Meet Grant, Founder of Mozzo Coffee

x+why partner Mozzo Coffee are a purpose-lead business through and through, transforming an every day staple into a progressive vehicle for being the change they want to see in the world. Founded in 2005 from a wind and solar powered, art covered coffee cart, Mozzo is a group of people committed to sharing passion and knowledge for serving high quality, consistent and remarkable coffee experiences both in and out of home. We caught up with founder Grant Lang, to discuss all things COVID, coffee and culture.

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1.    What is Mozzo’s mission statement?

To make the world a braver and fairer place. We aspire to find the stories that need telling – the ones that other companies aren’t prepared to tell. Coffee is grown in the tropics, and often in countries facing huge social, economic and political challenges. Coffee is a vehicle in which to not only buy the products from these economies, but also distribute their tales.

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2.    Can you tell us a little more about your role with Mozzo?

For the last year I’ve been purely focused on saving and restructuring the company, which is something I thought I’d never have to do. My role is predominantly about looking forwards to the future and setting the strategic vision. We’ve got a great team, and it’s all about making sure that each area of the business knows what the other is doing. Leadership is about giving people opportunities and chances, setting the direction and the path, and supporting people to work towards that vision collectively and autonomously. They have to be given the freedom to make decisions, so long as it’s within the boundaries of the organisation. In general, I find that leadership focuses more on values and collective behaviour than management.

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3.    Why are you passionate about coffee?

For a mix of reasons, alongside the market opportunity. I was raised in London and went to university in Southampton: in the early 2000s the London coffee scene was just developing and there was an emergence of speciality offerings. Southampton had a comparatively poor coffee ecosystem so I identified the opportunity to expand. It’s not the science that interests me though – blending, roasting and processing is all very much a science, but when you deliver coffee in a café – it’s all about the experience and the atmosphere, and that’s an art.

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What I’m passionate about is the socio-economic human side, it’s a value chain that goes all the way from a mountain in a war torn country like the Congo, to Pall Mall in London. Coffee touches so many people along that chain – people earning less than a dollar a day are reliant on this product, it has the potential to lift up so many lives, to the point where they can better themselves and their children.

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4.    How has Mozzo adapted to the changes instigated by the COVID closures?

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It’s been an incredibly difficult time organisationally and financially – compared to governments abroad I think the UK has handled the situation badly, but I’ve found that we’ve gone deeper into our values. I think a lot of people fall into the social entrepreneur trap – and by that I mean they try to fit into other peoples frameworks.

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When I started with a Tuk Tuk back in 2006, we would take 10p from every coffee and donate it to one of 3 charities, investing from our revenue not our profits, we were also fair-trade and organic while it was still a relatively recent development within the hospitality sector. We’re a limited company, not a social enterprise, but we have a foundation, and we’re now turning that foundation into an official charity. This is probably a 5 or 6 year plan now because of COVID, however eventually the charity will own 25% of the company. When lockdown ends I also plan to go out and do more events with customers, to get consumers to donate, and one of our biggest

achievements was successfully building a clinic in the Congo last year.

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5.    What inspired you to build a clinic in the DRC?

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I’ve been travelling around Tanzania and Rwanda, the DRC is a warzone and I got a call from someone in 2013 saying that no one was going to the Congo, and that there were chances to support the culture there. Small companies are often the leaders when it comes to innovation, and the friend that phoned me was a pioneer in the coffee world (he’d opened up Peru and was a vanguard of the Fairtrade movement).

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The DRC used to produce hundreds of thousands of tonnes of coffee a year, and it used to be a vibrant industry, however it had fallen apart during years of war and genocide, and any kind of enterprise there would be difficult. I felt like the Congo was somewhere we could make a difference, Rwanda has substantial international aid from the EU and other sources, so the impact a company like Mozzo could have was fairly limited. But in places like the DRC where there was no one, while people were still living without water and electricity, the impact of our money could go a lot further.

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When I visited, I fell in love with the raw humanity of the place, but also acknowledged the sheer brutality. People risk their lives to help, and it can be dangerous to speak up, especially about issues such as human rights and abuse against women. I know someone there who risks her life doing just that, she recently had her dog butchered because of the work she has been doing to further such movements, and when you meet people like that, you do what you can to help them. We have to be careful about what we publicise around such issues even just on our social media channels, as we may get our clinic shut down. We’ve had to learn how to say a lot, without saying much at all.

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6.    Tell us more about how you created your sustainable coffee cart

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I was working in a bar and wanted to open a café. I used my student loan to buy an Indian rickshaw, and I had a friend who used to work with yachts – yachts are self-sufficient, for example they have solar powered batteries, and I put two and two together and got someone to help me apply it to the coffee cart. 9 months later we’d transformed an old rickshaw into a practical and sustainable cart.

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7.    What advice would you give to start-ups and businesses moving forwards?

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Believe in yourself and your idea, share it with people, and never give up. It’s not about having the best idea or the biggest brain, it’s about being determined to overcome every day in spite of the set-backs.

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8.    What are your thoughts on the role of the Triple Bottom Line for the years to come? (people, planet, profit)

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It’s now more relevant than ever, the pandemic has hugely increased social and economic inequality, and the way the governments of the world have responded, they are responsible but won’t be held accountable. The gap is even wider, not only in the developed world, but in the developing world, and there has to be a collective international global effort to make the triple bottom line more measurable.

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Social and environmental measurements are a lot more complex than financial statements, and we need to find a way of simplifying and communicating the triple bottom line to create ever increasing positive pressure on governments, as there’s a fragmented approach within the global community. More cohesion and direction, with a uniform language.

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9.    When it comes to business, it’s common for people to feel the need to decide between higher education and learning on the job, what is the value of each?

