Origin Story: How Bryant Banker-Scannell Went from “Are You Hiring?” to Director of Coffee
Please welcome the second release of our series, How the Hell Did You End Up Here? where we interview some of the most knowledgeable, friendly, and successful coffee people there are so you can get to know how they ended up with such unique careers!
We know that having a career in coffee is kind of niche. It takes someone special to step up to the plate to be an industry leader in a developing industry and growing specialty coffee community.
I find that one common, underlying thought most coffee people ask themselves is: how the hell did I end up here? We ask the questions, get to know how it happens, and let you know what it takes to build your career in specialty coffee.
Bryant was one of the first people I personally met and looked up to at national coffee events, leading roasting classes and sharing his passion for coffee. He is so friendly, and his genuine excitement for the industry is inspiring, making this a story you won’t want to miss!
Introducing specialty coffee celebrity, owner of Relative Coffee Co. and Director of Coffee at Mill City Roasters, Bryant Banker-Scannell!
——
Emma: So when did you start your position at Mill City?
Bryant: I think I officially started this position maybe in 2022-2023. Before that, I had been out of the industry for half a half year wondering what if I was going to stay in coffee, when the owner of Mill City called to see if I was interested in work. I later learned there really wasn’t a position for me at the time, but it happened!
But you know, the owner knew me and said, “Well, I'll give you a desk and a phone and see what you can do.” And then over time the job just progressed into things like: do you want to hop into the roastery and keep the wholesale operation going? And then, do you want to assist with education? I was like, yeah, because it's a lot of what I used to do at my old roastery.”
I was at Dogwood Coffee from 2013 to 2020 in Minneapolis.
They had 3–4 locations at the time I started with them, and they are one of the core coffee brands that started up around 2010 when there was a boom of specialty coffee shops in Minneapolis-St. Paul area.
Emma: Did you start your coffee journey there?
Bryant: Yeah, Dogwood gave me the opportunity to experience being a barista and managing at the cafe level, until I stepped up into production roasting, green buying, and wholesale management. But of course, my roots started at Caribou and Starbucks!
When I went to Chicago for art school, Caribou was my coffee spot for a long time, but I had a friend that was so excited to show their favorite spot. They would say, “You have to try this mocha from Intelligentsia. They do this latte art thing, they serve macarons, it's so cool.”
Note: Intelligentsia at the time was one of the leading brands in the specialty coffee movement based in Chicago, IL.
It was definitely cool, and very tasty. When I moved back to Minneapolis I found a shop called Angry Catfish that served Intelligentsia and I thought, oh my gosh, connection.
So I would go to Angry Catfish and get mochas way too often, and eventually branch out into plain brewed coffee, which of course, were pour overs galore at that time.
Then it made me think, oh my gosh, that coffee tastes this way! That's so cool! It was at that point where I thought, what companies are doing this in Minnesota and how do I work there? Then I saw Dogwood opened in 2010 and I saw that they opened a cafe.
I was like, “Are you guys hiring?” and they're like, “No, but we're always taking applications.” It was at a time when cafes wanted experience working on manual machines. So after working on semi-automatic machines [at Starbucks and Caribou], Dogwood told me I didn't have enough experience and they couldn’t hire me.
And Dogwood didn't necessarily say that, but they were like, “It's good to have experience.” But most cafes at the time were just like, “Yeah, we're not hiring unless you have experience.”
And so the airport, out of all places, opened up a specialty coffee shop.
Emma: You were working in the airport?!
Bryant: Yeah.
Emma: Oh my god.
Bryant: So when the airport started getting cool, there was this company that took over the Delta concourse that had a coffee shop called World Bean Coffee.
Okay, and the gist was that they had one core coffee company that was based out of Seattle and then they would bring in a rotation of locally roasted coffee.
And so the local coffee they used at our airport was Dogwood.
And so I saw this job on Craigslist browsing jobs, and my partner was like, “Are you sure you want to work at the airport?”
And I was like, “I’ll get experience and I'll figure it out.” So I interviewed and they just told me if I could be at the airport at 4 a.m. to open, then the job was mine. And I thought, oh my god. Perfect. This is incredible.
