Meet Bob Arceneaux

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Bob Arceneaux. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Bob below.

Hi Bob, thanks for sharing your insights with our community today. Part of your success, no doubt, is due to your work ethic and so we’d love if you could open up about where you got your work ethic from?

I’d have to give credit to my dad, brothers and extended family as well as a sense of responsibility to the people who work for the company. My father received a degree in Mechanical Engineering and worked in the oilfield industry in south Louisiana. He ran a very successful shipbuilding company in the 70’s. I’m sure his work ethic led to his good reputation. All (5) of my older brothers were in the oilfield or construction industries in some capacity and all were successful and were held in high esteem from their peers.
It’s knowing that which helps me go to work every day and do what I can to help the company be stable and grow. I want those around me know that I expect them to give their best every day and put in an honest day’s work. I want to be an example to my sons so they know that it takes being consistent in your work ethic to move up the ranks and help the business grow.

Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?

Since I’ve got a good team around me handling sales, filling and delivering orders, roasting and general management, I now focus on financial management of the company and act as the company’s “green coffee buyer.” Along with my lead roaster, we determine what coffees we need & want to buy form our importers.

We receive small samples of unroasted coffee, i.e green coffee, which we roast in a small table top roaster. We later “cup” the coffee by analyzing it’s fragrance, aroma, body, flavor and such. We will purchase coffees bases on our assessment of this cupping exercise. I’ve always had a good sense of smell and taste having been in the wine biz for a few years coming out of college.

I gained an interest in wine in college and even worked for a small wine shop while in college before having a few wine biz jobs prior to getting my start in coffee. I guess you could say that I developed a palate and good sensory skills which helped me greatly in coffee buying and roasting.

I get to work with importers on procuring all of the coffees we need or want. It’s easy in the beginning and the more coffee you need to buy, the more complicated it can be. Sometimes it’s like buying stocks, i.e. day trading, as you deal with the coffee market’s price fluctuations which are caused by good and bad crop years, bad weather or Wall Street’s involvement on the money side of coffee contracts.

We are excited to be entering the Cold-Brewed-Iced-Coffee category. We’ll have 2 products for consumers to purchase in supermarkets. This product is typically found in or near the dairy section of supermarkets and we’ll be competing with a few long-standing brands. We’ve always been confident that we can produce a superior product. It’s taken us a while to get here not only due to the countless number of decisions you have to make about the packaging and product, but procrastination and lack of prioritization kept the product launch on the back burner. It wasn’t until we got started on the product launch, (we called it Project Falcon), that we burned the bridges behind us and decided we can’t stop as there’s no going back.

During the pandemic, I started making kombucha at home as a covid hobby. My wife had make it years prior and I though this is weird stuff, but I like it. Now 4 years and a few hundred batches later, I’m now selling it under the brand name La Rive Kombucha. It’s still a microscopic business, if you can even call it a business, but I enjoy the product and the process. It’s good for you and an interesting beverage to drink. For those who don’t know, kombucha is a lightly fermented tea that is a little fizzy and can be made into countless flavors such as Ginger Lemon, Strawberry, Blueberry and Watermelon.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

1: Work ethic – sense of responsibility to show up on time and do my best all day everyday.
2: Willingness to learn – no one had to ask me or force me to learn all I could about coffees from different growing regions around the world. It was a sense of curiosity to learn all of this and soak up all of this interesting information.
3: Leadership – even if I was low man on the ladder, I worked as is I was the person whose responsibility it was to do the best job, set a good example for those around me and follow through on doing a great job, regardless of the task.

Advice? Just show up. That’s half of the battle. Just show up for work, preferably on time. Also, stay busy. Find something to do even if you’re not asked to do something. Make some “thing” better or make an area of the workspace better. Leave your mark.
Finally, anticipate. This is one thing my father emphasized to me. Anticipate what has to be done and do it (well) before someone tells you to do it.

As we end our chat, is there a book you can leave people with that’s been meaningful to you and your development?

I read In Search of Excellence in the early 80’s. Written by Thomas Peters and Robert H. Waterman, Jr. They were biz consultants and write about the art and science of business management in Fortune 500 companies. While I never worked for a big company, it made me want to make an impact somewhere in my life. I loved the term “skunkworks” which one company used for creating small teams of people to work on special projects out of the ordinary work schedule.

While it was only 3 of us, we created “Project Falcon” to work on our cold brew coffee product launch. We tried to keep it “on the down low” as long as possible so most of our employees and no one outside of the company knew we were working on it. That was pretty fun.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.orleanscoffee.com, www.parishcoffee.com, www.perfectshot.coffee, www.larivekombucha.com
• Instagram: orleanscoffee, parishcoffeeworks, larivekombucha
• Facebook: orleans coffee, parish coffee works

Image Credits

pic of 2 bottles of OC Cold Brew Coffee provided by Cat Landrum