Opening Coppa

This story was told at the December 13, 2016 Mudrooms event in Juneau, Alaska at the Northern Light United Church (audio file here)

How about that Julie Coppens? You know of all the good things that Ken Leghorn has done for Southeast Alaska, I think it’s fair to say that importing Julie was your highest contribution.

And how about that 100% organic Sentinel Coffee? I think the man who roasted it is right here in the audience, the multi-talented Dave Thomas!  I’d also like to give shout out to our barista, Hal, who brewed those pots just for you. She’s here with many of our staff from Coppa. I love each and every one of you.

I’d like to thank my wife Jessica for letting me tell this story. I know the past three years haven’t been easy. Thank you for standing with me through it all.

Making ice cream is my jam. If I were an artist, cream, milk and sugar would be my palette. You can do anything with ice cream. But I’m not going to bore you with tales of making caramelized onion (still Aurah Landau's favorite) or herring roe ice cream tonight.  I’m going to talk about what our little family business has grown to mean to me.

In May of 2013, I was going through a traumatic layoff. I was losing my twelve year old career in the youth mentoring field, all because a solipsistic Texan moved my job to Irving. Suddenly, my friend Clint told me that the Seong’s Sushi building was being renovated and the landlord wanted to put in a coffee shop.

Shazzam. That’s what I was going to do next. I just knew it in my bones. I was going to run a coffee shop. And we would also sell ice cream, because that’s what I liked to make. In fact, I started making rhubarb sherbet commercially right here in this kitchen. Jessica was out of town on her first sea kayaking trip in a decade. So my idea had plenty of time and space to take root.

When she returned from Seymour Canal, I began my relentless lobbying campaign.  Wasn’t it going to be wonderful? Just think of how much money we can make off of those $4 mochas! After 20 years of working for non-profits, I was eager to make some real money.

But Jessica was a tough sell.  She was wise enough to see through the mirage of easy money through coffee. Eventually though, my persistence wore her down. By late September, we were open for business.  Building plans, electrical work, plumbing, equipment purchased, two baristas hired, all in the span of four months. Yes, you guessed it, I was not of sound mind.

I hadn’t been trained in coffee making. And all of my ice cream knowledge was self taught and gleaned from home cookbooks. But that didn’t matter. Right?

Katie, our first barista

Thankfully, we had some early customers like Chris Knight who came every day and put up with my bad milkfoam and my inconsistent espresso shots. And my first two baristas, Nikki and Katie, had a magic touch with the customers. Nancy had spent hours and hours testing recipes and got our bakery up and running. Our friends like Barbara came over and over because they liked us and they wanted us to succeed. Kim Rivera even knitted me a Coppa hat, that first fall. I was so touched I put it on display and wouldn’t even wear it.

Then winter rolled around and I started losing employees and I was working 60 or 70 hours a week and I wasn’t sure if we were going to make it. I had blown through my severance package and we were going to have to make it on what the business could produce and Jessica’s salary.  Thank god for her health insurance. I was trying to be a co-parent and found myself falling asleep in the middle of games of Life with Ferguson. He would have to wake me up each time it was my turn and I would spin the dial in a half daze.

We persevered though, and learned a lot by trial and error. My management style of making it up as I went along somehow didn’t run us out of business.  

Chef Isaac and his winning bacon ice cream recipe

We made some key kitchen hires. Kerry and Isaac dialed in our bakery, lunch, and ice cream offerings and added a professionalism that we were missing. Thanks to a grant we won, I finally took a barista class and we even sent our barista India to barista camp. The business started to feel solid, like we might actually make it.

Kerry's savory spirals have gained a cult-like following over the years

Then Dylan Roof brandished the confederate flag and murdered nine people in Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal church. I remember coming to church that week and imagining the same thing happening here at Northern Light. The Mississippi flag on Egan Drive had always bothered me, with its symbol of institutional racism. So I got together a group of like-minded individuals, and we we started working to get the flag taken down. We had our meetings at Coppa. I suddenly realized that I had a great resource. Coppa could be a convening place for organizing in the community.

And we prevailed, thanks to the support of 300 community leaders, including our entire Juneau legislative delegation.  But along the way, I got singled out. It was my picture in the paper, on the front page and the back page, and the hate poured right at me and right towards Coppa.  

The internet trolls struck, and they hit hard. I didn’t even know what a troll was before this happened. They started threatening me and talked openly about boycotting our business. They posted terrible reviews of our business on social media, threatening our four star ratings.  It shook Jessica and I to the core. Especially when a woman threatened to make up anti-Coppa bumper stickers and distribute them around town. I seriously expected we would get a brick thrown through our large glass windows.

But then a beautiful thing happened. Our customers and our friends rallied around us. They wrote glowing reviews of us on social media, drowning out the haters. David Katzeek performed a Tlingit ceremony in our shop and placed a protective devil’s club branch above our doorway. Folks came in and mentioned that they were making extra trips to support us. And when the local paper did its annual readers survey that fall, we were ranked Best Business in all of Juneau.

Love overcomes hate. It really does. As I’ve grown into the business, I’ve realized that Coppa isn’t all about making money. Believe me, no one in Juneau is getting rich off of those $4 mochas.  But it’s fine.  I’ve come to realize that this business I own is an extension of myself. It’s an expression of me and my family’s values.

We love being a gathering place for the community.  We love hosting artists, sometimes having their first show. We love sponsoring events like the kids open mic event a few weeks ago. We love giving away gallons and gallons of ice cream for one day every year. And we love budgeting our advertising dollars for youth drama programs and high school sports teams and public radio.

Seeing friends have a chance encounter at the cafe still gives me a tingly feeling. The other day a couple came over to celebrate with their kids just after adopting them at the federal courthouse. Our customers often tell us their joys and their sorrows. Sometimes they even break down in tears right there at the counter. We listen and try to help, even if it’s just with a smile or a hug or a free cup of coffee. And they give back, bringing us their homemade sausage, the nagoonberries they’ve picked, or their prized plum cake recipe.  On one day last week, they even donated close to $2000 to help cover one of our barista's emergency medical bills.

The night the election happened, I texted my employees. I told them no matter how they felt about it, they had to try and shake it off. People would be struggling the next day and we had to be there for them, be their smile in the morning, be that little spark of light for them. And I wanted to be at the cafe from open to close. I wanted to see all of our customers and hug them if they needed it, and get their hugs back.

Saralyn Tabachnick from AWARE with some Nas-Tea Woman ice cream

I’m not worried about expressing my values in my business anymore, well maybe just a little. My wife and I were so angry about the recent misogyny portrayed in the media that we decided to make a Nas-Tea Woman ice cream.  We knew we might get some hate, but we felt our customers would appreciate it, and we could help the AWARE shelter at the same time. New women customers came to the store in spades.

We’re now three years in.  I no longer worry about whether we’re going to make it.  I’m sure there will be financial ups and downs in the future, but we will be okay. There are more important things than money.  Like the promise of youth, the strength of community, the hope for equality, and investing in your employees, even though they might not be with you more than a year.

I love this town. I adore my wife. I cherish my kids.  And I love myself. Like my arms and my feet, I love this other extension of myself, this little business called Coppa.