Interested in starting your own entrepreneurial journey in food and beverage but unsure what to expect? Then read up on our interview with Timothy and Jennifer Biffert, Owners of The Honeysuckle Coffee Co., located in Sandy, UT, USA.
What's your business, and who are your customers?
We are Tim and Jenn, a husband and wife team of a coffee shop and bakery serving specialty coffee drinks, teas, and house, scratch-made baked goods + sourdough bread to the people of Sandy City off 700 East and Main St. in Downtown Salt Lake City. We have 4 kids and have lived in UT for almost 13 years after transplanting from North Carolina.
Tell us about yourself
We are from the south and wanted to bring our love of quality food/drinks, Jenn’s interior design experience in the comforting south, and passion for Southern-style baked goods to UT. So we decided on a community-centered space - a coffee shop! A space that would welcome all with cozy spaces, warm drinks, and full bellies and be able to offer it all at a somewhat small price point to visit us!
We started off with a goal to be the first craft coffee shop to bring a specialty-grade coffee shop to the south side of Salt Lake City in Sandy, UT. We love craft coffee, community, and quality baked goods, and we were tired of driving downtown to get it! So we decided to bring it to our side of the valley. We’ve loved getting to know our customers, many of who have become our friends and serve the community around our shop in Salt Lake City. During Covid-19 lockdowns, we were fortunate to still make coffee and offer it curbside for our customers. So many people told us how valuable that was for them during that time because we had built such relationships with customers before that, and it really made it all worth it.
Our location off of Main St. in downtown has now been open for about 3 months, and we can’t wait to see all the relationships we build there over the next few years as well. It’s our joy to be here, even just the small way of offering your regular drink from the barista who knows your name + drink of choice and fills your bellies with cheer.
What's your biggest accomplishment as a business owner?
Making it through covid-19 lockdowns was very hard for us. We pulled together all our entrepreneurial spirit and did everything we had to stay open so that we could be here on the other side for our staff, family, and community. We changed all our processes to offer curbside in a business that was very much set up for sit-down dining. We changed our menu and worked hours and hours to make bread to sell to our community.
By the end, we turned the front of our store into a little market and sold things that were hard for people without a wholesale license to find, like flour, baking supplies, and toilet paper, and even offered “pop-tart kits” with dough, fillings, icing, and frostings that you could take home to make your own pop tarts with your family and bake them yourself!
It was so fun to see everyone at home and knowing we could bring a little joy in a hard time. It was a great feeling, and honestly, it’s an amazement to make it to the other side, reopen our seating area to guests, and welcome them back in to hang with us again. It was a hard time, but we really felt proud that we pitched through.
What's one of the hardest things that come with being a business owner?
We would say that learning to do things you didn’t know you’d need to know how to do is one of the hardest adjustments. In a small business, you become not only the employee making the actual products (so, in our case, the baker and the barista) but also, at the same time, the employee manager, general manager, maintenance guy, window washer, your own HR, payroll specialist, social media marketing director, secretary, accountant, supply delivery company, ultimate customer service representative and every other job you need in between.
That is something it’s hard to explain to people that you carry all the time and how hard it actually is. I think one of the business owners’ favorite things is running into another business owner who understands and you can share all your thoughts and feelings with - because most of the time, it feels like no one else really gets it.
What are the top tips you'd give to anyone looking to start, run and grow a business today?
- We ran other businesses before we opened our own. This was huge for us in understanding at least a small part of what we were getting into. We would definitely recommend working in a top-level management job as a training tool for running you’re own business.
- Hire a good, well-known CPA.
- Have a passion for what you’re going to do because it will, at some point, even if just at the start, own your entire life. Like, REALLY, REALLY care about it! If you don’t love it, you can get very depressed about all the sacrifices you made for it.
Where can people find you and your business?
Website: https://thehoneysucklecoffeeco.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thehoneysucklecoffeeco
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thehoneysucklecoffeeco/
If you like what you've read here and have your own story as a solo or small business entrepreneur that you'd like to share, then please answer these interview questions. We'd love to feature your journey on these pages.
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