Pat McArdle Dreambeans Coffee LMFM
When our TORERO blend won THREE STARS at the Great Taste Awards and became the first Irish coffee blend ever to be nominated for a Golden Fork Award, our local radio station, LMFM came to the roast house one Friday morning in October to talk to us about the award and about what makes Greenbean / Dreambeans Coffee so special.
We’re going to post all four audio clips of the Greenbean / Dreambeans crew over the next while. This final clip is a chat with Pat McArdle, who runs Dreambeans Coffee, the consumer sales arm of the business.
You can listen here.
Pat McArdle, Dreambeans Coffee. LMFM
Click play above to listen.
Pat McArdle, Dreambeans Coffee
Transcript:
Pat O’Shaughnessy LMFM
Yes Paul, we’re back in the outside broadcast unit and it’s a little bit more tranquil after the noise of being out on the factory floor there which was just an incredible experience for me. I have to say I hope the listeners got a little flavor, forgive the pun. Now or three Pats here, you’re gonna have to be very careful. So I’m Pat and I’m off to talk to Pat McArdle who’s Dreambeans Coffee online. And then of course, we’re talking to the managing director Pat Grant as well. You’ll have to live with the confusion of all the Pats.
Pat McArdle, Dreambeans Coffee online. COVID really showed what online can do to all businesses and you’ve embraced that but you had been embracing online beforehand.
Pat McArdle Dreambeans Coffee
We had indeed. Dreambeanscoffee.ie started up in 2018 and has been running well since then. Obviously, during COVID, everybody upped their coffee game and set themselves up for decent, proper coffee at home. So people bought machines and grinders and started to order online which has been good for dreambeanscoffee.ie. It’s funny, now if you sit and talk to a bunch of people, everyone has an opinion about coffee because people are interested in it. Ten or fifteen years ago, people didn’t have the same interest or weren’t as fussy about demanding the same quality but it’s been good for Dreambeans. Dreambeans is the consumer sales arm of Greenbean Coffee. So Greenbean deals with the trade, it deals with coffee shops, with restaurants, with trade customers. And I’ve been working with Greenbean for nearly 25 years at this stage, since 1997 and I have been saying to Pat Grant for ages that it was time to do something, a consumer offering.
Pat O’Shaughnessy LMFM
Move into the cloud.
Pat McArdle Dreambeans Coffee
(Laughs) After a fashion… Eventually Pat (Grant) said “Well look, why don’t you do it?” And Dreambeanscoffee.ie was born.
Pat O’Shaughnessy LMFM
And it’s a great team effort. And even for you as I was saying earlier on to Alex and Barry you know, the idea that you win an award, it’s such a prestigious award it makes your job that much easier but there’s bound to be a certain pride and passion about it as well.
Pat McArdle Dreambeans Coffee
Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, okay, the great taste awards are like the Michelin awards for foods. To get three stars is extraordinary. And you know, people who haven’t heard of the company people who aren’t aware of Dreambeans, it really opens really opens their eyes and they tune into it. But we’re all obsessed with coffee here, and it’s it’s really it’s a it’s a…
Pat O’Shaughnessy LMFM
It’s a passion. I could see that even when I asked Barry, with the different types of coffee and the way these names rattle off the tongue like I’ve never heard before. And look Pat, we’re up against time here. Up against the clock a little, but I do wish you very very well. I mean it’s extraordinary. Between you brought the company both in the real world and in the online world.
Pat O’Shaughnessy LMFM
I want to just finish up with Pat Grant himself, Roaster Blaster, Blaster Master, MD. Pat, it’s been a wonderful morning and a wonderful experience for me and I hope that we give the listener a little bit of a flavour and I keep using that word and it is a pun deliberately as to what you do here. I can see the passion that’s in you all and I’m sure you’ve enjoyed your morning.
Pat Grant Greenbean Coffee
I have indeed and all I can say is thank you for coming down and LMFM. But I must say that Greenbean would be nothing without the team. We have great people working for us and they are all dedicated. They all love coffee and they’re all decent people. So thank you team.
Pat O’Shaughnessy LMFM
And very well done. You know it’s lovely to hear people doing that, particularly when you traded through a pandemic and your online presence kept you there along with what you’re doing here, I suppose. How do you top a big award like that? Do you just keep going and doing what you’re doing?
Pat Grant Greenbean Coffee
Oh, no! Onwards and upwards. Yeah. If I thought this was the pinnacle of I’d be very disappointed.
Pat O’Shaughnessy LMFM
That’s what I love. That’s why you’ve got to where you have. 30 years in the business. And it’s extraordinary to see where they’ve gone. And here right in the heart of Dundalk. Lovely to see local business, an artisan business doing so well on the international stage with the fantastic accolade of winning that award coming out of 14,000 entries right across the board. I’ve had a wonderful morning here.
Paul. I’m going to take back a little pack, didn’t you tell me you like your coffee? So happy just to get a pack for you. Okay, and it’s here just in case.That’s going back to you. Winging its way back to the studio and we’ll talk again sometime in the future. But for now for the last time today from Greenbean we’ll say Bye bye