands-on throughout all of it.

I still roast regularly across a range of systems, from early equipment like Sonofresco and Diedrich to commercial setups, and now Air-Motion Roasters. I still develop blends. I still pay attention to how operators are actually interacting with their equipment day to day.

That’s important to me.

Because it’s easy in any equipment business to drift away from the reality of the work itself.

And this industry doesn’t really let you do that for long if you’re paying attention.

I’ve also spent time at origin in El Salvador, Panama, and Jamaica, meeting producers, seeing the supply chain firsthand, and gaining a deeper respect for everything that goes into every cup before it ever reaches a roastery.

That context matters. It changes how you see every decision downstream.

What This Really Comes Down To

At the end of the day, this industry has never really been about machines.

It’s about people building something they care about, and figuring out how to keep it moving forward without losing what made them want to build it in the first place.

Equipment is part of that equation, but it’s not the center of it.

The people are.

And if there’s one thing my path has made clear, it’s this:

When you understand the system behind the work and stay close enough to the people doing it, you start to see the industry differently.

Not as a collection of machines.

But as a series of decisions that either support or strain the people trying to build something meaningful.

About Rick’s Roastery Notes

These notes come out of real conversations with roasters, buyers, and sellers every week. People trying to decide whether to buy new or used equipment. People figuring out if it’s time to scale. People listing a machine they’ve outgrown and want to move the right way.

This isn’t theory, and it’s not marketing language. It’s what we see when equipment actually changes hands, when systems get built, and when operations are either set up to run smoothly… or quietly create problems later.

The goal is simple: Help people see the bigger picture before they make a decision they can’t easily unwind.

If that means a buyer feels more confident in what they’re choosing, a seller understands how to better position their equipment, or someone avoids a costly mismatch in their system, then it’s doing its job.

That’s really it. Just clarity, before commitment.