We were lucky to catch up with Kristi Bullock recently and have shared our conversation below.

Kristi, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. The first dollar your business earns is always special and we’d love to hear how your brand made its first dollar of revenue.

I made my first dollar during my first week of soft opening at The Hive. And it was exactly a dollar (or $1.08 if you include taxes).

I have worked hard my whole life. One of the greatest gifts my parents gave me was a work ethic. I know how to work hard and get the job done. I bought the house that became The Hive at the end of April 2022 and over the next four and a half months, I rushed to convert it to a commercial restaurant. I took sledgehammers to the walls to help tear out a residential kitchen and create a coffee bar. Pulled out shelving and closets from a bedroom to convert it into a commercial kitchen. Created blueprint after blueprint for equipment layout so we could run an efficient coffee bar and kitchen with a small staff. Had an espresso machine get help up during shipping from France. Grout colors installed incorrectly. Renovating existing curtains and woodwork and cabinet doors into tables and coverings and shelving. I was buying books and merchandise and every bee themed decoration you could imagine and shoving it under tarps to keep away the dust.

It was chaos. Four months of absolute chaos where I questioned myself and wondered why I would want to do this crazy thing when I had not worked in the food industry since I was sixteen when I worked for three months at the tiniest little coffee shop you could imagine (Yes, my first job was at a coffee shop; the symmetry brings a smile to my face). I put all of my eggs into one Hive shaped basket and it constantly felt like it was about to tip over.

It was the craziest thing I have ever done and I was exhausted. I doubted myself and if I could get it all done.

But something clicked the second week of September. The contractors did their last round of touch up paint. My supplier got my espresso machine. The roaster sent me a big box of coffee so I could finalize my drink recipes. It actually looked like a coffee shop (minus the coffee equipment which was kind of a big thing).

On September 22, all of my coffee equipment was installed and at 8:00 at night I ground coffee for the first time and made my very first latte at The Hive. I have never had a better or more satisfying cup of coffee in my life.

The next morning, I walked in and it smelled like coffee. The Hive had never smelled like coffee before. It had smelled like paint and construction dust and raw wood. But now it smelled like a coffee shop. It was the most amazing feeling and moment. It was what I wanted it to become in that moment. To this day, I love walking in each morning and taking a deep breath of coffee first.

I didn’t wait long to do a soft opening. The coffee equipment was installed on a Thursday and Friday and we opened the door to the public the next Monday. We might not have had our to go cups, but I let the word spread around town that I needed people to come give us a little practice before we opened. I wasn’t even charging the first couple of days just so we could get the hang of it in return for honest feedback.

The coolest part about opening The Hive is that I got to put everything I loved from all of those coffee shops I had visited around the world into my little coffee shop. My tables are inspired by a table I at my very first French macaron at in St. Maartin. One of the drinks on my menu is almost identical to one I got in a beautiful coffee shop I visited in New Mexico. My Book Nook was inspired by a shelf of books at an awesome 24 hour coffee shop in Austin, Texas that I used to hang out at all hours of the night. And the name and the theme, The Hive and bees, came from a few different things, but mostly from a book.

I am a voracious reader. I love collecting stories. They comfort me and excite me and there is so much to learn from both fiction and non fiction. I have been reading my whole life. But I have one author that I repeatedly turn to for encouragement when I am having a tough time, Juliet Marillier. She writes beautifully and creates this amazingly strong characters who fight for themselves. When I was going through a particularly difficult time in my life (long before I started planning my shop), I got a tattoo of a bee like my favorite character had. It was a reminder that I was stronger than I ever thought I could be, like that character was. When I see bees, that’s what I think. So it was fitting that bees became my theme.

Of course I stocked my Book Nook with a few of her books. How could I not? The rules of the Book Nook are simple: read the books while you’re here or you can buy paperbacks for $1 or hardbacks for $2. And if you’re excited about a book, I’ll probably just give it to you. I love when people read and helping them to that end.

One day during my soft opening, a woman named Hannah came in. She asked my story and I told her all about it. How it became The Hive, why I’m passionate about excellent coffee, how I am excited for the shop to be a part of the community. It was probably an overshare, but I was excited.

She saw one of the Juliet Marillier books on the shelves while she was perusing and brought it up to me and asked if that was the book I was talking about. It wasn’t, but it was the first one in that series. She told me she wanted to buy it. I was happy to give it to her, but she insisted. And that was my first sale. Not a cup of coffee or fresh baked scone. None of the cookies or breads we had made. A used book. For $1.00. One of my very favorite books.

I love that that is the first dollar I made at The Hive. And its not that it was my first sale. It was that Hannah saw the value of what this book meant to me, how it inspired me, and decided that it was worth making it my very first sale.

I have sold many cups of coffee since that day and plenty of used books not to mention the many other things we have on our menu. But I don’t think that any will ever be quite as special as that first dollar spend here. It was a perfect bridge from my personal life to my professional life as a business owner.

