Meet Paul – Chapter 1: Childhood memories about money 

Transcript

Text on screen: The Financial Consumer Agency of Canada presents Money Break: A series on financial wellness, Coffee Edition

Poppa Bean Coffee Roastery 

The Poppa Bean Coffee Roastery is the brainchild of Paul Foster, with the help of his always supportive wife Sarah. 

After Paul graduated from university, his first office job brought him into direct contact with those who enjoyed similar coffee habits. 

Paul soon started a coffee club, supplying his own coffee and roasting it in hot air popcorn poppers, giving birth to the name… Poppa Bean. 

This is his story.

(The screen splits into four squares, with one square revealing at a time. A car drives along a country road. An aerial view reveals a house surrounded by trees. Then another aerial view reveals a long driveway leading towards the house. The car drives along the driveway. The four squares collapse into a single image that zooms in to reveal Paul sitting on large coffee bean bags in his garage. He puts his hat on and smiles.)

Text on screen: Chapter 1: Meet Paul Foster.

(Paul sits on a stool inside his garage with an industrial coffee roaster in the background.) 

Paul: Hi. My name is Paul Foster, and I'm a coffee roaster here in Ottawa or Vars, Ontario. 

(A bag of Poppa Bean Coffee appears.)

Paul: I am 38 years old. I have a wife and two boys, five and three. I've been married going on ten years next year. 

(An old-fashioned video shows a little boy in a coat holding a woman’s hand.)

Paul: I was one of five kids, so for us it – there was never an abundance of money, but there was always financial security. My parents always were very proactive on savings. They always worked on making sure that they didn’t just rely on their pension. They wanted to make sure that they had investments and back-ups in case there was shortfalls.

My family was always very forthcoming about money. We talked about it. Myself, I’ve always been, as a child, very young age, I always would – was obsessed with making money. My neighbours – I used to go around my streets when I was as little – young as three years old and I’d sell pinecones to my neighbours. 

(The hands of a child hold pinecones. The scene changes, and we see a smiling boy outdoors.)

Paul: My mum was mortified. And then so she'd take me back to say no, no, no, you can't sell just pinecones to your neighbours. You got to actually, like, do something with them. And most people just saw the gumption and the ingenuity, just being so, they just let me keep they. They just thought it was the cutest thing in the world.

(Coffee beans spill out of a roaster towards the camera.) 

Paul: So I worked in the banking industry – industry for nine years. I – I’d been very strategic about how I did – did the – the job. My job was a job; my business is a passion. I like it. 

But when I started working for the banks it is a need. You had to pay your bills, you had to – I wanted to save money. I needed benefits, I needed all the usual things that you need to live with.

(A close-up shows a baseball cap with the Poppa Bean logo.)

Paul: And then – but at the same time, the focus was to develop a business. 

(Paul leans over a burlap bag filled with coffee beans, unties the string and opens it. Unroasted coffee beans sit in a burlap bag. Paul holds the beans in his hand and then pours them into the bag.)

Paul: There was no dissuading me of which way I was going. I was going to do my business. I just had to do it responsibly. When I started the business, it was more just a hobby. I could find that I could roast coffee on popcorn poppers, and get these green beans and really fun coffees from all over the world within days, and I'd be able to cook it, bring it to work, and drink it with my buddies.

(Young adults are at a table together, having coffee, talking and laughing.) 

Paul: Coffee is a great social product. There’s never people that come up and buy coffee from you where they're unhappy or dissatisfied. I met my wife, and we’d meet in coffee shops and, you know, have these little, you know, encounters which were really, you know, just the building of a really nice relationship.

(A young couple is sitting at a table on a terrace having a coffee, talking and smiling.)

Paul: I’d plotted out using just the demand for my product and the amount of time I was spending to deliver it, roast it, and produce it. I’d go out and deliver the coffee before I’d go to work, and then I’d go from work back home to roast my coffee, and then wake up and do the same thing again.

Text on screen: Poppa Bean Coffee Roastery – Continue Paul’s story in Chapter 2: Paul discusses finances, credit cards and the importance of managing credit card debt.

(The Canada wordmark appears.)

Off-screen voice: A message from the Government of Canada

 

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