How COVID-19 has Impacted our Business

At 6:20 in the morning Jude and I were waiting for a school bus to pick us up. It was Jude’s 3rd birthday and what a great way to start his birthday by having a friend, who happens to be a bus driver, picked us up so we could follow along on his morning route.

Just a memory

It was a memorable morning—mid March still dark at 6:30am. There was a fresh blanket of snow on the ground and we were welcomed aboard the bus by it’s warmth, flashing lights and familiar smile of a close friend. Jude was in heaven and for the next hour his attention was fully taken by not wearing a seatbelt, being with his dad, seeing all the kids come aboard and then even seeing his big brother Leif at the playground of the school when we dropped all the kids off. This day continued to be a fairly normal day looking on from the outside. We took Jude out for lunch along with his nanny (my mother), and that evening we all went to the local YMCA to go swimming to continue the celebration.

In the back of our minds there were some significant concerns regarding COVID-19 looming. Our bubble was about to burst. As we were celebrating Jude’s birthday that day, not only were we holding on to the last of what we considered “normal” activities - like going out to eat and swimming with the family - but we also had our eldest daughter, Claire, in Costa Rica. She was on a trip of a lifetime with her 7th grade class. We had been diligently checking the news and communication with her school leaders about the students safe return home, which I was scheduled for the 17th of March.

Little did we know that the day after Jude's birthday our world would completely change. The restaurant/cafe shut down would begin and the uncertainties of COVID-19 would dominate our life in all aspects.

--

A question we at Fika get often is: “How are you guys doing?”. I really appreciate it when people ask us, because it comes from a very sincere place in people's hearts. I know our community is curious about how the business is doing and how our families are. So, my intent with this blog post is to answer that question as clearly as I can so you have a good sense of what the last 8 months (wow, eight months!) have been like for Fika Coffee. 

DISCLAIMER: As I write this we very well may be at another turning point for COVID-19, and this time it feels a lot closer to home. Cook County had its first case in June and then all summer there were only a small handful of cases (6?) that were spread apart. But now there is a huge concern as we are experiencing it in rural areas. It felt like we were able to keep it abroad for the first 7 months.

Just moments ago we found out that Minnesota restaurants will temporarily be closed, with the exception of take-out service, for the next four weeks beginning this Friday, November 20. We may have to close our doors depending on whether or not we do take out, but it is more or less how we've been operating lately. Regardless, we still have to decide which direction we will go.

Now, back to Fika! The months leading up to March 17th were great. We were in full mode with our community lunches that Fika was hosting on Wednesday afternoons in the cafe. I just got back from my inaugural trip to Sweden at the end of January. I had just posted Fika’s second full time year round position for a cafe manager. Sales were great and coffee was quickly being roasted and shipped. 2020 was set to be a success!

Although the outcome was not at all what we had planned or hoped for, I do still very much consider 2020 a success. For Fika, success means much more than the business of coffee. It’s also about how we respond to adversity.

On March 17th, when things started to drastically change for all of us, we decided to just close the cafe and keep roasting coffee for online and wholesale customers. I started what would be about a month of working at and staying home. Colin was the sole person going into Fika, firing up the roaster and fulfilling all of our online and wholesale orders. All of the online orders that came in and the few wholesale accounts that kept ordering kept him busy.

From the second half of March through May we saw a steep increase in our online sales. A good portion of these sales were from first time customers on our online store. I was very encouraged through all this as folks all around stepped up and did their part with supporting local businesses through online purchases. To give you a little idea of the steep of a curve it was here are the numbers compared to 2019:

• March 17th-31st: 176 online orders in 2020 and vs 34 from the same time period in 2019
• In April 2020 we had 410 online orders vs 88 in April 2019.
• In May 2020 we had 342 online orders vs 82 in May 2019.

With that said, we can’t help but stop to say thank you again to all who order coffee from us, especially during the most uncertain time during our business. It has kept Colin roasting, packaging and shipping out coffee, and has kept my dream of creating year-round employment for local folks a reality.

Funding

In late April I was able to secure a PPP Grant for $16,000 which really helped us. We put this money towards our payroll from about Mid May to the end of June. This really helped keep our feet on the ground until the cafe opened back up in the first week of June.

In May we also applied for an EIDL loan from the SBA, along with this loan we had the option for another grant of $1,000 per employee up to 10 employees. We received roughly $70,000 with this low interest rate loan, right now all of that money is sitting in a savings account and will only be used for a dire situation. My hope is to not even touch this loan but to pay it off fully in the spring when the payments come due. 

One thing I was not aware of was what was originally communicated as this grant of $1,000 per employee was not really a grant. It was only a grant if you did not take the EIDL but to those who took the loan would have to pay that part back. I found this out only recently when the paperwork was completed to forgive my PPP money and I had to pay back $4,000 plus. 

