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

Jack, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?

I’ve always wanted to run my own business. The problem always seemed to be coming up with an idea. What is something that people would want? Are there many other people doing that thing, whatever it is? Is it something that could be more than just selling a commodity or service?

Just like anybody else looking to do something fun over the weekend, my wife and I had gone to countless festivals and fairs that had food vendors. Food is great, but we would always find ourselves wanting coffee. That would usually result in a stop at Starbucks or, if available, a local coffee shop afterwards. It dawned on me that this could be the path to starting my own business. A mix of being a coffee lover and being at a crossroads in my career, I decided to take the plunge and start a coffee truck.

As anybody can imagine, starting a business can be downright scary. In the beginning, it was a lot of learning as we went, being diligent in our research of not just running an effective cafe and truck, but the backend work to get your business off the ground. To almost breath life into this entity by way of paperwork so it can be born and you can begin to nurture it and help it grow. Once we got those pieces in places we began our active search for a truck.

Cue imposter syndrome. It’s quite awkward to tell people you’re starting a coffee truck without the actual truck. Of course, we eventually found our truck that we later named Jerry. Jerry had been running as a coffee and taco truck in Detroit when we got him, and before that was serving coffee in Austin. Jerry was about that life. It took about 8 months to get the truck all up to code for the various central Indiana health departments. That time offered the a whole lot more uncertainty than I imagined. However, we the help of some local tradesmen, plenty of Google searches, and a bit of elbow grease, we were able to get our health department permits with several counties and hit the market.

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.

I got into the coffee business from a love of coffee. We offer a full cafe menu and a rotating selection of pastries from local bakeries. Besides vending at local festival and gatherings, we also offer catering. We’ve catering anything from employee and teacher appreciation days, to graduation parties and even catering for entire neighborhoods.

A unique part of being in the food truck business is that it gives you the opportunity to serve in communities you may otherwise never step foot in. This is where the spirit of our business lives, community. Sure, we may technically live and be based in Indianapolis, but Indianapolis has different communities. All the areas outside Indianapolis are even more communities. We wanted to try to be a common thread amongst all the places we would go and in turn try to give back where we can. Being a young small business, giving back can be tricky, but one way we’ve started doing that is our community initiatives. Each month we try to work with a local nonprofit by offering a drink special and pledging at least 50% of sales of that item to the nonprofit. So far, each month we’ve ran a community initiative, each nonprofit we’ve worked with so far has received 100% of those sales. As we grow we aim to find different or bigger ways to help.

That general idea is what we are trying to do with our business and what gave us the idea for the name Tapestry Coffee. Our goal is to be an interwoven part of these communities. Just like thread in a tapestry, when woven together we create a bigger, beautiful image.

What’s worked well for you in terms of a source for new clients?

Word of mouth feels so pure when it comes to sourcing new clients, but in my experience search engine optimization has offered the biggest payoffs. The vast majority of our business is from inquiries on our website.

It didn’t start like that, but once we tweaked how we were being presented and what search words we wanted to be associated with it made a huge difference.

Can you talk to us about how you funded your business?

I started out with what savings I had to get the business running. I came in with the mindset that I would put “x” amount in and then we would need to figure it out from there. Which is what ended up happening. Once we got our health permits and had a few events under out belt the business started to starve. Operation costs kept coming, but at that time it was winter, which tends to be a bit dead for food trucks. I had already reached my “x” amount and resorted to selling personal items to keep the business a float. Luckily were able to secure a multiple day catering contract in the middle of December, which is what saved us in the beginning.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://tapestrycoffeecompany.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tapestry_coffee_indy/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100090542613239
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jack-fransen-88141b60/