We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Lukabella & Lacianna Wiebe. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Lukabella & Lacianna below.

Alright, Lukabella & Lacianna thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. So, what do you think about family businesses? Would you want your children or other family members to one day join your business?

Family businesses are a great idea because they strengthen the local economy, offer higher levels of quality, better service , and can deliver exactly what the customer needs. As daunting as a modern economic world full of AI technology sounds some things will forever be essential. We are in the business of selling coffee which is an essential need for a lot of people. Everyone from the banker to the grocer, to the school teacher needs a cup of hot cup of coffee to get their day started. Essential needs are the backbone of economics; this is known as supply and demand. Family businesses have a unique opportunity to see the needs or demands at the micro level; as amazing as the corporations are at keeping America running they aren’t set up for some of the unique micro needs. This dynamic leaves room for family entrepreneurs to supply the demands of local needs.

One of the needs arising in our modern world is the need for personal handcrafted creations. People love the conveniences of all the modern things but the nostalgia of handmade things is still part of the human impulse. This is the niche Sage & Juliette endeavors to capitalize on. We know there are coffee chains that make great coffee but we are in the business of local handcrafted drinks served to customers who know our names and our story. We support small family coffee roasters; not only that, we also use things like local honey and locally grown herbs such as Lavender and Sage among other locally sourced ingredients. Our family business supports other family businesses because all of us are working on the micro-scale of the economy. Family businesses can put a level of quality & a level of service on things that are hard to match on a corporate level. For Sage & Juliette we take a bit longer to make our drinks than your average chain coffee shop but it is due to the handcrafted nature and level of quality we put into our drinks. Family businesses are also able to customize and cater to individual needs which is a wonderful advantage to the customer. What people often fail to recognize is if the micro-economies are healthy it greatly contributes to the macroeconomy.

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?

Our business is a mobile coffee shop, we are sisters and our names are Lukabella Sage age 19 & Lacianna Juliette age 16. For Christmas of 2020, we were gifted our first espresso machine. We immediately fell in love and were amazed at the quality of coffee we could build at home. We were serving friends and family and came to realize we loved building drinks. We soon discovered that the quality of the ingredients made a big difference in the final product. I (Lukabella) graduated from High School in early 2021, and then after taking a gap year, I began to pursue a business degree. We were encouraged by our parents to turn our newfound passion into a real business as a way for me (Lukabella) to apply what I was going to be learning in college. With the help of our dad, we built a mobile coffee shop. We worked to perfect our favorite recipes and sat in our living room brainstorming as a family what the name of our business would be. We finally decided to use our second names for our business name. Next, we decided on what aesthetic our business should have and decided to go for a boho vibe which we hoped would appeal to a wide audience from trendy college students to families and to lovers of all things natural. Then we filed the necessary paperwork and began to work on our food safety license, by June 2022 we were ready to open. We opened up social media accounts and began advertising. Our first outing was in our neighborhood at a city-wide garage sale event; after that, we began to set up at the local food court. Slowly we attracted a following on social media and began to get invitations to festivals, corporate events, and private events. By September of that year, we enrolled in Texas Coffee School to get professional barista training because we knew by that time it was definitely something we wanted to keep doing so it would be worth the investment.

In June of 2023, we celebrated our first anniversary by giving out cupcakes with each beverage order. We are now well into our second year of business and have learned many things. We have learned that there are two sides to business, profit & loss; and that and have to know how to manage both sides of owning a business. We learned that running a business is hard work but that hard work pays off. We have learned about the power of word of mouth and that marketing is a huge component of being successful. We realized that even on the days where we didn’t get very many customers it was usually still worth going out because of the connections we made or an invitation we received, so not all value is measured in money.

Things we want our customers to know: we also offer a seasonal menu, our house-made syrups (Lavender and Sage) are very popular, we offer non-coffee options (smoothies, tea, and hot chocolate), we have recently added a merchandise line, and we use locally sourced ingredients whenever possible.

Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?

It has been said to become a great leader you must be a great reader. We have found that to be true. Books we have read or listened to are Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell this book teaches about the importance of understanding cultural tendencies; Rich Dad, Poor Dad for Teens by Robert T. Kiyosaki teaches the importance of investing; How the World Runs by Kevin Swanson teaches the understanding practical economy: Create a Better Brain by Debi Pearl teaches the power of focused attention: Book of Proverbs teaches honesty in business.

Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?

Growing our clientele has been a trial and error process for us. When we started our business we thought we would appeal to the college crowd and worked our business strategy from that angle, but we soon found out we weren’t able to plug into that crowd due to the on-campus options available to them. We also thought we would do well at festivals but have found that often there are so many food vendors at these events that it is hard to make a profit since there are so many choices.

We soon realized our business was a better fit for college graduates, mothers, and business people. A pleasant surprise in the clientele department was that we get a lot of invitations from companies that do corporate fundraisers or employee appreciation days and other events. Also, Farmer’s Markets have been one of our best places to serve. Now that we have learned who our customer base is we can better adjust our marketing strategy to target the audience that tends to enjoy our service.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sagejuliettecoffee/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sjcoffee22/

Image Credits
Chris Clark Photography (sisters picture)