Coffee, Care, and Inspired Leadership with Natalie Fairchild

SPEAKER_1 (0:04)

The Bliss Business Podcast, the show about empathy, connection, and consciousness in business. Today's episode is brought to you by Zero Company, your paid search, social media, and programmatic ad experts.

Stephen Sakach (0:18)

Well, welcome back to the show, everyone. I'm Stephen Sakach here with my co-host Tullio Siragusa, and we've got a special guest who we'll introduce shortly. So some businesses create products, some create services, and some create moments. A cup of coffee at the right time can do more than just wake someone up. It can start a conversation, make a guest feel welcome, help a team feel appreciated, or turn an ordinary gathering into something more memorable. Today, we are exploring the role of empathy and leadership through the story of Pacific Perks Coffee, which is more than coffee. We'll get into in a moment.

Tullio, introduce our special guest.

Tullio Siragusa (0:59)

Yes, my pleasure. We're already having so much fun before even starting the show. This is going to be great. Our guest today is Natalie Fairchild. She's the founder and chief inspirational officer at Pacific Perks Coffee.

Since 2007, she has been leading her company, and recently, Pacific Perks became a franchise. Natalie created Pacific Perks as a flat-fee mobile cafe experience designed to promote businesses, reward teams, and celebrate important life moments with made-to-order drinks and treats served fresh in front of guests.

Natalie serves on many boards in her community. She enjoys moderating panels, speaking on topics from the heart, and sharing her knowledge as a co-host on To Get Her To podcast.

Natalie Fairchild (1:45)

Nice job.

Tullio Siragusa (1:48)

Natalie, welcome to The Bliss Business Podcast.

Natalie Fairchild (1:50)

Thank you so much. It's fun to be here with you. And yeah, we did have a fun discussion before we even went live.

Stephen Sakach (1:57)

So Natalie, so Pacific Perks, it's not serving just coffee. You're focusing on creating kind of an experience and a lot of different types of catering experiences. Maybe talk a little bit about that. But also, how do you think, you know, I want to know, how do you think like empathy shapes the way you guys show up for, you know, events, clients, that kind of thing?

Natalie Fairchild (2:21)

Yeah, for sure. So when we started the business, I didn't know how to say espresso correctly. And basically, I have a coffee and catering business and I'm not a great cook. It's not one thing that brings me joy and I don't drink coffee. So there's that. So why, why Pacific Perks? Well, I love creating experiences for people and I love doing events. So even as my girls were growing up, we were kind of the hub for, let's bring your kids and we'll go caroling in the neighborhood and have apps before and bring in the Christmas cheer, that kind of thing or Valentine's parties or different things. So I just love doing that and creating those experiences for people. So that's always been innately in me. So when we started Pacific Perks, it was like, how can we be super easy to work with, be an amazing employer, and create experiences for the people that we touch? And because we charge a flat fee, we don't take money per item. So our Perkologist, a little trademark term, the ones that do the events and are client facing, they're the heroes. They get to serve up the made to order latte for people or ice cream sundae and make it exactly the way they want. And so it's and we train them to see their guests, to read the room, to ask people how their day is going, to leave them better than when they started. And that starts from the very beginning. That starts with when a client has their first interaction with us, when they reach out to us, that is the details that are confirmation so that they're relaxed. We know we're set to go. If there's any issue with a bridge lift, as you know, Stephen, there's lots of those around here.

We are proactively client calling our clients. And what I've noticed is that when we are proactive with that communication, if things aren't going exactly correct, there's so much grace given.

And I always tell my team, if a client calls us and says, where are you? And we haven't proactively called them. We have failed in that moment. And that doesn't happen very often.

So that's kind of where that empathy and seeing people. So we start from the top down, seeing our employees, checking in with them, appreciating them, highlighting them. And then we're also giving them feedback where it's needed. And then they can be relaxed and give that experience to our customers and clients.