
How To Scale A Business Without Losing Soul | Nolan Hirte of PROUD MARY COFFEE!
From IT’S JUST COFFEE! by Ben Bicknell & Rohan Cooke
April 7, 2026 · 46 min
About this episode
Nolan Hirte discusses his journey with Proud Mary Coffee and the intricacies of scaling a coffee business while maintaining its soul.
If anyone truly lives for coffee, it’s Nolan Hirte. Founder of the wildly successful Proud Mary Coffee, Nolan’s passion for coffee bleeds out into every aspect of his business, making Proud Mary an iconic name across Australia and the U.S. We spoke to him at MICE26 about Proud Mary’s journey scaling to the U.S, as well as mood-based coffee labelling, barriers for young people entering the industry, and the Honduran producer who won the Cup of Excellence using a recipe from ChatGPT! CHAPTERS 00:00 Intro & Nolan Hirte 02:08 Coffee Journey & Passion 04:09 Creating a Coffee Experience 06:20 Why Storytelling Matters 08:05 Making Specialty Coffee Accessible 10:26 Sponsor: Marco MilkPal 11:07 Expensive Coffee Debate 12:44 Attracting New Coffee Drinkers 15:00 Simplifying Coffee Communication 18:22 Hospitality & Customer Experience 21:31 Building Team Culture 29:36 Future of Coffee & Technology 37:33 New Ideas & Coffee Experiences 41:53 Industry Shoutout & Outro If you're new here (welcome), our show dives into some of the best coffee conversations on the internet, but we will always remind ourselves at the end of the day - It's Just Coffee! Nolan Hirte…
People in this episode
Hosts: Ben Bicknell, Rohan Cooke
Guest: Nolan Hirte
Topics covered
- coffee culture
- business scaling
- specialty coffee
- storytelling
- hospitality
- technology in coffee
Keywords
- Proud Mary Coffee
- Nolan Hirte
- coffee experience
- business growth
- specialty coffee
- MICE26
- coffee industry
Sponsors
Marco MilkPal
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: PROUD MARY COFFEE
Products: Cup of Excellence
Books & works: ChatGPT
Places: Australia, U.S.
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