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Joe Gurule: Joe and Monica here, owners of Oso Grande Coffee Company. We have a great announcement to make. We are going to become partners with San Juan Regional Medical Center, and we'll be in the location downstairs at the hospital.

Monica Gurule: We are really excited to be in this partnership and want to...

Joe Gurule: ...continue to serve the community.

Monica Gurule: One thing we want our customers to know is that Oso Grande Coffee is not a franchise. We are locally owned and operated here in Farmington, New Mexico. And we have been for the past eight years. What that means is that my husband and I, who are the owners, we live in San Juan County. We're part of the community. Anything that we donate goes back to the community.

Joe Gurule: Along with this partnership, we want to discuss a few things. Of course, we want to discuss our mission statement. So, some of our mission statement, of course, that applies here at our San Juan location. We're going to apply that same mentality there to the location there at San Juan Regional Medical Center.

Monica Gurule: Our mission statement for Oso Grande Coffee Company has always been to provide our customers with the best freshly roasted coffee available to us. We've done that. We've done that for eight years at our location here at 2214 San Juan Boulevard.

Along with that, we also provide excellent customer service to our customers, our employees. And we want it to be part of the community. We've done that for the past eight years.

Joe Gurule: What inspired us to open the coffee shop, Monica?

Monica Gurule: Well, we lived here since 2002 And we didn't have access to the type of coffee we wanted. We were looking for somewhere that had organic coffee, that knew how to brew it the proper way. And we could not find that here. We looked, we tried several different places. That is when we decided this is something we'd like to pursue. It wasn't something that we did right away. It took us a couple of years. But that is the reason why we opened Oso Grande Coffee Company, is because we wanted coffee brewed the way we like it.

Joe Gurule: So, it's been a great past eight years. Of course, we have some great ups and some downs. You know, we took in the good with the bad. We've had some amazing followers that come to our coffee shop daily. And we see them all the time. And a lot of them are actually from the hospital. They work there at the hospital. So, they are excited to see us there at the hospital and we are excited to do this as well.

So, we want to continue to serve our community by being part of the San Juan Regional Medical Center. And what makes a great way to do that is to be there at the hospital, a great location, and it will be an amazing place just like our place here at San Juan Boulevard.

Monica Gurule: And it also helps our customers that do come here, that are from San Juan Regional, it cuts their commute down. It helps them have more time to go do what they need to do before their shift starts.

Joe Gurule: So Monica, how would you summarize our journey from opening 'til today?

Monica Gurule: Our journey has been extremely difficult.

Joe Gurule: But rewarding, right?

Monica Gurule: But rewarding. Yes, it has been.

Joe Gurule: Of course, we've had to adapt with, of course, going through COVID. I'm sure everybody had to adapt going through that. Meeting new customers and our employees and everything else. But you know what? That's a lot of things that motivates us to do this every day, seeing our customers, being part of the community, coming to work, being involved.

Monica and I-- a lot of people don't realize that we are here daily. If not both of us, one of us is at least at our coffee shops. We're able to take questions and even educating some people if people ask us questions. Some people are scared to ask questions about certain products, we make them comfortable, I think, in my opinion, and of course our crew does too, make people comfortable to come to see us and ask us about certain things, how we can do things and that's how we get our great following here at Oso Grande Coffee.

Monica Gurule: And they see that we're passionate about coffee and how we brew our coffee and they're interested. And that's what makes it fun for Joe and I to keep doing what we're doing, is we make the customer feel at home. We invite them in to know us and to know our employees.

Most of our regulars know our employees by name. They know when we're here and when we're not. And it's more like they're family to us. So, we have a lot of regulars that we consider part of our family because we're here at the coffee shop. This is our second home. So, our employees are not just our employees, they're our family. And when Joe and I decided to finally open our coffee shop, that was one of the main things. We wanted to be part of the San Juan community. And we wanted the community to accept us, because we are locally owned and operated. Joe and I have lived in this community since 2002, and we love it.

Joe Gurule: And we grew up in New Mexico. We grew up just south of Farmington, moved to Farmington after I got out of the military. And this is our home. And we're glad to say we are New Mexicans here in the Four Corners area.

Now, what we serve here at Oso Grande Coffee-- and Monica hit on this earlier-- is all organic coffee. So, our roaster is Desert Sun Roasters out of Durango. We think it's very important that we were able to find a roaster that provides exactly what we need, freshly roasted coffee made to order for us. So when a customer comes and gets their coffee, that's what they're getting, a fair trade organic coffee.

Now, along with that, we also have loose leaf teas that you cannot buy in the store. So, it's teas that are specific to us that we picked out by choice. We have some great green teas. Our raspberry green tea and our peach green tea seems to be some of the most popular teas that we have. Of course, our Navajo tea is amazing.

Monica Gurule: So with our Navajo tea, a lot of people don't know that we carry it, we brew it. And it's done through a drive-through. There is no other place that serves Navajo tea through a drive-through. You can get it quick, you're in and out, and we like that.

Joe Gurule: Of course, we have a whole bunch of different specialty coffee and tea drinks that we serve. But of course, we just want to let people know that we are here for whatever they desire. I mean, if they have a drink somewhere else that they go get, hey, come see us. We might be able to make something similar or even better to that.

Well, that's it from Oso Grande Coffee. I mean, we want to be thankful that we are going to be part of the San Juan Regional Medical Center crew. We're going to be partners with them and, hopefully, for a very long time. We are very excited to be there.

Monica Gurule: And we are very grateful.

Joe Gurule: Very grateful. And thank you for spending this time to listen to us. Thank you.

Monica Gurule: Thank you.