We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Fawn Reed a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Fawn, thanks for joining us today. Covid has brought about so many changes – has your business model changed?
Covid hit 8 months into our first year and destroyed our business model. We opened as a coffee shop that had breakfast items and quick sandwiches for commuters. Once businesses closed for months on end and everyone worked from home our business tanked. We closed for about 45 days like everyone else. As things started to open up business started to grow back slowly. Over the last two and a half years we decreased our menu, increased our menu, decreased our menu, increased our menu and most recently we discontinued a big portion of our food and switched our business too a coffee/ceramic shop. We determined with the rising food costs and unstable food chains that we would leave the food to the other businesses and we would focus on giving the local area something fun to come do and get great coffee while they do it.
Fawn, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
Our business started with a simple gesture of love. My grandbaby loved Strawberry Jam. Store bought jam was unacceptable so gramma deemed that he needed homemade jam. We made our first batch of jam together I had never made jam before let alone can it. Needless to say it was fabulous. So then I did other flavors. I love Raspberry so that was second, my youngest loved peach and bourbon so Bourbon Peach was my next accomplishment. My husband loves cherry so I did Cherry and a Bourbon Cherry as he is a Bourbon man too. After 22 flavors I had to stop creating flavors. Now that I had all these flavors and were selling them on the side I was able to put them in a local coffee shop I frequented. Slowly we added my cakes and brownies. I wanted to cultivate the jam sales so we did a create your own yogurt parfait with homemade granola. It was about 9 months into this I decided that I wanted to have my own place. We found a location and went to work. 7/22/2019 Mama Baer’s Cafe opened its doors.
Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?
I have always been a very driven person. You give me something to do it is done and done well beyond your expectations. I know how to fix things and get them done. While that is a great quality, I have had to learn to take a step back and let things happen when they are supposed too. In this I mean when it came to launching different things. There were times where I just couldn’t get something done and it turned out to be for the best. For example this last Christmas I wanted to launch cocoa bombs and some of our other things. I got the molds we were making our own chocolate etc. It just never came about. It was a good thing because business dropped yet again and I lost my staff. Had I pushed it and made it happen I would still have cocoa bombs sitting on the shelf I am quite sure. So regardless of what I am doing. I set a goal to have it done and work towards that goal but if things interfere with that goal I just let it happen. I don’t let it get to me I just keep moving forward. Some could look at it as failure and in some ways it is. As I did not reach the goal I was working towards but in the same respect maybe that goal wasn’t what your goal should have been. Its like leaving the house 5 min late and missing an accident, I will probably do cocoa bombs this next Christmas and if I do it will be prefect because it happen when it was supposed to happen.
How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?
The cafe quickly turned into something completely different from what I envisioned. Our Base business was Jam that is Mama Baer’s. We couldn’t just sell jam so we added coffee and some food items. When we opened we sold more jam than coffee. We had a lot of older customers that wanted more lunch items so I added more lunch items. They also all wanted more breakfast so I added a few of those as well. None of which was my plan. It seemed to make sense to add a tea service since I had everything for it. We did that for a bit and it was rather successful. All of that went out the door when Covid hit. After the last two years of Covid we decided to ditch the food and added pottery. I figured everywhere else does food. What is difficult to find are places that do crafts. What is even more difficult to find Is a place that has great snacks, coffee and crafts. . We are the only place I know of where you can go paint bisque that is locally made in addition tos being the only place you can go paint, get a lil cake and coffee. I think a business has to always evolve or pivot. If you are not doing that then you are stagnant.
Contact Info:
- Website: mamabaers.com
- Instagram: mamabaersaz
- Facebook: Mama Baer’s
- Yelp: Mama Baer’s