And for anyone who is curious, I did reach out to Ms. Marillier via email to let her know that her writing had been a piece of the inspiration for a little coffee shop and café in Jefferson, TX. I treasure the encouraging response she sent back to me.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I have been fortunate to do a lot in my life. Professionally, I have spent time working in the medical field, the political arena, and commercial real estate. Personally, I am a traveler and a reader and am always willing to try something at least once because you never know if it is worth it until you try. I love to see the world and drink in experiences and grow. I have been fortunate to have opportunities to do that since I was young.

And while none of that exactly prepared me for opening my own food service business, all of it added together to provide the skills to do just that.

I fell in love with coffee shops long before I fell in love with coffee. For me, my local coffee shop was a place of sanctuary. I could go there when I was feeling good, meet up with friends, and try something new. I could go when I was not doing well and I knew I had a safe place to just be. I would sit under a very large painting of Andy Warhol and drink a cup of coffee and work or read and recuperate. That shop was comforting and a place where I could connect with people. For over 15 years, that has been my coffee shop. Even though I have left the area, I still go back and visit and each time I do, I still feel that sense of comfort and homecoming. When you come to visit The Hive, you will even find one of their mugs front and center of our mug wall.

My love of coffee came long after my love of coffee shops. I have a vivid memory of walking into a coffee shop in Austin, being annoyed that they didn’t have many flavor options, and then drinking the most perfectly prepared cup of coffee of my life. It was hot, but not too hot. It has distinct froth and a silky texture. There was a hint of vanilla, but not enough to hide a rich and smooth coffee. It was unlike any coffee I had ever had until that moment. It opened my eyes to what coffee could be. Since then, I have been fortunate enough to try coffee across the country and all over the world. I never plan a trip without finding at least four coffee shops to visit. I have had amazing coffee and terrible coffee and everything in between.

The most important thing to me about that is that I try it. I sit in these coffee shops, major chains and holes in the wall, and take in the atmosphere and the energy and learn from my experience there. I drink coffee until I shake and try as many new things as I can. I ask baristas to surprise me with their favorite drinks and I never say no to a suggestion (which is why I am currently in love with Violet lattes). I want to experience every aspect that I can.

I don’t remember exactly when the idea to open a coffee shop came to me. It was a ‘huh, it could be fun to have a coffee shop’ idea that was ephemeral for years. I took classes on how to make drinks like that vanilla latte. I visited coffee shops to see what I liked and what I could do. I tried out recipes for coffee syrups, pastries, and food that I could serve. It was for ‘one day, if I want to do it.’

I do know when it went from being an idea to being a goal. 2020 and 2021 threw a wrench in a lot of people’s lives, and I was no exception. I had major health and personal crises to go along with a global pandemic and decided to change my life. I left Austin, Texas, my hometown, and accidentally ended up in the piney woods of Jefferson, Texas where I didn’t know a single person. It was a huge change and I ended up falling in love with this small town and the community and decided it was time to do something about the coffee shop idea that had been bouncing around my head for a decade.

I was fortunate. I didn’t have to rush into opening a business. I took my time to connect with other locals in the area, to find out what people wanted and needed, to make connections, to find the right space for by business, and the right vendors for what I wanted to create. A lot of it was chance, but every decision I made was with the intention of building a community coffee shop.

The Hive is not a production coffee shop. We don’t have a drive through and it is not just a place you walk in grab your mediocre coffee from a faceless barista and go. You absolutely can do that here (not the mediocre coffee part, though), but for me it what we do here will always be more than that, because that is what I love about coffee shops. We know our customers here, we are a part of the community, and we care. We care about each ingredient that goes into our food and coffee. We value the fact that our customers choose The Hive for their coffee and food needs and we respect them and are committed to giving them an excellent and personal experience each time they walk through the door.

The Hive is a community coffee shop. I didn’t know that when I set out to build a community coffee shop that I would rely so much on the community to help build it. Every step of the way, any need I had, friends and community members were there to help me. From the real estate agent who called me and said ‘Kristi, I found your spot!’ (and she was not wrong, I walked into this beautiful house build in 1933 and fell in love with it ten steps in the door) to the crew I could call and say ‘They just delivered that refrigerator. Can you help me get it inside?’ to the myriad of people who helped me paint, build tables, and dye curtains so it could look exactly how I envisioned it. Friends hung dry wall, tasted my scones, and helped me find exactly what paperwork I needed to file for my permits. My community coffee shop would not have been built without a community.

That is just one of the reasons I work so hard to make sure I support this community. I choose to partner with locals as often as I can. For example, we strive to be a zero food waste kitchen, I partner with local farmers who take my food scraps to feed their animals and gardeners who take my egg shells and coffee grounds to make compost. That compost is used around town for projects and I get some back for The Hive’s kitchen garden where we grow herbs and some of the veggies that go into our food and drinks. Local artists and artisans create goods for me to sell ranging from hand made soaps to one of a kind bookmarks to the shirts that proclaim ‘Support your Local Caffeine Dealer’ and many other things. We partner with an apiary 15 miles up the road for some of the best honey in the area. It goes into our drinks and our foods and we even sell it to anyone wanting local honey. We work with community organizations to help support those who need an extra hand whether that is participating in a toy drive for kids at Christmas (my customers were amazing for that and we ended up donating over 200 toys) or sponsoring Woofstock, a local music festival benefiting animal aid organizations.

