Today we’d like to introduce you to Addison Mathis.
Hi Addison, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I got my first coffee job when I was 18 in Tallahassee, FL at Calvin’s, a small college campus-adjacent non-profit coffee shop. It was a special place; it is where I fell in love with the way coffee brings people together. At Calvin’s I barista-d, managed, curated our rotating art galleries, and planned community events.
Soon I got a second job at Paper Fox Coffee in Tallahassee, befriended coffee nerds, learned more about the industry and the community, and became more intrigued about what a coffee career would look like.
As for so many others, the beginning of Covid made me question everything about my life. I didn’t know what else I would do for work and it wasn’t really the time to be looking, so staying in coffee wasn’t so much an active choice as it was a passive one.
At the end of 2020, I moved to Atlanta because I wanted and/or needed a change of scenery. I started working for Perc Coffee at the East Lake location as a Barista, then worked as a Lead Barista at the Virginia Highlands location, and now I am Perc’s Quality Assurance Manager. My coffee career is now an active choice, not a passive one. If uncertainty brought me to this career, the remarkable humans I’ve met through my work keep me certain about being here.
I’ve had access to a lot of really cool experiences since the Atlanta segment of my career began. I’ve competed in local and national barista competitions, an online competition through the Barista League, and trained with Glitter Cat Barista. I’ve worked on coffee pop-ups and attended coffee pop-ups and connected with some of the coolest, most badass humans I’ve ever met. There are a lot of coffee folks in Atlanta creating the kind of community they want to see, and it’s a wildly significant opportunity to learn and be inspired by them.
I’m really happy to be sharing and creating coffee experiences almost every day. I’m where I am today because of all of the folks who supported me, believed in me, and challenged me along the way. When I first moved to Atlanta some key people looked me in the eyes and told me I was good at coffee and I had a lot of potential in the industry. Without their encouragement, I would not have believed in myself enough to be where I am. Community support means everything.
My boss, Amber Foreman, and my best friend and co-worker, Daniel Borras, believed that I could do great things in this industry shortly after they met me, and they told me so. It was revolutionary. It made me want to be better at my job, it made me want to put more of my heart into my work. The value of hearing, “You’re good at this, keep going” cannot be overstated. I think a lot of folks out there have so much potential and just need someone to believe in them like that — not only does it open up opportunities, but it creates joy and a feeling of competency that gives the mundane things we do in a day a little more purpose and direction.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Oh boy, it has not been a smooth road. My biggest hardship is an ongoing health issue that I’ve dealt with since 2017– post-concussion syndrome (PCS). In a nutshell, PCS is a condition where concussion recovery takes a lot longer than it should. I’ve had 20 concussions since 2017, leading to chronic pain and brain fog that has been difficult to live with. It’s something I have to consider all the time. I must make a constant, active effort to take care of myself so I can invest in the things that matter to me.
Sometimes I wish I could live with a little less intention and a little more recklessness, but I can’t, so I do what I can with what I have (which basically means taking a LOT of breaks).
It’s hard to be fully invested in my career and my community when I have to monitor my physical needs this closely, but every day I get a little better at it. I’m not really an “I’m grateful this happened to me” kind of person, because f*ck that, pain sucks, but I am a more empathetic and understanding human and co-worker because of it. Something I understand really deeply now is that if your basic physical needs aren’t being met, you can’t show up and give 100%. Everyone has different basic physical needs. In a leadership role in the coffee industry, it feels super important to understand this and treat people accordingly.
I would like to note that I am lucky to be receiving outpatient treatment at the Shepherd Center’s Complex Concussion Clinic and my health team have been monumental in equipping me to continue living as effectively as possible (special shout out to Dr. Potter, Cheryl, Brittany, April, Evan, and Cynthia). PCS is a challenge but not having to navigate recovery alone is everything.
I feel devastated by my condition a few times a year; living with something like this is a grieving process without a conclusion that has its highs and lows. People used to tell me that I was “strong” and “brave” and it frustrated me because I felt like I didn’t really have a choice in what was happening to me — like, I didn’t pick this pain for myself. I think of myself as strong and brave now though, because of the work I put into my recovery on a daily basis. Regardless of whether or not it’s a choice for me to do that work, I think it’s badass that I continue to do it.
I also want to note that I get a lot of support from the people I work with and work for. They’ve respected my needs and offered help in monumental ways and I would not be able to find happiness in my life and career without that support. I have a lot of empathetic and understanding humans in my community, and it has been so huge.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I work as PERC Coffee’s Quality Assurance Manager.
I train baristas, dial in our coffees, develop menu changes, and help oversee the quality of products and service from the time the coffee leaves our roastery to when it reaches the hand of a customer. The humans I work with at PERC are some of the most impressive, kind, and badass people I’ve ever met — a lot of my job is supporting them in doing their job well, and I really love that. Also, the fact that my job is to get people excited about coffee is a pretty cool MO.
I also compete in professional barista competitions and placed 8th at nationals last year (my very first time competing!).
I’m proud of the life I’ve built for myself and the way my coffee career adds value to it. I think that fact is very cool. I was on a very academically-focused track in college until a coffee career came out of the woodwork and my trajectory shifted. It was the only trajectory that made sense, and it was also the only trajectory that felt good. It continues to feel good because it continues to evolve, and the people I’ve met in the coffee community keep me coming back to why this work is important: coffee can be about taking care of people, and we can get a little better at doing that when we work together. This community is a very special thing to be a part of.
I really do see coffee as a catalyst for connection and my heart is so close to the work. Connecting with customers is huge. Connecting with other coffee people is huge. There’s a “feeling a part of something bigger than yourself” sentiment that the coffee industry affords and it made me feel at home within it. Of course, the industry isn’t perfect, but there are so many folks who care so sincerely about coffee and about each other — coffee is about people and experiences and surrounding yourself with people who center that idea in this industry is huge.
If we knew you growing up, how would we have described you?
When I was growing up I had a lot of sprawling, random interests. My passion and life plan changed on a monthly basis: from cake decorating to marine biology to politics, I wanted to pursue almost everything. I was extremely idealistic, and I thought empathy could heal the world (maybe a part of me still does, but it feels more complicated than that now. So it goes). Around the end of middle school, I started to really geek out on some things that were dubbed as “uncool,” so in the name of “being cool” I abandoned many of them. It was a weird thing kids were doing at the time: making other people feel “uncool” for caring about things. It wasn’t until college that the metric flipped and I felt empowered to develop and pursue interests (psychology, art, then coffee; often all three).
When I was in high school, I prided myself on my romanticism of life, on my capacity for vulnerability, and on how I took care of and prioritized my friendships. Knowing what I know now, I think that these friendships were my first understanding of hospitality: My friends and I gave incredibly thoughtful gifts, shared snacks, and dropped off milkshakes at each other’s doorsteps when we were distraught over something.
It’s interesting to reflect on how these experiences formed my outlook on hospitality. In simple terms, hospitality is making people feel taken care of. These experiences led me to understand how it functions and succeeds before I ever stepped foot behind a bar.
Contact Info:
- Website: perccoffee.com/locations
- Instagram: instagram.com/aspecialtybean
Image Credits
Jon Chandler, Daniel Borras, Ampersand, Felipe Trujillo, Addison Mathis
