We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Chrissie Rellinger Smith. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Chrissie below.

Chrissie, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. How did you scale up? What were the strategies, tactics, meaningful moments, twists/turns, obstacles, mistakes along the way? The world needs to hear more realistic, actionable stories about this critical part of the business building journey. Tell us your scaling up story – bring us along so we can understand what it was like making the decisions you had, implementing the strategies/tactics etc.

The biggest challenge is keeping costs down but finding ways to expand and improve your offerings. As the owner of North Perk Coffee, I am very committed to authenticity of the craft by making drinks from scratch and not choosing cheaper, automated products. We have expanded our offerings to bring in new customers and provided fresh offerings to our existing customers – for example, bringing in seasonal specials, adding nitro cold brew and more, has been very successful. It’s also fun for folks to try things they never heard of or try drinks they never thought they would like such as a Matcha Special Latte. Keeping your offerings fresh and innovative is good for the shop, customers and crew.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I came to own North Perk Coffee about 3 years ago just as COVID was waning. I previously had spent about 30 years in corporate marketing and events. The opportunity to buy the shop was presented to me and I decided to officially hang up my corporate hat and own this coffee shop business. Getting into coffee of course presented a huge learning curve — I quickly went to barista training and espresso extraction school to start the education process. Also, I was so fortunate that the previous owner and the manager helped teach me so much since they wanted me and the shop to succeed. Understanding coffee and the intricacies of this popular drink has been so great and I will continue to expand my knowledge and evolve the shop. And, my consumer marketing experience has helped me adapt to the retail environment and customer experience.

Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?

We have a great customer base but continue to try and reach new customers… our strategy is simple. Great drinks and community engagement. First of all, we have authentically crafted drinks and always follow trends to create new and exciting offerings. We offer seasonal specials and are always expanding our base drinks such as new Nitro Cold Brew and Kombucha. Secondly, we strongly believe in the community. We give back to local charities, participate in community events and donate our time or products to fundraisers and more. We also take pride in selling locally made retail and food products as well as hosting local vendor pop-up shops. We want our community to see us an important part and we never take it for granted.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

Our reputation is very important to us and we maintain that by having a very friendly staff that is committed to the highest level of customer service. Also, we offer a great product that is always evolving, invest in state-of-the-art equipment, and community involvement.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.northperkcoffee.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/northperkcoffee/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/northperkcoffee

Image Credits
My own images, Chrissie Rellinger Smith