The Good Life

One question that comes up—both from other people and from myself—when planning this countryside coffee concept in France is: Why do this?

I could just keep doing what I’m doing. Roasting, tasting, testing, training. I love the craft, and I love the community I’ve found through my work.

But when you live your days chasing new projects, watching the industry shift around you, a restlessness can creep in. You begin to sense something’s missing, both in the coffee landscape and in your own life. And if you’re wired like me, the feeling that there’s more to offer, more to create, is hard to ignore. That hum in the background doesn’t go away. It grows louder.

At the same time, there’s a quieter vision pulling at me. A picture of the future: my wife and I in the garden, sipping tea under the sun, deadheading flowers, surrounded by space and calm. If I’m lucky enough to get old, that’s how I want to do it.

Paris is a remarkable city. Alive, self-aware, always evolving. But after years of commuting across the length of an aging metro line, drowning out screeching metal with podcasts just to stay sane, I’m ready for a different rhythm. I’ve seen things on those trains. Some are heartbreaking, others are outright dangerous. It wears on you. You start to feel the weight of it every time someone asks about work.

This project—building something slower, smaller, more intentional around coffee—is also about building a different kind of life. A change in lifestyle, yes. But also a shift in purpose. Not the good life as curated on social media, but the one Helen and Scott Nearing wrote about in Living the Good Life: a way of living that actively provokes genuine social change.

Because this work still matters. Coffee, craft, and community still matter. But I believe it can mean even more when rooted in a place where life grows slower and deeper. Where the garden is just outside the kitchen. Where the coffee we serve connects directly to people and soil and story. Where the goal isn’t to scale, but to ground.

So when I ask myself, Why put so much thought into a project that doesn’t have to exist?—the answer is clear. This is the life we want. This is how we make space for our ideas to grow. This is how we offer something to others, too. A place to connect, to slow down, and to live the good life. Together.