Software and Other Upgrades

We have also received some CARES grant money from our local Cook County SBA, that we have used to update our POS Square system to be more “hands off”, to update our website to allow people to order drinks online and pick up and then finally used some to purchase our to-go cups, lids and sleeves.

We also received a $10,000 MN DEED Small Business Relief Grant, the use of this money has and is being used for our payroll and rent.

Plans to reopen the Cafe

In May, when we started to have conversations about when to open the cafe back up, a couple things that we were mindful of were staffing and how we could pivot our business. In a normal year staffing is a tricky thing to do up on the North Shore in general, let alone during a pandemic. I had taken down my job posting for the full time cafe manager in March once things became unclear. It was also evident that I would be putting in a lot more time on the cafe floor then I had originally planned on. 

Because of staffing shortages and the concern for keeping a safe environment for our staff and customers, we decided that the cafe would be closed on Tuesdays & Wednesdays when we opened back up.

The roasting and packaging needs of Fika drove a lot of this decision. Typically on roasting days, the roasting and cafe portions of our business are, in a sense, competing against each other for space and staff. With all production taking place on Tuesdays and Wednesdays when the cafe was closed, it gave staff the space and focus needed to roast coffee well while providing an overall safer environment and product for everyone.

We opened the cafe back up on June 4. While we originally intended on bringing and cycling people through the cafe, we quickly realized that plan was not going to work, so we switched to a window service model. We already had the perfect window-so much that people thought we had it installed just for window service. 

A Big Pivot

Another big pivot for us was the addition of food to our menu. When we introduced it, we offered a couple different hearty open-faced toast sandwiches, yogurt bowl, smoothies, and some health elixirs. The thinking behind this was one we also get asked if we offer food but also now more than ever being and staying healthy is a focus and if we could add to that, it would be great. Our food program launched mid July through the first part of October. 

Did you try one of our open faced toast sandwiches? If you did you probably noticed a few things: one is that they were very large and overflowing with health goodness, second they were just beautiful to look at and third they were just down right delicious. Leticia headed the whole program up. She did the leg work of developing the menu and working on all the costs.

From being more or less a coffee shop to all of a sudden becoming a restaurant was a good challenge for us mostly in the areas of staffing. It required all of one if not part of another person to really successfully execute the menu on a busy morning, but if there were times with no food being ordered we had too much staff on hand.

The jury is in! The menu was a hit, but the jury is still out if it will find its way back into the cafe next summer or before.

The summer came, people showed up and we hustled hard. Despite the cafe being closed two days a week when we were open, our sales were well above last year’s. It was really busy. In fact, just the other day I had a local come into the cafe whom I hadn’t seen all summer. He asked how the summer went for us. Instead of answering, I responded with a question: “How do you think it went? He said every time thought about stopping by for a coffee there was a long line at our window well into the parking lot. People were even standing in line on Highway 61 (or maybe they weren't). 

A Fall Unlike any Other

As the summer went on it just kept getting busier and busier. September and October were huge months for us. They out performed 2019 numbers for those same months, despite the cafe being closed two days a week.

Missing our Customers + Community

I can say though that we all greatly missed having people into our home and the chance to say hi. Often I would be at the espresso machine making drinks and I would see a Friend of Fika in line outside or at the window who I have not seen for 6 months or a year. In previous years they would be inside and we would exchange greetings and catch up, but this past summer I was either unable to even say hi or I would yell from the back of the espresso bar at the window to say hi. 

Stretching our Abilities 

Also this window service model stretched us in many ways. We were all more spread out inside as we worked, so communicating was more difficult and there was more literal running and walking that we had to do between orders. 

Despite that, we put our heads down and worked. The cafe space was open for bathroom use but beside that it was a mess with boxes of merchandise filling it up and whatever else did not have a home.

More Changes

The last couple weeks we have been able to have some breathing room, and start to sort things out and get ready for the Holiday Season. We have also been able to open our doors for indoor service as of October 15. After our experience using window service this past summer, we are even more grateful and appreciative of all the conversations we're able to have face-to-face with our customers. It has been such a refreshing change!

New Opportunities

As I bring this home, I want to point out a couple of things. One in the midst of all of this Fika coffee has partnered with some of our friends to start the Sisu Coffee Project, read more about it here. I really hope that this project will become a catalyst for creative ways for our community to come together for each other.

And, remember that full time Cafe Manager position that I had posted and then took down? Well in the first week of September we welcomed Trevor Cook onto our team as our second full time year around employee. Trevor comes to us with cafe experience, and a love of relationships with people. Soon here I will have Trevor write his debut for the blog and share his story.

So, yes things have gone very well for us. They have not always gone smoothly or how I had them planned, but I feel very grateful and supported by all of you, our Friends of Fika. I know that not all businesses had the same experiences that we have had, which serves as another reminder that we need to be good stewards of all of the support we have been given.

This last season we were a living testimony to our theme of adventure and the value that it can bring and produce in us when we open up to the unknown, adversity, and move forward.