The owners of the Lettered Streets Coffeehouse, on the corner of Dupont and F streets, said they are looking to expand their business. They said they hope to have a solid expansion plan for the coffeehouse by the time summer begins.
Ever since Anna Dean, 26, and Kjirstin Glessner, 30, bought the equipment from the coffeehouse’s previous owner in 2007 and reopened it as the Lettered Streets Coffeehouse, they have had dreams of expansion.
“These three years have been a great growing time for us, and I think it’s okay for us to think about growing some more and different directions,” Glessner said.
Dean and Glessner said they are looking to expand by broadening the menu at their current location or by opening a second location. According to Dean, a breakfast and light lunch menu offering sandwiches is the goal. She said they don’t have a lot of room to expand within the current location, but they have thought about knocking down a wall behind the bar to create space for a small kitchen.
A second location is another possibility, the women said. They said they haven’t looked at any specific locations yet, but they have considered areas, such as downtown. If they do decide to open another location, the women said they want to stay true to the neighborhood they move into while maintaining their current business model.
“We would never want to put a hot pink building in the middle of the Columbia Neighborhood or something like that,” Dean said.
Either way, Glessner and Dean said they are committed to keeping their store local. If they expand their menu they will continue to buy their coffee from Orca Bay in Everson, their pastries from the Grace Café and Food Co-op, and they said they will get their produce from local farms and markets.
The women also said they will maintain the warm and inviting community atmosphere of their current location whether they expand in-store or add a second shop.
“That’s what we will strive for the whole time,” Glessner said. “We’ll be community based. I don’t think the atmosphere will change much.”
Glessner and Dean said they are finally ready to begin the long process of expanding their shop, and this time they are armed with the knowledge they gained from opening a business during a recession.
“We’re more about the elbow grease hard work, I guess, and kinda the do-it-yourself,” Dean said. “So as long as you can be a little innovative with how you go about things, you know, then there’s really not too much of a reason to worry about failure.”
Dean said she feels now is the right time to make their dream a reality with the way the small business economy is slowly picking up.
Dean and Glessner have been working with the Small Business Development Center, a program affiliated with Western Washington University’s college of business and economics that is designed to provide no-fee professional confidential business advising, research, and training to small businesses.
Jennifer Shelton, the director of the center, said the trend for small business in Bellingham is going up.
“Businesses are finding a little more energy to grow and expand,” Shelton said. “It’s going to be fantastic.”
According to Dean, friends and customers have been very supportive of the idea of coffeehouse expansion. She said they are offering to help in any way they can, much like they did when the women opened the shop three years ago.
“They’re just excited to see a company flourish in these times,” Dean said.
It is too early in the process to know for sure whether the coffeehouse will expand its menu or move to another location, and way too early to discern how much it would cost, the owners said, but the Small Business Development Center is helping them figure that part of it out.
“Things are still very nebulous,” Glessner said.
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