We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Mark Hollander. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Mark below.

Mark, thanks for taking the time to share your stories 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?

When my wife and I opened our cafe in September 2020, we had exciting plans to establish a meeting place in our community where people would gather and share meals, coffee and relationships. It was the first time that we had ever worked together full-time and that was a totally new experience. Working IN the business and ON the business 24/7 together created some crazy and interesting dynamics between us that we didn’t anticipate and certainly were not prepared to handle. As we have now navigated those waters now for the past 4 years, we have learned how to better handle our personal and business lives – together and separately. It is certainly not for the faint of heart but we are better and stronger because of it and now live to share the stories and experiences.

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.

My wife, Melissa and I have been married for a little more than 20 years. We are career bankers – me for 35 years and Melissa for 22 years. She got out before me and started her own bookkeeping business and I retired about 7 years ago after a cancer diagnosis. After coming out positively on the other side of that diagnosis, our priorities changed a lot and decided to jump into something that we had discussed many times but never had the “guts” to make the jump and decided to sign the lease on a building and open a cafe in the heart of my hometown. This just happened to be in January 2020 – right before the global pandemic.

Following the much longer than expected buildout and startup of the cafe during COVID, we finally were able to open the doors in September 2020 and have been operating La Belle Vie / The Cafe in Frenchtown for almost 4 years now.

We are an American style cafe in the heart of the Frenchtown Neighborhood of St. Charles, MO – the place where our town was originally settled by the French Settlers in 1769. We are now a big part of the revitalization of this neighborhood and community and absolutely love being a part of it.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

As I mentioned, we signed our lease agreement about 2 months before the world went crazy with the COVID pandemic and we were already neck deep into the building renovation, investment and business plan. We thought that everything would return to normal within a couple of weeks and we could get back on track but – obviously – that didn’t happen. The bank pulled one of our loan approvals because of the pandemic and we lost about 50% of our bank financing. Contractors wouldn’t show up to do work on our HVAC, plumbing or electrical needs and suppliers could not get equipment to us because of supply chain problems and shortages all over the globe.

Daily, we would come into our building and work alone on projects and progress went at a snails pace but we never skipped a day and continued to slowly inch forward and closer to a time when we could open the doors for business. Thankfully, our county was allowing business and commerce to continue so we took the necessary precautions and appropriate social distancing measures to minimize seating and personal contact to give us a chance to make sales and serve customers.

It felt horrifically slow paced but we did it…and, now nearly four years later, we are continuing to thrive and grow in our little space of town.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

During the COVID pandemic, social media grew significantly. I assume it was because more people were working from home and could access their social media more readily. This allowed us to connect with a lot of people very quickly and our platform and audience grew very quickly. Initially, it was only on Facebook but we spread out and also established an Instagram account and that grew rapidly. We tried to post consistently and tried to include menu items, information us and our staff members along with changes and improvements to the facility and our construction progress.

I wouldn’t suggest going through another pandemic to build a social media audience but staying consistent and interacting constantly with your “fans” has allowed us some great exposure and a real strong presence in our community.

Contact Info:

• Facebook: @labelleviefrenchtown
• Other: Instagram
  @labellevie_frenchtown

Image Credits

None – all personal pics taken by me!