Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Landon Forgette. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Landon, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Are you happier as a business owner? Do you sometimes think about what it would be like to just have a regular job?

I do wonder about this sometimes, but never seriously consider it after thinking about it for more than a short while. It feels more like a little escape from stress through daydreaming that ultimately brings me back to reality. The stress does get to me sometimes though.

Owning and running a start-up business is very rewarding and very stressful, especially when you open a week before a pandemic! While that’s thankfully in the past, things tend to get overwhelming at times, but I know that I have people that love to work here and who rely on me to keep things going.

This, as in today, is definitely the most stressful time I’ve had since I began, and I feel like that’s saying a lot since we made it through the pandemic. We are currently looking to move the business to a better location so that we can add a drive-through and more lobby space since it’s hard to find a seat sometimes. I’ve been looking for several months and every time I find something nearby our current location that seems like it would work, it’s either already under contract or a large corporation comes in and massively outbids us. I know that if we can move the shop, we can grow. When we can grow, I can offer positions for my employees to grow into and they can grow professionally and personally as well. Not to mention, I can offer them more benefits, better raises, etc.
I know that if we stay where we currently are, the opportunities for both me and my employees will not be available as soon as they could be if we moved.

I love being able to help others. I feel a responsibility to grow and reach a point of what I consider to be success, not only for myself and my family, not only for my employees, but also for the customers and community.
To answer the question more concisely, I would say that while I do sometimes imagine what life would be like if I just had a 9-5, I can’t realistically see myself going back to it. I encourage anyone I can to start their own business and do tell people, even my own employees, that it’s the most challenging and best decision I’ve ever made. Anything worth doing is hard, and the benefits of being able to make my own decisions, and mistakes, far outweigh the benefits of working for another person or faceless entity. It’s not for everyone, but I think a lot of people would be much happier if they attempted to build something themselves. Succeed or fail, I would say that if you are thinking of starting a business, you should ask yourself if you’re willing to temporarily give up almost everything in your life to make it happen, excluding family and friends of course, because that may be what it takes to get there. Anything worth doing is difficult, and it’s worth it to me. I’ll add that you probably won’t personally make much money, or any at all, for a long time. That’s usually when I start thinking about a regular job, but thankfully that’s less and less and it does get better the longer you stick with it.

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 worked off and on, mostly on, in coffee for the last 20 years. When I moved back to Texas from the Pacific Northwest I was working in insurance adjusting. While there are some great coffee shops in DFW, I wanted to build something a little different and had the opportunity to do so. I quit my job, dedicated myself full time to what I wanted to do and am still doing it now. The shop’s five-year anniversary is coming up and we’re still here.

While there are now a few others, we were the first to offer CBD in drinks for sale by order in DFW. At least to the best of my knowledge. If I’m honest though, a majority of our sales come from drinks without that, you can add it to anything here, but it isn’t required for any drink. I always wanted to be a coffee shop first and foremost, but that helped get us through the pandemic and we have a lot of vets and other people that are so grateful that we are able to offer that to them. We’ll never get rid of that unless the Texas senate tries to change the hemp bill again, which they are currently trying to do.

People love our seasonal drinks. While we do carry the fan favorites like everyone else, like pumpkin-spice, we also make a large amount of our own syrups, especially for seasonal drinks. People ask weeks in advance when they are coming out and all of us here are proud of the things we come up with. Sometimes they do so well that we keep them on our menu year-round afterwards. This season we have a Maple Spice latte, my favorite, a Pecan-Brown Sugar latte, a Red Apple Chai, also delicious, and of course, Pumpkin Spice. We ended up keeping the Summer Garden Matcha from last season and it’s amazing.

Another point of pride for us here is that we constantly hear, in person and in the reviews, about how people just love spending time at the shop. People find that they can sit and work productively, but also feel very calm here. It’s cliche, but the vibe here is inviting and different than any other coffee shop that I’ve seen or heard of, especially in DFW. People love to come in and hang out to play games, have work meetings, or even host wedding showers and the like, which is something that happened last week. I’ve seen people make friends with strangers and I can honestly say that I feel like the customer base is super diverse and I love that everyone feels comfortable being here together.

Lastly, people love working here. I believe in paying people well, we pay a higher wage than most shops, and I think that everyone feels a sense of pride and responsibility for being here. We work together to make schedules work for everyone while giving people the time off they need to have a life outside of work. Our turnover rate is extremely low for this industry and most people leave to do greater things in their life with everyone else’s encouragement. When I hire someone, I don’t tell them that we are a family here, as I feel like most businesses use that line to negative ends and don’t mean it. However, I can honestly say that the employees feel that way. Customers have even told me that they feel like a part of a community in the shop. Employees genuinely care about each other and the customers and that feeling grew out of the care and respect we all give to each other. That’s not to say everyone that is hired works out. I doubt that can ever be the case, or that we always get along, but we all work towards helping each other to be better people, do better things, and to make the world a better place through simple acts.

