Someday is now
When the idea for POD ON ME came together, a private room you can book by the half hour right where people are, Todd knew exactly where the first pods would come from.
He called Dad. He called Darc. And he asked if they wanted in.
Our story
Three of us left. Twenty-five kiosks. One more big idea.
POD ON ME was not born in a boardroom. It was born on a ranch in the Peace River Country of Alberta, in a family that has buried too many of its own and never stopped building.
Chapter 1
The land Dad and Mom bought at seventeen
Dad started working that land as a teenager, homesteading it, and when he and Mom were both just seventeen, they bought it together. Her name was Audry. They would go on to be married fifty years.
Life took Dad away from the ranch for a while. He became a real estate developer, and a good one. Then he did something most people never would: he gave it all up and moved his three sons back to the land he had homesteaded as a boy, so we would grow up the way he had.
We called it the Triple R Bar Ranch. Our brand was a Lazy R over a 3, and the 3 stood for the three of us boys: Dean, Darc and Todd.
Chapter 2
What the ranch taught us
Out there you learn early that nothing gets done unless you do it. You fix what breaks, you do not waste what you have, you show up in every kind of weather, and you stick together.
Dad never stopped being an entrepreneur, even on horseback. He taught us to see what a thing could become instead of what it was. We did not know it then, but that is the whole idea behind POD ON ME.
Chapter 3
Portland, coffee, and our first kiosks
Darc went south to play university baseball in Portland, Oregon. He came home with more than a glove: he had seen what coffee could be, with people lining up at little stands and drive-thrus everywhere. Back home, nobody was doing it yet.
So we did. We built our own portable coffee bars with our own hands, and with Dad backing us all the way. Then, about thirty years ago, we bought a fleet of retired FedEx drop-off kiosks and turned some of them into drive-thru coffee stands, years before drive-thru coffee was on every corner in Canada. Dean was a partner in all of it.
The rest of the kiosks went back to the ranch to wait for their turn.
Chapter 4
The storm
Twenty years ago, we lost Dean in a motorcycle accident.
There are no words for what that did to our family. The ranch had been built for three sons, and now there were two. Not long after, Dad sold the Triple R Bar.
He sat us down and told us the truth as he saw it: staying on the ranch to carry it on would only hold us back. He wanted us out in the world, building things of our own, the way he always had. So, with his blessing, we went.
Chapter 5
Building our own lives
We did what Dad raised us to do. Together we built and ran a big car wash in Vancouver, British Columbia. Darc built a Japanese vehicle import business that keeps him busier than ever, and his sons worked alongside him for years. Todd built online companies, including Bro.com, Dude.com, Delicious.com, GermProof.com, Coconut.com, Names.com and Shirts.com.
Through all of it, the kiosks sat on Dad’s land. Every time one of us went home, we saw them, and every time we said the same thing: someday we are going to turn those into something.
Chapter 6
Mom
Nine years ago, we lost Mom to a brain stem tumor.
Audry was seventeen when she and Dad bought that land, and she stood beside him for fifty years of marriage, through every move, every venture and every storm. She was the heart of the Triple R Bar, and she still is.
Chapter 7
Through every storm
We have been through more than our share: losing a brother, losing our mother, losing a baby, walking away from the ranch we grew up on. We will not pretend it was easy.
But looking back, we can see it clearly. God has had our backs the whole way, carrying us through the trials, the storms and the losses, and leading us to where we are today. We would not be standing here without that, and without each other.
Chapter 8
The next generation
Our kids are grown, or nearly there, and they are the best thing any of us has ever built.
Darc’s two sons grew up in the family business. Kei Reum pitched NCAA Division I baseball at Fordham and the University of Nebraska Omaha, and he is now playing baseball in Australia, carrying on the love of the game his dad brought home from Portland. Jayce is a farrier here at home, keeping the horse-and-hoof side of our ranch roots alive.
Todd has a family of his own and two daughters about to finish high school. His son Dawson was born an identical twin; his brother Sebastian was stillborn. Dawson carried both of them forward. He finished at the top of his class, graduated this year, and is heading into engineering.
Our hope is that our kids will be part of POD ON ME too, so that what started on the Triple R Bar keeps going long after us.
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Dad’s answer
Dad is 81 now, and fighting multiple myeloma the way he has fought everything in his life: like a Viking. He did not hesitate.
“I’ll sell them to you for nothing. You guys go for it!”
We said no.
“We’ll pay you, Dad, and you’re getting a good cut. You’ve been there our whole lives. We wouldn’t be where we are today if it weren’t for you.”
Going out with a bang
It is just the three of us now: Dad, Darc and Todd, with our families and our kids around us.
Twenty-five kiosks waited on the ranch for decades. Now every one of them is being rebuilt on its original footprint, so a little of the Triple R Bar goes wherever they go.
It has been too long. We are doing this for Dad, for Mom, for Dean, and for Sebastian. And we are going out with a bang.
Dad, Darc and Todd
The Triple R Bar Ranch, Peace River Country, Alberta
In loving memory of Audry, our mom; Dean, our brother; and Sebastian, Todd’s son.