Owner of Arabica in Willoughby reflects on changes in small coffee business - The News Herald
Many times, the start of someone’s day sets up the tone for the rest of it.
This philosophy keeps Tim Snider — owner of Arabica Coffee House in Downtown Willoughby — excited to come to work day after day.
“It is rewarding, frustrating and exciting, in a nutshell,” Snider said. “It’s all the feels, I think. In a local coffee shop, you are very connected to your community.
“Whenever there is fluctuations you feel it. Right now, we are going through spring break, so people aren’t here, so we are less busy. We feel that as a business in scheduling and in everything. When the weather is nicer, people out and about walking around, it’s a great walking area …”
He said that 80% of his business is regulars, “good and bad,” and that he’s able to form quick connections with people throughout the day.
“I think people that come to Willoughby stay in Willoughby. Because maybe they appreciate the small-town feel in a little bigger area, I think it’s great… we aren’t a drive up so there is a lot of people walking around.”
Before purchasing the Willoughby location at 4138 Erie St., Snider worked at a Mentor Arabica where he went from barista to manager in eight years. When that location closed down, he soon found himself working as a manager in a Starbucks at the Richmond Heights Barnes & Noble.
After the store closed, he didn’t tangle with the coffee trade again until he and his wife Tina heard that the Arabica in Willoughby was up for grabs.
“Me and my wife would travel, and we would be like ‘How do we make this happen? How do we make this work?’ it was something that I always enjoyed doing,” Snider said. “We were at a point in my career that I didn’t know what I was going to do long term.”
They found themselves in the position of being able to buy it, so they made the leap of faith and went from managers to Coffee House owners in 2018.
A lot has changed in the industry since they opened on their own.
Snider says that lately, the price of green coffee beans has increased, which raises prices across the industry. From the time the beans are harvested, each person, from importer, roaster to supplier, adds a slight bump to cost.
“Unfortunately, the coffee industry is going through this very volatile time right now,” Snider said. “The Arabica beans coming out of Brazil — they have had five bad growing seasons in a row.
“Just in January we received a dollar per pound increase on green coffee bean. … our roaster just sent a memo out saying there can be a 20% change per day, it can be either direction but it’s very (unstable) right now.”Snider has kept costs the same for the past two years, only raising them slightly. A small coffee currently costs $2. With the cost of his breakfast sandwiches, paninis and baked potatoes remaining consistent.
Unfortunately, he said, prices will be going up in the next few weeks, and the new chalkboard menus are on their way.
“I look at things as a consumer too much maybe, instead of as a business owner, and I think what would I want to pay as a consumer and I try and keep it as reasonable as I can,” Snider said. “You hear so much about (price) gouging… and the price of eggs is very prevalent. … I didn’t want to change the menu board and raise those prices in hopes that we would see normalized prices again. I didn’t want to be so reactionary.”
He said there is an upside to the new menus, as he’s adding a couple of drinks that were offered on a seasonal basis to the permanent lineup, including the “Chagaccino” — a rich mushroom and cocoa powder, espresso and oat milk drink with umami undertones. The mushroom-adapted coffee powder that makes up the base of the drink, Snider said, has increased in popularity and he wanted to stay on top of the trend by including a drink with it. The rise of cold drinks and cold brew — oat milk and other concoctions that contain a range from of ingredients from dragon fruit and Ube (a purple yam) are trends that can, for small businesses, be hard to research and stay on top of.
As he doesn’t have a team of researchers, Snider said that he travels and attends trade shows to get a feel for what’s going on in the zeitgeist, often experimenting with new drinks on his apprehensive employees and regular customers when he returns home.
“A lot of the new drinks or things that we come up with are really just a thought and a dream, I wish there was something more to the science behind it,” Snider said. “Right now, Ube is popular, so last year we tried to incorporate an Ube drink in, having no idea anything about it.
“It’s a lot about trial and error. I was at a conference, and they were talking about developing new drinks, these people take months and months to develop a new drink. At an independent level we don’t have months and months… it’s ‘OK this is pretty good’ and we can throw it on a seasonal menu and eventually it could make the real menu if we find it to be that way.”
Going forward, new drinks that are similar to energy drinks with green coffee extract and other lighter flavors have been trending. So he’s going to experiment to see what hits. He said when something doesn’t work, he owns up to it and moves on.
“You own it, you just own it, not everything can be a winner and that’s the best part about being in the smaller side,” Snider said.
“We had one latte that we tried to do candy bacon in, candy bacon — in hot drinks — does not go great by the end of a drink,” he added with a laugh.
“In idea and in a couple times that we tried it, it worked great, but I tell ya, after 20 minutes of a drink sitting there — not too great to have rubbery, chewy bacon, it doesn’t all work and that’s OK. That’s part of trying to do something different and not just trying to do the regular same old, that everyone is doing — without progress we die.” He added that expanding would be nice, but because he has often been the face of the company it’s been hard to find a way to add another store.
“Time is the hardest. It’s a commitment,” Snider said. “When you are trying to expand and add another operation, it’s doubling your workload. … and it comes down to finding the right people that you trust and that you are willing to put in place.
“I’m really lucky to have a great staff, they are very reliable. I call this my baby, and I can walk away from my baby and feel comfortable trusting them, so that’s a great possibility learning towards expansion… I am the face of my business, so expansion gets rougher, I think when you do that, when you actually take your face from one place to another… I often (hear) that people say that are ‘going to Tim’s’ instead of Arabica… and that can be good and bad.”
As the days get nicer, Snider said he hopes to see more people strolling around downtown and said that he’s looking forward to many of the events that the city puts on.
“As the weather is getting nicer, come to Downtown Willoughby,” Snider said. “The events start in Willoughby that bring a lot of people down and the Rib Cookout is not too far off…”