I say it a lot and I believe it with everything I am, ‘What is the point of a community coffee shop if we aren’t supporting the local community?’

A beehive is a gathering place with a little something sweet inside. That is what my Hive is. A place for people to come and be and find connection. One of the unexpected things I have discovered that I love is when I am able to help people find those connections. Its a coffee shop and people talk. I hear one person say ‘I have….’ and another person say ‘I need…’ and I am able to connect them. People have found housing and health care and jobs because of connections that only exist because I had a dream to build a coffee shop. Friendships have bloomed here and relationships have started over cups of coffee at my tables. It is one of the most gratifying parts of the job and it was a complete surprise that it would happen.

The Hive is a community coffee shop where we make excellent breakfast, lunch, and coffee and is a place to gather and make connections whether you are a local who walks in, grabs their favorite mug off the wall, and gets your regular drink or are driving through town from Point A to Point B and just need to stop for a minute to recharge. Everyone is welcome and everyone gets to feel that same joy I have when I walk into my favorite coffee shops.

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

Consistency was the best tool I used to build my reputation in Jefferson. It doesn’t matter if it is the food, drinks, or hours, The Hive stays consistent with what we do.

Small town living is very different than city living and I had to make decisions on how I structured my business due to that. We have a lot of seasonal and event driven business that comes to town, and because of that some businesses here make the choice to shut down for a month at a time or to alter their hours depending on the time of year. I chose not to do that.

The Hive has not changed its hours since we opened. The sign flips to ‘Open’ at 7:00am every day (except Sunday) and we are here with excellent food and drinks and the community appreciates that.

Even during times of unexpected circumstances, The Hive stays open for the community. In the summer of 2023, due to extreme storms in the area, the majority of the region lost power for over week. The Hive was fortunate, we only lost power for four days, but even during those four day, with a dedicated team, a generator, and my home coffee pot, we were able to make coffee and breakfast tacos for people who were affected by the storms.

There is comfort in knowing that someone is there for you consistently. It builds trust with the community for them to know that The Hive is here when we say we will be, with the excellent coffee and food we promise them.

Can you talk to us about manufacturing? How’d you figure it all out? We’d love to hear the story.

While manufacturing is not quite the correct word, what we serve at The Hive is created at The Hive. 90% of what we serve at The Hive is scratch made here. Stocks, breads, coffee syrups, yogurts, and more are all made in house by hand, led by my phenomenal Chef, Courtney Tolar. The other 10% are things that we cannot do better ourselves, like the perfect sweet and spicy pickle to top the Ham & Cheddar Sandwich or the Single Origin Dark Chocolate Sauce for our Mochas.

I love to feed people. I believe that when you sit together over a meal, you aren’t just feeding the body, but also the soul and the spirit. But it was a journey to get to where I could actually do that.

I didn’t grow up cooking and learning from others around me. I used to be a terrible cook. I once set my stove on fire twice in one day. After the second time, I turned off my stove and did not cook again for years unless it was in a crock pot. It wasn’t until I had people to cook for that I started to love cooking. I read books and watched shows and devoured cooking blogs to learn. I tried different cuisines and spices and techniques. I am proof that you can go from a fire-starter to someone experienced in making soufflés and pastas and breads. And I fed people. Friends and family and coworkers and anyone who needed something to eat. Just because it fulfilled me to feed them.

Interestingly enough, the most important ingredient I have incorporated into my cooking arsenal is time, and not the herb, though it is lovely. Time to make five versions of the same dish to find out which one is best. Time to let lavender steep to perfection so they syrup is delicate and delicious, but not overwhelming. It takes close to 48 hours from start to finish for the perfect loaf of sourdough bread and 72 house for a batch of house made yogurt. Time and patience go a long way in creating delicious and flavorful foods and drinks. Salt helps, too.

At The Hive, we serve breakfast, lunch, and coffee. All of those recipes started in my home kitchen and people enjoyed them, but I wasn’t able to do it all by myself. About six weeks after I opened up for business, a young woman walked up to the counter and asked if we were hiring and handed me her resume. Imagine my shock at discovering that a Le Cordon Bleu Chef was looking for a new kitchen to work in in Jefferson, Texas. I hired Courtney and she has been my partner ever since. She took what I spent years crafting and made it even better and more efficient. She shares my belief in quality products, helps maintain our kitchen garden where we pull fresh herbs and veggies whenever possible, and works hard to make my dream a reality.

Cooking is a beautiful art. Its a discipline and it is work. But the rewards are innumerable. You get what you put into it. We put time and care and love into our food and drinks and we can see how much people love it. Because they come back for more. And that is the biggest compliment we can get.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.thehiveinjefferson.com
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheHiveInJefferson/
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/the-hive-jefferson

Image Credits

Averie Nugent Photography