We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Brittany and Deni Salazar and Banach. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Brittany and Deni below.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

Hi there! We are Brittany and Deni, the owners of Enroute Coffee and Tea house. Brittany was born and raised in Arizona, while Deni moved from Washington State to Phoenix. Together we have a combined total of over 25 years in the food and beverage industry. We met in 2016 while working together in downtown Phoenix where we both found out that we have an equal passion for coffee, guest service and giving back.
In January 2019, we were blessed with a golden opportunity to buy Enroute and live our dream! We are located in Goodyear, off the I10 and Estrella parkway. Here at Enroute we pride ourselves on our local love. We do our best to source, support and hire locally for all our operations. All our baked goods are made fresh by small family businesses and our milk and creams are from a local dairy farm! We showcase a handful of small businesses from our community in our Local love shopping corner.
We are a full espresso bar that specializes in using unique and premium ingredients for a new and exciting drink experience. We pride ourselves on our hand selected powder bases that really create out of this world flavor compared to syrups that are traditional used. We are famous for our vanilla bean infused nitro coffee and white coffee. Enroute Coffee & tea house is proud to serve over 12 different teas at anytime. With a wide variety of offerings like our favorite strawberry peach black tea and a local elderberry herbal tea. We also serve an herbal relaxation tea and delicate white peach. All our teas are locally blended and unsweetened. Our lotus drinks are eye catching plant based energy drinks made from clean ingredients that won’t leave you with a caffeine crash like store bought canned energy drinks. They pack a punch!
We are grateful for this opportunity to make our own stamp on the industry while giving other small businesses like ours the opportunity to do what they love.

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

In the beginning, we made a point to meet our fellow small business in our area. With so many corporate giants surrounding us , we wanted to show our community that we are here to support and lift up not only ourselves but them as well. We weren’t afraid to ask questions and seek help from our friends. One of our goals was also to support local as much as possible, so we reached out to local bakers and makers to help fill our shelves with creations you couldn’t get anywhere else. We also filled our coffee shop with other local small businesses to provide a “Local Love Corner” which now spans across the whole coffee shop. We currently have 10 local makers that get to sell their handcrafted goods within our shop. By making it a mission to be “all things local” it struck a chord with our community that we weren’t just another coffee shop. We were a coffee shop with a mission and morals. While finding our community we also made it a point to be 100% authentic at all times and in every aspect. We stay true to ourselves in the product we serve, the employees we employ, our social media presence, physical presence within the shop and coffee trailer. Authenticity goes a long way for most people, they appreciate that we are REAL people behind the screen and counter. Lastly, I do believe strongly that we also grew a great reputation for offering unique and delicious flavor combinations that are traditionally not done in a coffee shop, which keeps customers on their toes. Enroute Coffee and Tea offers hundreds of drink options compared to the corporate giant neighbor that offers only a handful. We offer a unique, exciting, and always changing offering to our community and they know it and look forward to our creations.

Do you have any insights you can share related to maintaining high team morale?

Managing a team always starts with hiring, we have to hire the right people for the job. We are in a customer service industry so during our interview it’s more focused around personality and engagement with us. We can teach anyone how to brew coffee but I can’t give people a personality. Our customers have short interactions with our team, they don’t have time for our employees to warm up to them. Once we have our team, we are big believers of communication in everything. We set our expectations not only on day one but while we are interview. This continues during their time with us, we love to have one on ones with our team members. We are consistently coaching and giving praise, we want them to know when they can improve and when they are rocking it out. We believe this gives them the ability to come to us or the management staff if they have any questions or situations they need to speak about. We have already created that bond that they have an easier time talking to us. We also extremely recommend getting to know the different learning styles and having training available for each way, ( i.e. hands on, listening, looking, reading flash cards) so your staff learns efficiently in the way that works best for them Yes, this does require more work from us, Owners but we have seen and experienced longevity with our employees by taking extra steps to sit, talk, learn about them, and what we can do to always offer the best experience for them. As owners, managers, and leaders we need to always be aware, constantly learning and having the ability to pivot for our ever growing team!

Contact Info:

• Website: enroutecoffeeaz.com
• Instagram: @enroutecoffeeandtea
• Facebook: Enroute Coffee & Tea House

Image Credits
@Hncphotoz @mojonesphoto