The Misson
To me coffee is community, and coffee shops are the closer we come to the General Stores of the past. And it is where people come to connect to their neighbors, with their friends, and offers the opportunity to make new friends of strangers.
I have been running coffee shops for a while now and I’ve learned that the human element is at the heart of success. Of course, it’s the customers. There is nothing easy about retail because ultimately people bring their true selves to the coffee shops – they bring their moods and annoyances as well as their joy and kindness, they bring their noisy children. And, in Great Barrington, their dogs. Over the years, I’ve learned the names of almost them all. To make the coffee shop experience the best it can be requires patience and understanding and a continuing forgiveness.
Which means the second part of the equation is doubly important: the staff. Though many imagine they too can serve the public, in reality, only a percentage of them have the skill and grace and resilience to be kind to my customers. And one the hardest but most necessary parts of the job of the coffee shop owner is to kindly dispense with those who can’t do the best job for my customers along with to finding, treating well, and keeping those who can.
If you can surround yourself with those who are committed to the mission of creating and honoring that community and strengthening those connections, you have to put significant time into creating the space that accomplished those aims; to doing the best job of figuring out what your customers want and making sure you’ve got the very best equipment to make that possible. And here is where those connections with your customers come in – it was them who convinced me to add crepes to the menu at Holli’s.
I’ve learned over the last few years, that it’s a very worthy mission.