We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Ben Ratner a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Ben, thanks for joining us today. Naming anything – including a business – is so hard. Right? What’s the story behind how you came up with the name of your brand?

Our cafe is called LiB’s Market. We’re a cafe & specialty coffee roastery. My wife and I set out to have a community driven space that we could express ourselves through, support our family with and eventually have it be a resource for them in some way in the future. We had seen how couples/partnerships found unique ways of integrating an aspect of their names into their business name to help convey that we stand behind our products and services. So at first we just combined the names “Lindsay” and “Ben” but soon realized our young daughter’s names fit in as part of an acronym as well as our family dog, “Snoopy.”
It has become a great conversation starter with new customers and highlights from the start, that we are a family business. An interesting by-product was, as time went on and we had two more children, we had to decide to pick names that would fit the “LiB’s” acronym or divert from the formula. I am happy to report that our son’s Brodie and Simon enjoy their names and that we made the family business also have some overlap with their names.

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?

LiB’s Market is located in the historic district of Salem, Ohio. We focus on all things local and hand-crafted including our own freshly roasted coffees. In the summer of 2014, my wife and I formed an LLC for in-home dinner parties, corporate catering jobs and custom pastry orders. After about a year, in the summer of 2015, we made the transition to brick & mortar, opening LiB’s Market in August.

Since then, we have worked to grow LiB’s into a place beloved by many in the Salem community and beyond.

The name LiB’s is derived from an arrangement of our kid’s and our own initials.

Pastries, tea and coffee are shop staples, but the opportunity to expand our menu into quick, healthy food options became apparent quickly. Since October of 2015 more options appeared on the menu with a “grab and go” cooler, occasional popup dinner events and coffee tastings becoming regular happenings as well . Customers were offered healthy salads, wraps, in-house brewed iced tea and local sodas for on-the-go. We have also obtained our beverage bottling license and started bottling our own tea & cold brew.

Let’s talk M&A – we’d love to hear your about your experience with buying businesses.

My wife and I bought a business in 2015, and it has become the cafe we run today. We both had experience in food service and both creative in our own ways. Operating a business together would not only (hopefully provide income, but would give us an opportunity to work together and express ourselves.

We were able to utilize the Small Business Development Center, out of Kent State University’s Tuscarawas to assist us with understanding the pricing and guide on the legal side of things which was a huge help.

For funding, we applied for a small business loan through the Mahoning Valley Economic Development Committee. Our plan was subject to a project approval process, which meant their board had to approve our loan request and review the overall project/plan and get behind it as an investment for their board. We provided some examples of treats we would be providing and are pretty sure that helped them make their final approval! :)
After two years of operations, we were able to apply for a traditional business loan through a local bank and have since moved on to a lower interest SBA loan.

Can you talk to us about manufacturing? How’d you figure it all out? We’d love to hear the story.

An appealing part of the purchase of our business was the process of coffee roasting that was a large part of their operations. I have a background in wine production and the two products/processes are very different but overlap in many ways as well. The growth of coffee cherries parallels the growth of wine grapes, and fostering strong agricultural relationships is key in both industries. There are also similarities and developing flavor profiles in both wine and coffee, so much of what I learned in the wine industry was useful after making the switch to coffee. And I really just made the addition rather than fully making the industry switch because a big part of both business is also food production. So having a little cafe is much like having a little winery in needing kitchen space and leading employees in food service.
The actual roasting of coffee beans became the most crucial new skill I needed to learn, and the green coffee wholesaling company had weekend training workshops at their warehouse that I was able to utilize to really give me the foundation in roasting I needed to have a successful business. I was able to eventually train and bring on a second roaster as well.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.libsmarket.com
• Instagram: @libsmarket
• Facebook: Libsmarket
• Youtube: @libsmarket5452