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

Dacia, appreciate you joining us today. Let’s start on the operational side – do you spend more of your time/focus/energy on growing revenue or cutting costs?

I live under the motto “do unto other’s as you’d have them do unto you” and implement it into our personal business as well. We try to have our drinks be affordable and be of good quality. We get our beans locally roasted to help with cost of product, support another local business, and get a truly fresh product.

We continue to grow our revenue by serving drinks that are mostly coffee and not a ton of ice, unless requested of course. One of my biggest pet peeves when going to another coffee business is when they fill a cup with ice and put a little bit of cream and coffee in it. After 5 sips my drink is gone and I really didn’t want to chew on ice. I enjoy the flavor and aromas of coffee and like to enjoy it, hence why I purchased the drink in the first place. I make sure to put mostly coffee in our drinks and appreciate when customers say thank you for the good product. We also always serve 3 shots of espresso with our coffee drinks.

When it comes to festivals and markets, we don’t raise our prices like some other businesses do. Sometimes the festival or market fees are high, so vendors increase their prices to cover the cost of entry. Depending on the event we either decline invites because the cost is too high or when we participate we keep our prices the same. We tend to get a higher volume of customers because we are affordable and people tell others that we have our prices set at a normal cost and aren’t trying to over charge. We love our product and want other’s to appreciate it as well and if that means we have to cut costs to make our clients happy, we will.

Dacia, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I started Cool Beans Wilmington 3 years ago during the pandemic. My boyfriend and I renovated a 1990’s sunchaser rv to accommodate our mobile coffee trailer. We serve coffee, lemonades, teas, soda drinks, and baked goods. Recently, we partnered with a local artesian and she takes our used coffee grounds and repurposes them into soap and bath products. We love going green so this was a no brainer when she asked if we were interested in working together. The soaps and bath products smell so good and adding coffee grounds to them help with invigorating your skin and exfoliation.

We are super proud of building our trailer on our own and being able to market this business to our community. My background is in marketing so I created my own website and social media. I love being able to promote events on our social media channels and help get the word out that not only will Cool Beans be at the event but information about the event too.

We also pride ourselves in giving back to the community through fundraisers, all fire fighters and officers get free coffee, and working with local businesses to surprise their team or office with a coffee event.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

My biggest piece of advice to grow followers is follow other local businesses and like and comment on their pages. It doesn’t matter if they are also a similar business, show your support and love for others that share that same passion. It will go a long way with other businesses if you like and help their business grow. When you have an event at another location, make sure to tag them and share their event on your page. This helps them and you to get people to show up and hopefully purchase from both or all vendors attending.

What’s been the best source of new clients for you?

The old ways are usually the best ways, networking and word of mouth are still HUGE in getting your brand and business awareness. It’s not what you know but who you know. I always have business cards both on my trailer to hand out and at networking events. People like to see who runs the business and what you can provide others with. I also suggest doing expos to help get your business out in society.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.coolbeanswilmington.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/coolbeanswilmington
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/coolbeanswilmington