Ex-Freaky Bean CEO launches new co.
Photo/Courtesy Jon Stratton
Jon Stratton, general manager of Maddabout Coffee in Saco, will take what he learned from the collapse of his former business, Freaky Bean Coffee Co., and put it to good use with his new company.
The former owner of now-bankrupt Freaky Bean Coffee Co. has launched a new coffee company in Saco.
Jon Stratton, who founded Freaky Bean Coffee Co. with Andrew Kessler in Scarborough in June 2006, is behind Maddabout Coffee, a new company that for now sells coffee wholesale. The company is owned by the aptly named Second Crack LLC, which was registered with Maine's Secretary of State's office on March 26. Stratton says he is not the owner, only the general manager. The company is bankrolled and owned by some former owners of Freaky Bean who wish to remain anonymous, though some are family members, Stratton tells Mainebiz.
Asked if taking the general manager title as opposed to the CEO title was an effort to dodge negative publicity stemming from Freaky Bean's bankruptcy, Stratton says no, it was a much more practical reason: he's broke. "I personally guaranteed almost everything," he says. "So financially I'm ... I'm financially destroyed."
Stratton estimates he personally guaranteed 50% of Freaky Bean' s debt. Freaky Bean Coffee Co., which in February was pushed into involuntary bankruptcy by three creditors, owes more than $1.1 million, according to court filings. Creditors include Rosemont Market Inc., Central Maine Power Co. in Augusta, Paul G. White Tile Co. in Portland, T & T Development and The L & J Co., both in South Portland. For more on Freaky Bean's bankruptcy, read "After rapid growth, Freaky Bean falls into bankruptcy."
Stratton says he's focusing his energy on reestablishing relationships in the community to build Maddabout's wholesale business.
However, when the time is right, he says Maddabout would like to open one or more retail locations. He also has future plans to start buying coffee beans directly from coffee farmers in Central and South America, which he says cuts out the middle men and helps the farmers make a better living. "We know a ton about coffee, so it would be a shame not to use that knowledge," he says, sitting on a recent morning in the Starbucks on Congress Street, where Stratton learned the retail coffee business as an employee. "We love the coffee business -- everything about it."
He won't get into specifics about what went wrong at Freaky Bean, which quickly grew to operate six retail locations within a year and a half of its founding, because of the ongoing bankruptcy proceedings. But one lesson he did take away from his experience with Freaky Bean is stick to the business plan. "When we stopped focusing on our core values, that's when Freaky Bean began to change. That's not going to happen to Maddabout," he says, offering as an example Freaky Bean's December 2007 purchase of Maine Roasters Coffee's two retail locations in Yarmouth and Falmouth.
Overall, Stratton says the whole Freaky Bean situation has been "pretty life changing." The hardest thing about the experience was letting down his employees, he says. "That's what kept me up at night. They worked hard for us."
But he also takes full responsibility for what happened. "Where I was the leader and president ... I can't walk away from it, there's no one behind me I can look at to take the responsibility. It's my responsibility to take care of it, clean it up the best I can and walk away."
He takes comfort in a quote he attributes to Abraham Lincoln: "It doesn't matter that a man has fallen. It only matters that he stands back up."
That's what Stratton says he's doing. "It's nice to be excited about something."
The name Maddabout Coffee comes from two places. After the Freaky Bean Coffee Co. fell apart and Stratton was fuming about its collapse, he says a friend told him there was no use in being "maddabout" it. "[The name] just fits because we're mad about coffee and in another sense we're just moving on with our lives and pretty happy about it."
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