So I get on shift and they say, ‘all right, here's your bar’ and I'm like, ‘how do I grind the coffee? Do I just push this button?’ because you know, with a semi-automatic machine it just does it all for you. And so I was like, okay, how do I use this Mazzer [grinder], okay, how do I use these three group heads?
And they just said, yep, you do this and you do that.
I'm like, okay, not enough training. So I had my phone propped up on the group head [on top of the espresso machine] just watching YouTube videos, and practicing and practicing while I'm serving at the airport. Which is kind of the most low stakes because the customers just leave and you never see them again.
So it's funny because now that we're here today, 16 years later, I saw my manager that hired me at the airport, at one of the events last night in San Diego, and I was like, oh my gosh!
And I saw that they are now starting their own coffee company and I told them: You know, you're the reason why I'm here today, because you gave me a chance to get experience, which then allowed me to move on and get jobs in actual retail cafes."
So, I eventually moved out of the airport and I ended up at a restaurant, which is my first and last serving job. Very stressful. But I learned coffee there and then I moved to a barista job at a Dogwood retail cafe. My manager eventually left and they asked me: Are you interested in managing? I was like, I'll give it a go.
And then our production roaster was leaving so they put a call out to all the employees and asked who was interested in roasting. I was interested and I was like, yes, please because I was feeling unsure if managing was for me. I love the people and I love the community but I also love the idea of roasting so I moved up and just kept taking those opportunities.
Emma: So that was like your first like roasting job then?
Bryant: Yeah, it was a shift during 2013-14. I kind of stepped up into production roasting. I spent a year just redoing profiles that the old roaster had left because I had a one-month boot camp where they were like, here's your job, and then I was like, okay, and then they went into a job in their field that they went to college for.
I just did the same thing that he taught me and after a year I finally felt comfortable to try new things like let's try pre-blending versus post-blending. Let's try shortening roast times versus extending, and we cupped [tasted coffees] Tuesday through Friday like every morning from 9 a.m. to 10 a.m. We cupped everything and so it was like hyper cupping with my green buyer at the time. She was a very, very, very talented taster and I would just soak up everything she was saying about coffee and try to commit it to memory. Yeah, it was a hyper boot camp for sensory development.
Emma: Yeah, I like that your journey started out of genuine curiosity. I feel like some people have a mentor or somebody who's like, “Come here, let me show you this.” But for you it was mostly self-sustaining curiosity.
Bryant: Yeah, I was always just like: what's the next thing?
I did like my own little craft soda company for a minute. It failed during COVID, but I've always just kept roasting coffee. It's independent but it's also community-driven and it's problem-solving but it's not like I'm doing Algebra or equations—I was an art kid.
I tried going to school like three times.I did a lot of courses at art institutes international and then school at the art institute, and eventually community college. I never graduated with anything. And I was always down for coffee—it's allowed me to build a career, an untraditional career path, which has been really cool.
Emma: I love your story, that's really cool. How has your passion changed or developed because I know you own Relative Coffee. How's that going?
Bryant: Yeah, it's pretty organic and it's pretty steady growth. I mean, it's doubled from the year prior!
So you know, for the first year I was like, “Let's just do it!” And then the second year I was kind of like, “Oh, this is kind of adding up to be not just a passion project!”
It’s not much, but it’s at a place that gives more room within my own life to support others across my coffee network, and locally, especially during the winter Minnesota had with Metro Surge. It feels good to be able to do something.
Emma: Do you still feel just as passionate about coffee now as compared to when you started?
Bryant: Yeah, that is a really good question. It's the constant battle of the tortured artist!
Yeah, you get in these waves of motivation. And then you have those periods where those walls go up. It’s like getting into a sleepy winter. And when you’re done you kind of come out of that funk, right?
As an educator too, it kind of sucks when you go up and down. But I think that's like a natural human response, right? We crave new things and I find that redundancy can be a little bit soul-sucking in a way. You always have to find those ways to be like: How can I make this more interesting? How can I rejuvenate this? What can I research? What can I share with others?
