Providing a place to gather is the secret recipe
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Habits are hard to break.
One of my everyday habits is stopping at Mainstay Cafe on my way walking to work.
There is an advantage on being a regular at any establishment. The staff usually knows what you like.
At Mainstay I don't even have to open my mouth as I walk up to the counter. They all know my order -- regular sized coffee with cream. Which is good, because I'm not a morning person and it usually takes me a few sips of coffee to get in the groove for the day.
Since I started this column, I've had Mainstay on my radar. Not because I'm a regular customer, but I realize the coffee business is competitive. Here in Marshall, there are a number of coffee establishments, most of them franchises like Starbucks. We have a couple drive thru shops, with another one opening up on College Drive sometime in the future.
And the price of coffee beans continue to jump up.
On Thursday, I finally had the chance to sit down with Mainstay co-owner Gina Meulebroeck at one of her tables inside the cafe. As soon we sat down, Gina drew cheers from a table nearby that was full of women enjoying their weekly coffee get together. They knew who I was and why I was there. I commented to Gina that this would be a first time for me interviewing somebody in front of an audience.
While the moment was flattering, it really was perhaps an example of the secret for running a successful coffee shop.
"If you think about it, we provide a space for people to come have meetings, to gather. So it’s just a important part of everybody’s daily life -- a coffee shop. And there’s less places, less coffee shops to sit down and have coffee," Gina said. "You look at Scooters, it’s a drive-through (and so is) Caribou. You can go sit in there, but it’s basically a drive-through, and you know they say 7 Brew is coming. I don’t know if that’s true or not. I think fast-paced life is is kind of taken over. So I feel like we’re important because we provide a place for people to come and meet meet their girlfriends and have a business meeting or interviews or stuff like that. So a lot a lot of that kind of business happens here."
It also helps to be not only located on Main Street in the middle of downtown, but also next door to City Hall. Besides coffee, Mainstay also offers danish, breakfast and lunch menu items. On any given day, you find friends chatting of a student or business person hard work on their laptop.
I asked about how she got involved in the coffee cafe business, and I was surprised by her answer.
"In 2018, my husband had the opportunity to purchase some downtown properties, and this was one of the properties. This building, and along with the previous owners, wanted to sell the business also. So my husband came home one day and he said, 'You want to own a coffee shop?' And I said, 'Well, yeah, probably not alone. Let’s think about who we could be, you know, who could be partner with or whatever. So that’s kind of how it came about."
Her husband, Brad, also owns Coleman Electric. Looking back, Gina said her answer to Brad was actually kind of surprising to her.
"That’s how he rolls. He just flies by the seat of his pants. So you never know what he’s going to come home (with)," Gina said. "He’s a dreamer. I’m the realist, and he’s a dreamer. So he comes home with all these grand ideas, and I usually squash his dreams. He’s probably excited that I said yes."
Gina ended up partnering with her friend Polly who she calls a silent partner who handles the books and laundry.
Gina says the partnership works well because she's not a numbers person, but she enjoys talking with the customers. But admits running a coffee shop wasn't something she thought about. She was a happy stay-at-home mom.
"I always thought it would be fun to work in a coffee shop, but not necessarily own a coffee shop. I have no business background. I have no knowledge of anything. I actually went to beauty school and was a hairdresser for five years before I was a stay-at-home mom with my kids for 15 years," she said.
The shop was formerlythe Daily Grind. In fact, Gina said she remembers walking down Main Street throughout her life living in Marshall as customer walking into the shop. When the Meulebroecks bought the shop, they decided to rebrand it.
"I reached out to a friend of mine that was really good at marketing and was kind of his niche is designing logos, and he had a big, a good marketing mind. So I picked his brain, and he helped me walk through that whole process," Gina said.
She said "Mainstay" just popped in her brain.
"A lot of times when when words pop in my mind, I like to look up the definition. I pull out a dictionary and I look at the definition. And mainstay, I don’t know why, I think it was because we’re on Main Street. So then I was like brainstorming mainstay, main. That word came into my mind … And so then it kind of stuck with me. And then I looked it up in the dictionary, and it meant a very important part of something. So when we bought the business, we knew that this coffee shop was an important part of downtown Marshall," Gina said.
And she feels obligated to provide that place for residents and visitors to be place to gather.
"I feel like it’s grown to not just for the downtown community. We get so many out-of-towners. There is a pretty big group of people that take the effort to look out for privately owned businesses. You know -- so instead of just looking up coffee shop near me, they they look up privately owned or locally owned coffee shop. We get a lot of those kinds of people that are looking for a little bit different of an experience than your big box caravel and Starbucks. Camden State Park brings a lot of people this time of year. It’s kind of fun to get a lot of retired people that are camping in Camden that will come. Sometimes they bike in. Last week we had two different couples say they biked in from Camden just because we have such a great bike path on the biking trail, and so then they come in to get a coffee and lunch or whatever,” Gina said.
With several staff members from the Daily Grind working for her, the menu hasn't changed much.
"We’ve probably expanded our food menu though. Our lunch offerings are a little bit more broad now that we’ve taken over. We’ve explored new items, but we always end up going back to the basic, our basic popular ones. It’s makes financially makes more sense to have a smaller menu. We try to diversify our ingredients, you know, to be utilized in multiple things on the menu. Just with food costs so high and stuff. But you learn what people like, and you just try to stick with it,” she said.
Gina also likes to think the menu has a healthy aspect to it as well.
"We make everything like from scratch. Like our all our salad dressings are made from scratch. There’s no preservatives. It’s easy to just order stuff off the truck, (like) ranch dressing, but we chose to try to keep it a cleaner food environment with salads, sandwiches, and soups. Kind of our basic services," she said.
Meanwhile, the costs of coffee beans continue to rise.
"Everything has just gone up. Nothing has going down," she said. "These are challenging times with food costs and coffee costs. But people continue to buy coffee. ... We’ve had to do price raises, and every time you raise prices, you’re always nervous. Like I’m going to lose people, but you don’t. I think coffee is one of those things that people just -- they make it a priority in their life, and they don’t really bat an eye at if we have to raise it 50 cents or you know nobody says anything."
While Gina only fills in a couple days a week at the cafe, she enjoys it.
"I think that’s my favorite part is just getting to know people. And I love when new people, new faces coming in. I love to go pick their minds. 'Where do you guys come from?' 'What brought you here?' And sometimes I like to ask, like, 'what made you come to Mainstay?' Gina said. "There’s definitely that niche crowd of people that like the coffee shop life. You know, kind of a small, quaint place to visit. And every coffee shop’s so different, and some people offer you really unique things. And it’s like once you become a coffee shop snob ... it’s fun, like your hobby. You go to town and let's check out the local coffee shop."
And that's the secret in staying ahead of the Kwik Trips and Starbucks. Provide a gathering place for people that are not necessarily on the go.