Owners : Daniel Cooke
Address : 2550 State Route 956 Volant, PA 16156
Phone : 724-674-3071
Website : www.bluezebracoffee.com
Year Established : 2006

Daniel Cooke recently shared information about running his small business. You will find this helpful information below. I encourage you checkout their website for some fine coffee and teas.

Why did you start your business?
Wanted to try something different and supply people with a product that they enjoy and want to purchase again and again.

What has been the biggest success?
Coffee

What has been your biggest business blunder?
Trying to get people to try the coffee, when they are loyal to competitive brands and their service.

What did you learn from that blunder?
That we need to market our brand better and show others that we are a very good, reliable business who will work for the customer.

What is the most enjoyable thing about running your business?
Learning how much our customers enjoy our coffee and tea and are excited about trying different types.

Where do you see the business in 5 years?
Growing and having established retail and wholesale customers.

Owners : Erica Caldwell & Darrick Coleman
Address : 101 Washington Ave Batavia, NY 14020
Phone : 585-815-7640
Website : www.presenttensebooks.com
Year Established : 2005

Erica Caldwell recently shared information about running her small business. You will find this helpful information below. I encourage you to visit her charming bookstore located in beautiful western New York State.

Why did you start your business?
I have always loved bookstores and I have a strong background in writing. There were no general bookstores in Genesee County and I thought that it would be great to offer books locally.

What has been the biggest success?
Our customers love the atmosphere and shopping experience that we work hard to offer. They are thrilled that they don't have to drive to the city to shop. And they are very pleased with our ordering service, which allows them to order rare or out-of-print titles. We offer this as a special service and spend a lot of time tracking down books for our customers.

What has been your biggest business blunder?
We based our start-up projections on an established bookstore in a neighboring county (the owner was kind enough to share her information with us). Since her location is about half the size of Batavia, we doubled her numbers and used them as our projection. This proved to be too optimistic.

What did you learn from that blunder?
We should have considered an initial period where sales would be slower because we needed time to advertise and get the word out that we were in business. It would have been much easier if we had built in a time of low sales in the beginning(basically the entire first year) as part of our business plan and been more prepared for that financially.

What is the most enjoyable thing about running your business?
It has been great getting to know our customers. We can anticipate what certain people will be looking for and make sure that we get in the latest books by their favorite authors. People love such personalized service and their support makes it feel like what you are doing is worthwhile.

Where do you see the business in 5 years?
I think we will continue to grow as more and more people are referred to us and realize that we offer the same products as bigger stores but with a touch of local flavor. We hope to be able to hire at least one employee soon so that we can distribute some of the (extremely heavy) workload.