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The value of higher education is that up until this point, we are not taught to ask open questions, or to challenge the status quo enough. Higher education is the moment where independent thinking is really fostered. It’s a fundamental problem to the system we’re in that we are taught to memorise and recite rather than critically apply, which helps us to think about complex problems differently.

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But there is also too much emphasis on education for education’s sake – the tick box exercise of employment opportunities. Education combined with more real life opportunities to apply is what needs more emphasis. We have brought in people with phDs in the past and they’re almost too bright for the role, SMEs need people to roll up their sleeves and do whatever it takes – whether that’s strategy, being a delivery driver, sales, HR issues, higher education doesn’t necessarily provide this ability to duck, dodge and weave, only life does that – so combining the two is the sweet spot. We also talk about apprenticeship programmes, but these often miss the mark from the employers point of view, and the world of academia and the world of business must meet in the middle.

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10. What is your favourite interview question? (And how would you answer it personally)

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I’m interested to know why people do what they do. Selling anything just to make money is boring. ‘Why’ is such a big question, and trying to distil the thousands of small reasons down to one short answer is very difficult.

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11. What’s the biggest lesson you’ve learned?

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Trust your instincts – I’ve made mistakes in the past where I’ve put my ideas to one side because of the influence of others and I think it’s important to believe in yourself, and have the courage to stand by your convictions.

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12. What’s the smallest change that’s given the biggest return, personally or professionally?

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When recruiting there has to be a shared set of values, and the right people have to be matched to the right roles, with tools and direction, then they will go out and do amazing things.

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13. How do you balance your life whilst remaining disciplined, and what % of your time do you keep unscheduled?

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I try to keep 2 days a week free to deal with challenges and opportunities that may come up that weren’t foreseen, I spend 1 day a week looking forwards and focusing on branding and vision, and the other 2 days are for collaborating.

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14. What are your strengths and weaknesses?

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One weakness is that I’m a proactive starter not a finisher, I’ve never worked for anyone except myself, so I can be weaker on processes and as Mozzo has scaled, the details on this side of things can bore me and I may put off doing it. My strengths are that I bring positivity to every day, I’m a communicator and I have vision and passion.

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15. Do you think entrepreneurial attributes are innate personality traits, or skills that can be developed?

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I think that they’re a bit of both, there’s something innate within it, because it can be a very lonely path and most entrepreneurs seem to have a drive to want to define their own path, they don’t just want to fit in and belong. However, these attributes have to be put into practice and you have to be prepared to test and fail, there are lots of people out there with these abilities that don’t have the final 1% it takes to make the leap of faith.

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16. How has what you do changed you as a person?

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It’s made me extremely tolerant and compassionate, but it’s also made me impatient, as the journey continues and time pressures become more intense, I give all my time to people who confront the challenges head on.

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17. What is your vision for the future, personally and professionally?

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Simply to build an organisation to be proud of, one that delivers both commercially for all stakeholders involved, but also has a positive impact and creates a model that can be an example for organisations far bigger than ours. It’s not just about profit.

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18. When working on your passions, it can be difficult to put on the breaks and is easy to burn out, especially in start-up culture. How do you prevent this, and manage anxiety and stress?

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Until March last year, I’d never really had an issue with burn out, I do a lot of exercise such as running and swimming. I love what I do so perhaps it’s a little selfish but I’ve never found the social sacrifice required by the long hours difficult. I’ve always been lucky, and told myself I’ve got nothing to lose. When I first started, I didn’t have money or a house – the more you get, the more you have to lose I guess, which can induce stress over time as other people depend on you. But it’s also important to remember that they wouldn’t be there without you, so you just have to do the best that you can and take considered risks.

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It’s when factors outside of your control take-over that stress comes into play, and burn out is about recognising that not everything can be important or urgent, and wake, work, sleep is not sustainable.

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19. Are there any books or blogs on your reading list?

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I listen to a lot of Audible, Simon Sinek has always been a good one to have a read of, and I love autobiographies and biographies of successful athletes. I recently read A Promised Land by Barack Obama, and in the realms of academia – Blue Ocean Shift: Beyond Competing – Proven Steps to Inspire Confidence and Seize New Growth.  

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20. What do you love most about x+why?

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I think it’s their approach. They’ve gone into a very crowded and competitive, quite often stale arena, and they’ve really looked at the marketplace and thought about shaking it up and doing things differently. They’re pioneering in that sense – there’s been a huge rush towards coworking spaces and managed offices, and they’ve done this in a way that stacks up commercially but also recognises that the social and environmental bottom line is something that impacts not only their own business, but that of all their tenants. Without knowing it, they will influence so many of their own entrepreneurs and staff. Phil and his team are great people full stop, and they truly live their values.

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21. What are your authentic values, and what was the process that lead to you uncovering them?

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Respect, integrity and to pause and think about the impact on others before making a decision. Throughout my education, there’s always been a focus on strategy and money when it comes to business, but as a young person growing up, it was obvious even in the 90s and early 2000s that population growth and climate change were serious issues and we needed to find more ways to join the two together.

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We have a very one dimensional approach to problems, which pissed me off, so I guess the process was born out of a frustration more than anything else. Politically and economically, the more we’ve had to lose, the more closed minded and self-interested we’ve become.

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For example, something that needs to be exposed now is our race towards an electric future. This is not the panacea for our problems, there are still many human rights abuses, including a very real cost to the lives of children when extracting the required minerals out of the ground. There’s no doubt that Elon Musk is a genius, but before he takes us to Mars, could he please sort out the human rights issues that are happening here on planet earth, especially in places like the DRC – and consider the impacts of such projects all along the value chain.

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x+why are incredibly lucky to have Mozzo supplying delicious coffee to our new site The Fulwood in Holborn - opening April 2021.

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