I love this place, the people that come here, the people that work with me, and the business we have all built together. I hope to do so forever and to help others create something similar for themselves and the greater community.

Any advice for managing a team?

I feel like the answer to this question was hard learned for me, but I also think it’s one of my bigger strengths now. I’m not perfect at these things, but I’m much better at it than I used to be. If you’re reading this interview and you’re one of the people that helped me learn these lessons, whether the experience was positive or negative, I apologize for any shortcomings I may have had at the time.

First and foremost, realize that no one will feel as strongly about your business as you and that they can’t and shouldn’t. Having a business is, almost, as emotionally satisfying as having a child. You are there from its inception, through all the growth, through challenges and failures, and through successes. Your team can definitely care a great deal if you treat them well, even almost as much as you, but they have their own lives and dreams to achieve. I’ve told my employees that I don’t think they should be here for longer than five years if I don’t have a spot to promote them to. I want them to reach for and achieve their biggest goals, just like I want to do for myself. I would never chase someone away after that long, but I always encourage them to build something that they love as much as I love Coral Reef Coffee. Maybe I’ll regret that someday, but I don’t think I will. The team here genuinely wants the shop to grow and succeed and I want that for them too.
Secondly, if you are there for your team when they need you, they’ll be there for you when you need them. Everyone one here has the same expectations of each other, including me, and everyone here supports the others when they need it. Whether that means trading shifts, giving personal advice, or just listening to one another about their lives. Almost all of them do things together outside of work now.

I also will never ask an employee to do something I would not be willing to do myself. A small example of this is when I personally show them how to clean the bathrooms, including the toilet, on their first day. Lead by doing and showing what’s expected, not by just saying it.

If you can’t tell, I’m a little long-winded, so once again more concisely, it all comes down to empathizing with your team on a human level. Give someone a reason why they should do something, why they should care, and show them why you care about it, and them, by leading with examples.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

I like this question as a juxtaposition to the previous one. Even if you do all the things previously mentioned, some people just don’t work out and will take advantage of the fact that you care on a personal level. If you do not recognize this as soon as possible, the better parts of your team will suffer and, rightly so, leave. I’m honestly still working on this aspect of management myself, but I’ve also grown in this area a lot since opening. Whether I like this reality or not, and I don’t, that doesn’t make it any less true.

I still believe that most people are good if they are genuinely treated well and shown professional respect. However, I believed that almost blindly when I began. If you have someone who is taking advantage of the respect you give them in any area of your life, you need to do yourself, your team, and that person a favor and let them go before it affects everyone else. In business this could be an employee, a vendor, or a customer. I tried too many times to tell myself that I just need to figure out how to get someone to meet expectations and that if they couldn’t it was somehow my own failing. In reality, some people are just not at a place in their life where they want to. Again, no one will ever care for your business as much as you and you shouldn’t expect them to, but at the same time there needs to be a bar of what you’re willing to accept and that bar should probably be higher than you think. I feel like I finally have a great relationship with every vendor involved in the business, the best team that can work through their own problems (usually without my help), and a loyal and growing customer base that treats my team with respect.

This lesson was learned through many mistakes with many people. Poor teams will cause your business to go downhill and letting someone stay on staff only delays the inevitable. Managing a team is hard. Sometimes hard decisions must be made and procrastinating on making those decisions causes everyone to suffer. Not just your team, your customers, your business, the person who really doesn’t want to be there for whatever reason, but also you as the business owner. This applies to customers too. If a customer treats an employee or stranger poorly, they get one warning and then they are asked to not return. It makes everyone in the store uncomfortable if they continue this behavior and the results are the same as the results of an underperforming employee. I’ve only ever had to tell two customers in five years not to return after a warning, and the money they would have spent would have never made up for the headaches they would have caused. I’ve only ever kicked one person out without a warning, but they treated an employee so badly that I did not ever want to see them in the store again.

One last thing about this. None of this is an excuse for a business owner to treat people poorly for a little inconvenience. Everyone has rough days, weeks, or even months. If you’ve done your job and know your employees and customers well enough, you’ll be able to tell the difference between someone having an “off day” and someone who is genuinely just a mean-spirited person or an employee who refuses to acclimate. If they are just having a rough time in life, you’ll be able to show them how to get through it. If you are lucky enough to have a business doing well enough that you do not have to manage your own business, hopefully you’ve trained your manager to treat everyone this way. Same as before, I guess. Treat others with respect but know that you deserve the same. There’s a balance to it all, the hard part is finding your center of gravity.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://coralreefcoffeeco.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/coralreefcoffeeco/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/coralreefcoffeeco/
• Twitter: https://x.com/coralreefcoffee?mx=2
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/coral-reef-coffee-company-lewisville-2

Image Credits

All my own, with Payton Mundhenk taking the photo of me.