We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Rebekah Weiss. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Rebekah below.
Rebekah, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Being a business owner can be really hard sometimes. It’s rewarding, but most business owners we’ve spoken sometimes think about what it would have been like to have had a regular job instead. Have you ever wondered that yourself? Maybe you can talk to us about a time when you felt this way?
I have this thought several times a week. I work part-time as an attorney. I own Basic Biscuits, kindness and coffee a café, and I am also an elected city council member. Not to mention I have two teenage sons. Hardly a day goes by or I don’t wonder if life would be easier if I just had one full-time job One place to go every day with one set of tasks. Plus, even though I have a lot of flexibility with my myriad jobs, there’s almost never an actual day off. For example, I’m currently in Puerto Rico on “spring break” but I’ve sent payroll, made a schedule for the biscuit shop, and have been fielding texts and phone calls from legal clients and various cafe employees about call offs, etc..
Rebekah, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
I got into the café owning industry in 2019. I had taken a several years long break from practicing law while I was married. I was fortunate enough to take a 30 week French cooking class, during the time away from practicing law- as cooking being a passion that I’ve had for a long time, And it kind of sparked my idea for a bakery. My then husband and I came up with the concept of Basic Biscuits while on vacation in South Carolina. At the time, there were no other biscuit-based breakfast restaurants in the area. But there are a ton of south. So we really felt like we had a corner on the market with no competition. What set us apart other than having very little competition is that everything we make is from scratch. We make all of our buttermilk biscuits in house by hand in small batches. Nothing is shipped in or premade. I use only real butter. There’s no shortening or any other type of fat in our Biscuits. Even the sausage is locally made, and hand pat-tied. If I could smoke the bacon myself I would, lol! I take pride and making a quality product and providing extremely friendly personal customer service. This isn’t a chain, and I think it shows.
How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?
Oof. I think I may have pivoted three times this week. I started the business during a pivot-I hadn’t been practicing law for several years and honestly had never planned on doing it again. However, a life pivot, a divorce, caused me to pivot back the other way. So now I’m practicing law again, part time, while counting on the employees that I have hired and trained to manage the business for me instead of being as hands-on as I once was. Stepping back from the day-to-day operations of the Biscuits shop has been hard, and there have been times when I have to step back in to redirect employees or get things back on the right path when it veers. I miss seeing my regular customers, but I’ve learned so much about running a business when I’m not actually working in it.
Are there any books, videos, essays or other resources that have significantly impacted your management and entrepreneurial thinking and philosophy?
Absolutely. I was lucky enough to be selected for the Goldman Sachs 10,000 small business entrepreneurship course. The curriculum is from Babson College, and implemented by Columbus State community college here near me. This was a 15 week intensive on entrepreneurship and running a business- scaling it -all kinds of things I had never even thought of. I have a communication and a law degree- no business degree so this taught me a lot about managing employees, profit margins, how to scale, and even how to wind down if it should ever come to that
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.getbasicbiscuits.com
- Instagram: basicbiscuitsandcoffee
- Linkedin: Rebekah Weiss
