We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Don Niemyer. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Don below.
Don, appreciate you joining us today. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?
I’ve always been interested in simplicity. I grew up in a context where we didn’t have a lot (although we had plenty, we just didn’t have an abundance) but I watched my family emphasize that life wasn’t about “stuff”. It was about relationships and experiences, and you can fill your life with those things for free usually. Then I married a girl who felt the same way and we made the idea of chasing simplicity a foundation of our life. Well, all this simplicity chasing eventually led us to move in to a 99 square foot RV with our two daughters where we lived for about 4 years. We didn’t know it would be that long when it started, but we loved it so much we just didn’t quit. When it all started we were living in Portland, Oregon, but had decided to relocate to Colorado and that’s where the RV idea came in. We figured we’d make an extended trip of the relocation and think about what we wanted to do next. We figured it would be in coffee (we had owned 3 coffee shops in Portland) but we wanted to get inspired and do something creative and unique. So we took off in our RV and traveled the nation. We went to hundreds of coffee shops, talked to hundreds of people, and got a bazillion ideas that informed our next move. But the big question was how do we execute all these ideas for an amazing coffee shop while still keeping it simple? This line of thinking led to the idea of a Tiny House Coffee Shop. We had notice that the Tiny House folks were doing a great job of building gorgeous, well-designed structures with elegance and creativity, while still keeping them simple. So that’s what we decided to do! I thought this was such a great idea that I started researching all the other operations who had already done it so I could learn from them. To my surprise, the number of folks I found who had built a Tiny House Coffee Shop where customers actually come inside was ZERO. I didn’t find anybody who had done this before! So, as I like to say, armed with my passion and ignorance I decided to do it anyway. We really felt like this would be a chance to demonstrate that you didn’t need a million dollars to open a great shop. A typical path for folks opening shops is they create something gorgeous and palatial, but quickly realize they can’t pay for all that gorgeousness selling drinks for $4 a pop. So they start selling food and smoothies and dog washes and trail gear and more food and cocktails and well…you get the idea. They end up not being a coffee shop but something… else. So by building something tiny and simple we reasoned that we’d have low overhead and could focus on what we really wanted to make: Coffee! So we built our little Tiny House Coffee Shop, started poking around for a place to park it and open shop, and the first one to invite us to the party was the City of Colorado Springs, where we set up in Acacia Park, downtown in the heart of the city, and where we’ve been now for over 6 years.
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
Well, obviously we sell coffee. We’re quite passionate about it, and have spent many years cultivating our expertise as owner-operators who are in the trenches doing the work, and also getting out of the trenches where we can calibrate with others who are further along the road than we are. So we’re very proud of the products we deliver to our customers. But with that said, we actually don’t see coffee as the end game. Coffee is just the vehicle we have chosen to chase our own dreams based on values-based living, simplicity, caring for our family, and contributing to the community. And it is these core principles which we love encouraging others toward as well. So to explore the idea you asked about regarding what problem we solve for our customers, of course it starts with a great cup of coffee delivered in an efficient manner for a fair price with great hospitality. But that’s just level one. When we are at our best we are finding ways to inspire every person who walks in the door to “Live your best story” (which is emblazoned on our wall) or to find ways to simplify their own lives. And when we’re at our very best, we’re invited into the stories of the people we serve in a thousand ways. A kind smile or a question that says “I see you”. A celebration of a victory like a new baby or a work promotion, or possibly an ear to hear that things are not going that great along with an encouragement that things will get better. We work hard to be intentional about these things, and to remember that we’re not just there to hand off a warm drink. So these are the ways that we try to serve our customers, and then in the broader sense we also work to find ways to serve the community. The best example of this is our partnership with The Marian House, which feeds hundreds of people every day who are experiencing hard times. Our tiny little operation has given around $30,000 to this cause over the past few years, which is a small way we can be involved in caring for others around the community who are not even our customers.
Alright – let’s talk about marketing or sales – do you have any fun stories about a risk you’ve taken or something else exciting on the sales and marketing side?
One interesting little back-note about Story Coffee is that when I first moved to Colorado Springs back in 2001 I got my first job in coffee at Starbucks. I worked at several different locations over 3 1/2 years, but the last place I worked was the original location in downtown Colorado Springs, about 100 yards from where Story Coffee sits today. Well that lasted for a couple years until Starbucks decided to close that location, and of course I immediately realized there was a potential here for picking up some of that business. We knew that we’d pick up some of those customers just because we were across the street and they’d need to get coffee and there we’d be. We also knew we’d never pick up some others because our product is actually a different profile and they’d just never like what we offered. But the ones we wanted to target were those that were kind of in the middle. They wouldn’t automatically try us out, but they could be persuaded if invited. So we decided to just straight up ask them for their business. We created a short video that started off with me in front of the Starbucks telling the story of how I got into coffee 20 years ago at this location and how much I’d enjoyed serving the community right here on this corner. Then I start walking along, continuing the story of how I had moved to Portland and got deeper into coffee, then traveled the nation in my RV getting inspired, and then ended up coming right back to this very corner in downtown Colorado Springs and continuing what I’d started 20 years ago: Using coffee to be involved in the lives of people and serving the community. At this point, the camera follows me around and we are on the porch of Story Coffee, The World’s First Tiny House Coffee Shop, and now that my old Starbucks is closing, we wanted to invite you over here to try us out. The video was fun and kind of told an interesting story and of course, none of that mattered if no one saw it. So we posted in on our Social Media and once again, straight up made the ask: Would you watch this and then share it with some friends? To our delight, the video took off and had about 20 times the usual viewership of our posts on various platforms. In addition to telling that story we offered half-price drinks for an entire week to try to get people to try us out, and they did! Our sales took an immediate jump during that week and the weeks to come, and have continued rising since then.
What’s been the best source of new clients for you?
Word of mouth
Contact Info:
- Website: www.storycoffeecompany.com
- Instagram: storycoffeecompany
- Facebook: storycoffeecompany
Image Credits
All photos Brenna Skattebo Photography