Especially early on in my career there was so much changing with brewers and grinders and brewing methods and technology. The cafe environment was really fast-paced and it was constantly interesting and there was constantly something to solve.
I think with moving behind the curtain [and behind the scenes] a little bit more, sometimes you can get a little more isolated and in your head. So I'm at the roaster thinking to myself, what am I doing? I'm putting out this great product, and I'm really proud of it, but then I have no one around me to talk about it with. In a cafe you have all these people to talk about things with, like what this coffee is, and what it's doing, how it was processed or roasted.
But as a roaster, I’m doing this production job. It's not stars and butterflies all the time. So I think it's easy to get into a rut being in that space too much.
Being out in events like World of Coffee, where you realize again that these are my friends and these people are doing and talking about interesting things you've also witnessed in coffee. I think it rejuvenates that passion almost like taking time off. Which I think is helpful. But yeah, lots of ups and downs.
But I am passionate about coffee in different ways today that I wasn't in the beginning. It's hard when you're super inspired right away, and then as you grow, you know, obviously it's not always gonna stay the same.
Emma: What's your favorite thing to do when you're not at work?
Bryant: Oh my gosh, that's such a tough question because, you know, masochistically I'm doing my own coffee business on the side, right? And so my inclination is to say, “Oh, I work, I don't need time for myself!”
That's also just my mindset in general, even with friends and my personal life. I'm always like: I don’t have needs, what can I do for you?
Emma: What's your sign?
Bryant: Pisces.
Emma: Oh, yes! That makes a lot of sense.
Bryant: Yes, just an introverted Pisces, INFP on the Myers-Briggs.
Yeah, but generally I like biking so that I can take photos! Yeah, I just like getting around the city and getting in nature. Photography was my passion for a long time before coffee, and I worked in it for a little bit. So it's nice to still be involved in it and photograph for fun. The process of it is something I still really like to do.
And I always love a good arcade stroll.
Emma: Yeah, I feel like there's definitely a crossover between photography and biking and coffee.
Bryant: Yeah, there really are lots of creatives in the coffee industry. I remember a documentary that covered the balance baristas and coffee production employees have in relation to their creative endeavour. It’s really cool.
Emma: All right, last question: If you had to live in one movie for the rest of your life, what would it be?
Bryant: My gut reaction is Darjeeling Limited. It's a Wes Anderson film. Okay, and you know, it's some of his early work before it got really stylized so I think it was during the first half of his career.
He had a style, and then it got more into the tiny figure feel of it, like what it is now like Moonrise Kingdom and like Grand Budapest Hotel.
It's so grand in scale, but also so stylized and it feels like you're playing with miniatures. It's so cool, but Darjeeling Limited is about three brothers that take a trip through India, but their relationship between the three of them has fallen apart. One of them has essentially said that the brothers all need to get together because their mom wants the three of them to come visit.
But she actually did not say that. And then he's like we haven't talked to each other for so long. It's all about what happened when the brothers fell apart. The story is just about brothers, and family coming together, and experiencing culture, and finding a love for themselves again.
Throughout the movie they’re working through some past unforgiven events. By the end of it, they've come to this enlightenment about how they are brothers and how they are friends and how they love each other and now how they come together for themselves.
And yeah, it's a good vibe. Maybe it's a little sad but I just love the music and the soundtrack is so good. Yeah, it's really colorful, and I love that.
—
A very special thank you goes to Bryant for taking the time to speak for our interview. His story is inspiring and shows how time, commitment, and passion can take us a long way. You can visit Relative Coffee Co.'s website here and give them a follow on Instagram here, or find Bryant nationwide at any CoffeeFest or World of Coffee shows, teaching and sharing his love of coffee with Mill City Roasters.
All photos were provided by Bryant.
——
About the writer: Emma LaVoie is Head of Education + Curriculum for Dessert Oasis Coffee Roasters. She's the brains behind this blog and lit a fire under our team to follow suit. You can almost always find Emma reading a book with a coffee in hand. If you're interested in reaching out to Emma, shoot her an email: emma@dessertoasiscoffee.com. She'd be happy to geek out over coffee with you. (Seriously, don't hesitate to reach out — she'll love it.)