Coffee roasters' philosophy: Take it slow

No business plan. No consulting help. No desire to grow, grow, grow.

Also, no nagging anxiety, as Bryan Baquet, Adelphi University student and a founder of Gentle Brew Coffee Co. in Hicksville, says he's familiar with uncertainty, and, as no one really knows the answers, is fine with testing and correcting.

So, what else would you expect from a philosophy major who's starting a business?

In January Baquet and two friends launched the artisan organic-coffee roasting company at 107 Stewart Ave., aiming to grow slowly and import beans directly from farmers in developing countries.

Yes, they tried a business-plan program, but "questions were way beyond our scope of knowledge," says Baquet, 24, who will be a senior philosophy major. "We thought about the basic things like competition and demographics, but stayed away from projections."

Learning on the job

He and two high school buddies -- Zain Nadeem, 22, who graduated Saturday with a degree in philosophy and religious studies from Fordham University; and Ryan Baasch, 22, who's just earned a degree in political science and economics from Stony Brook University -- are educating themselves through reading, tasting, customer feedback, trial and error.

So far they have about 60 regular customers, mostly students and consumers in the area, buying bags of roasted-to-order ground beans and bottled "cold brew," says Nadeem.

While Baquet says that one adviser at a small business development center called him either "crazy or a genius," he does get a thumbs-up from John Chaffee, coordinator of the philosophy program at LaGuardia Community College, Long Island City. LaGuardia has expanded its philosophy program over the past two years while many four-year schools are cutting back on some humanities.

Chaffee says a philosophy background gives entrepreneurs a foundation in critical thinking, reasoning and ethics, as well as confidence they can figure things out. For the most part, students in his program, he says, expect to go on to careers not in academia, but in law, medicine, medical technology, education and business.

Baquet says he got the idea for Gentle Brew about a year ago while researching agricultural trade issues for his thesis.

"I wanted to see if I could create a company that exists within capitalism," he says, but that "has a more fluid way of operating, where the needs of the farmers and the consumer are taken into account and symbiosis is the end goal, and not unsustainable growth."

Next month he and Nadeem, who have been working with an importer in New Jersey, plan to visit farmers in Costa Rica to discuss buying their beans directly.

Baquet started the business with about $20,000 -- loans from his father and several supporters. He's also plowing in his earnings from working at his father's landscaping business in Hicksville.

Among the challenges: juggling school and business priorities. Baquet said his grades dropped last semester while addressing start-up issues. And early on, he says, there was some arguing, before he and his colleagues stepped back and worked to keep a lid on their emotions.

Another who began small

Another philosopher/entrepreneur who started, in the early 1990s, with no business plan is Stephan Shaw, 42, co-founder of The Unemployed Philosophers Guild, based in Brooklyn. The business develops and markets products such as Freudian Slips sticky notes and "What Would Nietzsche Do?" T-shirts.

Shaw, formerly of Baldwin, says he feels entrepreneurs are wise to "start small and as simple as the idea will allow. Often people start so far underwater that only a miracle could raise the boat."

He also recalls a message from one of his professors at the New School in Manhattan, who said a degree in philosophy "pretty much vaccinated you against midlife crisis. It actually vaccinates you against many things. One of them is definitely the need for a business plan."