Local IS Better

Written by Populace

Spring Issue '24 - Online Shop

So there I was, just sitting in my empty cafe, thinking about all the mistakes that were made and what I could have done differently. The thoughts flooded my brain as I searched to turn off the light switches. As I locked the deadbolt on the front door and made my way to the back, I felt a rush of emotion come over me. I had failed… I blew it. 

The glamor of running a food and beverage business is overrated. When you see a well curated and aesthetically pleasing Instagram feed or a publication featuring a beautiful origin story, you don’t realize how many tears have been shed or how much angst and anguish has been pushed down in the spirit of service. 

The dollars can come rushing in at times, but there are moments when it is a struggle to get a drop.

Supporting the dreams of a risk-taking creator can seem like a simple act of solidarity, but for that person that locks and unlocks the door everyday, it is their source of air. These dreamers and doers in our communities provide a nuance to the local culture that can’t be matched. 

The size of your community does not matter. The current makeup of your community does not matter. If you provide a platform for the citizens of the community to build a business, your community and people visiting will benefit. 

When I first started my business back in 2010, my local community was excited for me to be there. I was 22 years old and I only knew a few “adults” in the city. I was mostly relying on my friends and family to help, but I slowly started to meet some of the city leaders through their curiosity, nothing formal. 

Although a more formal initiation into the community would have been helpful for all of us at that time, there is no substitute for grit and determination sprinkled with a little bit of “right place, right time.” 

I still remember the feeling of opening the shop for the first time. Your soul wants to leap from your body once the initial patronage of family and friends goes away and you're left with greeting complete strangers into your life, and telling them your story or just simply proving the product that they came in for, no other questions asked. 

It’s a unique feeling that not everyone will experience. I love that fact because it keeps it sacred only in the hearts of those that have jumped into their own abyss of curiosity and risk. 

When the people that make up the fabric of our communities live, work, and survive in them, there is no alternative to the complexity it brings.

You can’t systematize, create processes or standard operating procedures that replace living and working in a community. No matter how many organizations you join or how much you spend in yearly dues…experience outweighs process, everytime. 

Now don’t get me wrong, the ability to attempt this is not impossible. We see large corporations and even middling corporations try to do this every day. I’m sure if we all closed our eyes and imagined who those corporations are, our lists would be similar. 

When one of these corporations succeeds, it punches a hole in the fabric of the community. The perimeter on the tapestry will hold up for a while but when too many of these soulless entities make their way in, the integrity of the fabric is gone and no longer provides what it used to. 

Don’t believe me? Look around. Go and talk to a small business owner who has been doing it for more than 5 years, then a 10 year, maybe even a 15 or 20-year owner. The higher in business age you seek, the rarer they are to find. 

We live in a society based on the free market and capitalism. The very nature of that structure is why I was able to start my own business. I’m no fool. We all actively participate in the system, every. single. day. 

The beauty of this system is that it can change. It evolves based on the town or city you live in. You can effect the change. Your dollars drive the economy. Your social media presence influences your friends and your family. You are the product but you are also the producer at the very same time. It’s a unique time in our economic history. 

Our company has decided to focus on the most important ingredient in our product, the most important ingredient for our bodies, and it is the most important ingredient for our beautiful state. 

Water. 

Water conservation doesn’t sound super exciting to “most” folks, but I gather that if you’re reading this, it might actually matter to you. 

It matters immensely to us. Our product is impacted by the quality of water used in the brewing process and in the harvesting process at the farm. Fun fact, water is 98% of the coffee in your cup. 

We have taken many steps in our company to “try” and reduce our impact and work to conserve as much of our water as possible. 

We do not buy any new merchandise for resale. Instead, we buy recycled clothing and work to give it a new life. We only use compostable packaging for our coffee sold at retail. We use only compostable materials in our cafes, all the way down to the trash bags.

These are practices that we believe in, and honestly we probably don’t talk about it enough, but we are busy working on trying to get people into our business based on who we are and not just what we do. 

Decisions that we make as a business are impacted by the community we grew up in. Water conservation might not be as important to me if I didn’t grow up on the shores of Lake Huron or if I didn’t get to watch freighters slowly pass through my city weekly throughout the spring and summer months. 

I am deeply indebted to my home, but not in the promissory note type of way. I wouldn’t have become who I am without my community. Without the positives and the negatives. 

So as I flashback to the beginning, those feelings of failure that only some of us get to experience are real, they are raw, and they hurt. 

Whether we are walking through the empty spaces that we tried to shape into something great or we are walking through the streets peering into the windows of a vacant building and dreaming about what it could become, our home is what matters. Our community is what matters. 

Our small business continues to navigate the waters of the local economy and even though some of our efforts in the past have failed, our core business remains strong and vibrant. An entrepreneur who hasn’t tried something and failed isn’t one you want to hear from, it’s the ones with at least a few scars that tell the most interesting stories. 

So make sure to continue dreaming about the future. Make sure you continue to support the dreamers. Local IS better, always and forever.

BIO

Andrew Heppner and his wife Justis have two kids and live in Bay City, MI. They started Populace Coffee in 2010 and continue to operate it to this day. Their family is passionate about conservation and coffee, two things that most of us can admit to loving in one way or another.

Spring Issue '24 - Online Shop