Black History Month Recap
It’s hard to believe we’re already in the third month of the year, which will make our shop 6-months old! We have three goals for this quarter:
Merchandise: Design and fulfill Winter items
Roasting: Officially kick off the roasting business
Van: Figure out pricing
We’ve made a lot of progress on these, and as the quarter has progressed, some have taken priority over others. For example, we now have an opportunity to accelerate our roasting goals. (I’ll get into that later in the post.) And the van, while a fun and important goal, may take a little longer to get the focus (and money) it deserves.
But, with all that being said, we’re on our way!
The year started with the same high hopes that I think every year brings. Our team is big on setting our intentions, saying them out loud, and working to manifest them through new seasons. And then January 6 happened.
At the time of the insurrection, I was in an All-Hands meeting for my day job. After that meeting, I headed into the shop where Jeronica and I were set to do an interview. People were literally storming the capital as we tried to focus on whatever questions we were being asked, which I still can’t remember. All I kept thinking about was how things have been different and would have been different if those folks looked like us. It was a very difficult day.
Hope returned two weeks later though with the inauguration. For many reasons, January 20 was an important day in history for us all with Kamala Harris becoming Vice President. But what, or shall I say who, stood out to me the most was Amanda Gorman. She was graceful and strong and beautiful and forthright. It was just the reminder we needed that We Can Do Hard Things.
We’re no strangers to setbacks. (You know we’ve rolled with our share of punches.) And while the shop doors are open now, we remain committed to working through the ups and downs of life and entrepreneurship no matter what comes our way. We trust that the good energy we put out will be contagious and reciprocal. So that’s exactly what we’re doing: putting all the good vibes out there.
So let’s chat about the wins. Black History Month kicked off with a bang and never stopped rolling. We got a $10,000 grant from the San Francisco 49ers and Visa! We spoke with the organization for what we thought was an interview about being a Black-owned business and they completely surprised us. The best part was that we came to their attention through our customers and followers who advocated for us. I mean if that’s not reciprocal, we don’t know what is!
We had an awesome BHM exhibit by Ernest Kirk Jr. aka The Black Folk Artist for the first two weeks of the month as well. He came to us through his daughter who brought his artwork to our attention. They came by the shop in January with so many beautiful pieces we couldn’t choose! So we used them all and it was a brilliant display of personal history that felt familiar to us too. The artist program has really taken off and become a huge part of the company. We can’t wait to bring more artwork into the shop.
Our featured roaster this month was the one and only Cxffeeblack. (Shop Guji Mane online.) Cxffeeblack is a social enterprise that seeks to reintroduce the Black history of coffee into Black communities and help reimagine it’s Black future through the intersection of coffee and hip hop culture. We’ve been following Cxffeeblack’s journey for years now and we were so excited to bring a little Memphis to San Jose. We sold out in less than two days!
And last but not least, Illiana and Mar got promoted to shift leads this month! The entire team works so hard and, if our reviews are any indication, they’re all dedicated to providing an incredible customer experience to everyone who walks through our doors. Illiana and Mar have such great energy and drive, we have no doubt we’ll be able to reach the next level with them taking on leadership roles in the shop and the company.
Speaking
We spoke with more people and organizations than we ever have before in February. Nirvana Soul has been a written word kinda company since the beginning. We truly value owning our own narrative and feel much more comfortable behind a laptop and espresso machine. But, as opportunities arise to share our story in different ways, we’re learning to be more open. This has posed new challenges for Jeronica and me as we figure out what topics make the most sense for us to lend our voices to.
For example, we still struggle speaking about being a Black-owned business. You’d think it would come naturally to us, but it doesn’t. We didn’t even write about it until very recently after almost two years of keeping this blog. It’s a topic that deserves sensitivity and research to get right, particularly as stats are involved, which we find they often are.
Nirvana Soul is one of few Black-owned food & beverage businesses in San Jose, the 10th largest city in the country, so we understand the interest. We love being here with Jackie’s Place and Back A Yard Grill, among others. What’s difficult is being positioned to speak for all Black-owned businesses. Not to mention there’s a huge intersectional angle that often gets missed. You might notice that we pivot back to our own particular experiences as Black women when we cover this topic, which just feels like the right thing to do.
The other topic that we haven’t yet managed to cover gracefully is the pandemic. We’ll get a lot of comments along the lines of: you don’t seem to be affected at all. The truth is that we have been fortunate to operate at the pace we are during this time, but even so, we’re still nervous about selling enough coffee and engaging enough customers to make it through. There are a lot of businesses that are barely getting by or worse. Sensitivity is required here too.
After this month of speaking engagements, we’re starting to catch our flow a bit. Here are the topic areas we think we’re best suited to speak about more comfortably (these might change):
Entrepreneurship: partnership, sisterhood, advocacy, financing, coffee
Self-Care: creating a happy place, showing up fully & joyfully, slowing down
Community: owning your story, local artists and artwork, San Jose, Silicon Valley
It’s possible, and likely, that we’ll spill over into those more difficult topics when we cover the above, and we’re good with that. Our greatest strengths, we believe, are our transparency and vulnerability. We don’t mind fumbling through those uncomfortable conversations if it means we might help someone else, but we also know we’re not experts and would never want to deter progress. It’s all a learning experience.
Roasting
We’ve been working with a roaster in San Jose since we started selling coffee online last July. It’s been a great partnership and we’ve all grown more invested in the future of Nirvana Soul by working together in just this short period of time.
We knew pretty early on that in order to grow, we’d have to be able to fulfill larger orders and support accounts, so we added this to our 2021 goals. None of us knew what this would look like or how urgent it would be to figure out, but we gave ourselves a year thinking we’d have plenty of time.
Well, as the universe would have it, two months into the new year we are now faced with the opportunity to take ownership of our own roasting situation. This came as a major surprise and, just like everything else we’ve done, we’re just putting one foot in front of the other. We’re working closely with our current roasting partner and other roasters in the San Jose coffee community to see how we can make this possible.
Right now, we’re exploring every option from buying our own roasting equipment for an external warehouse to bringing micro-roasting equipment into our shop. What we’re trying to avoid are any disruptions to the beans we use in-store and sell online, and as we make progress, we’ll be sure to communicate any changes that are coming.
As you can imagine, this is going to be a huge investment earlier than we anticipated. This, in combination with the shop, merchandise, the dream van, community outreach, speaking engagements, the artist program, pastry pop-ups, and more is a lot to manage with our current financial situation and bandwidth. But, hey, we opened a shop in Downtown San Jose, which seemed impossible at many points along the way! We got this!
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We keep having to remind ourselves that we’re a new business. It feels like we’ve been open for so long, but really we’re only 5 months old! We just love seeing and engaging with customers and making new friends that we want to keep bringing more people together through the power of coffee & tea. But patience is everything. As long as we keep focused and working, we know it will work out for the best.
This has been a long post, but we always end these off the same way: with gratitude to you. Thank you for continuing on this journey with us! You are the fuel to this dream we’re realizing together. Thank YOU thank YOU thank YOU!
Looking forward to what the next couple of months bring. 💕
-Be’Anka