We recently connected with Shirley Bell and have shared our conversation below.

Shirley, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. The first dollar your business earns is always special and we’d love to hear how your brand made its first dollar of revenue.

Crown + Bloom opened our serving window for the first time on Saturday, August 17th of 2024. We had our grand opening at A Thrasher’s Farm in Pelzer, South Carolina. Our very first customer was one of our friends, De’Andre. He was there early, and was determined to be the first one to place and order — what a good friend :) I remember that he ordered a very straightforward iced vanilla latte, and loved it!

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Crown + Bloom was truly born from four friends day-dreaming about how fun it would be to own a coffee shop together! We all love working for ourselves, love coffee, love traveling, and love each other. So, what better way to combine all of those things than starting a coffee shop on wheels :)

We operate out of a renovated 1967 camper, and we’re committed to organic ingredients. From our small-batch, certified organic syrups, to our ethically-sourced beans — quality and safety are priorities of ours. Come on out to the camper sometime, and try to find an ingredient that’s not organic! We’re the real deal, that’s for sure.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

After finding our camper on Facebook Marketplace, we set a very ambitious opening day and determined that we wouldn’t move it out. Renovating a camper that’s old enough to be our grandmother, is definitely not something that should take less than two months — for normal people, that is! There were South Carolina summer Saturdays, where at least two of us were working from literal sunup to sundown. We were fabricating windows, sanding and staining countertops, painting and painting some more… Sometimes, it was hard to keep the end in sight.

Luckily, we had some good tunes, good friends, and good parents to help see us through. There is no way we would’ve made it to the finish line without our village. Our parents were always ready to lend a tool, a backyard, or a hand. By leaning on each other, and determining that we would meet our goal — we opened on the day that we had planned since the very beginning :)

Can you tell us the story behind how you met your business partner?

Brantley and I met Corey and Baylee at a Starbucks within our first weeks in Greenville, SC. I remember that we were moving into the first apartment we had in the upstate, and we had scooted over to Starbs to play a card game and take a much needed break. Corey had recognized Brantley from the Chick-fil-A that he was directing at the time — at first it was one of those, “how do we know each other” moments :)

We connected right away! I just remember them being so kind and friendly — that I knew we would have to stay in touch. We had just moved from Iowa, and definitely needed some local friends. We had them over for dinner shortly after, and the rest is history!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.crownandbloomcoffee.com/
• Instagram: crownandbloomcoffeeco
• Facebook: Crown + Bloom Coffee Co.

Image Credits

Rachel Brown
@rachelbrown.photography