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

Savannah, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love for you to start by sharing your thoughts about the pros and cons of family businesses.

My husband and I run the shop together, and we love it! I think what works well for us is really knowing our particular roles in the business. We have very different strengths and we try to let each other have the freedom to flourish and do what needs to be done without getting in each others’ way. We have three little girls, 7, 5 and 3 and they already want to come be baristas! We’re excited for the day they can officially join the team. I love that they get to see their parents working together on something they love, knowing they can chase their dreams too one day.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I’m a wife and mom of three who previously worked in the non profit space. My husband and I were both working remotely 90% of the time and we spent most of our days working from various coffee shops in Southern California. My love for being in that space grew over time and when I had my first daughter I decided I wanted to have my own coffee shop one day. We tried making it happen after moving to North Carolina in 2017 but spent a few years struggling to find a location. Once covid happened I started to give up on the dream, but now 7 years later we finally got the opportunity to buy a shop in town. We’ve jumped right in and it’s been a dream! It’s hard work and long hours but it’s so rewarding when you’re working hard at something you love.

I think one thing to note that’s a bit different about my approach with our coffee shop is that the main focus is really on our community. Coffee is so important and delicious and there’s a lot to say about that, but what I love to cultivate the most is our relationship with our customers. We love having regulars and really getting to know everyone who comes through the doors, making them feel welcome but also seen and known. I’ve recently talked with a friend about how in the 7 years of living here in Charlotte, it never really felt like home until we got this shop and created this community around it.

We source all our beans from Rwanda and proceeds from the coffee sales go to our Do Good Initiative projects which focus on the farmers and their community to help build farms, health clinics, different clean water initiatives and various other projects.

Let’s move on to buying businesses – can you talk to us about your experience with business acquisitions?

My husband and I bought this coffee shop. The previous owner is based in Atlanta and felt that it needed a local owner (in Charlotte, NC) to help get it where it needed to be. It felt especially exciting to us due to the nature of it being a give back business, so we ended up buying it. The previous owners leadership team really helped walk us through all the steps needed to acquire the shop and set us up for success. The hardest part in acquiring was navigating the staff and finding the best way to step into a business that was already rolling day in and day out and not cause too many waves. It was a rocky path for the first few weeks but we’re really headed in the right direction now!

Do you have any insights you can share related to maintaining high team morale?

My advice would be to foster open communication and make the team know that their opinions matter! It is a family business but we want all our baristas to know we view them as family, too. We’re very open to feedback and I think it’s important to show it with actions and not just words. When they have suggestions on certain things we do, we act on it and I think that really helps them know their opinions matter. Everyone has different strengths and weaknesses and if you focus on putting the right people in the right positions, that helps the team thrive!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://landofathousandhills.com/pages/loso
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thousandhills.clt/
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/thousand-hills-coffee-charlotte-4

Image Credits

Inessa Savitskiy