Local Cafés Deserve Local Owners
By Brian October 4, 2021
There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes “What the hell is water?”
The author David Foster Wallace used this anecdote in 2005 to introduce a commencement address, and I am borrowing today to talk about self awareness, and more specifically because it’s time to write openly about why Summit Coffee is a franchise. As Wallace continues, “The point of the fish story is merely that the most obvious, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about.”
Like a local band whose songs start streaming on the radio (though I may be dating myself a bit), or a local sports writer who signs a contract with ESPN, people have a visceral reaction to their favorite little secrets becoming bigger than what they’ve been. And for Summit, more specifically the growth of Summit, we’re in the same boat.
In a series of conversations a few falls ago, we agreed on two major things — Summit was going to grow, and we needed to remain true to what we’ve always stood for. And at the top of that list, jotted down upstairs at the roastery on some post-it notes, was “local.”
Let’s call out the elephant in the room: there’s a stigma around franchising, about selling out, about the sterilization of a brand. We hear your questions, we read your comments on social media, and I assure you that everything you’re wondering, we’ve wondered and asked ourselves ten times over.
But at the foundation of our business, Summit Coffee is a locally loved brand — where customers know each other, and know their baristas, and people genuinely care about conversation and experience and connection. That’s why we’ve survived, and fortunately thrived, for 23 years and counting. So while most of our customers may only ever visit one Summit — their Summit — we also are not a mom-and-pop joint. We have a team of 12+ people beyond the cafés that makes us smarter, more insightful, more impactful.
On the other side of the coin, however, we are not a chain. Starbucks is a really sound business, and Dunkin has some great things — but we are not them. We can’t template what makes our Basecamp café and replicate the magic in Chapel Hill, nor can we make a carbon copy of the floorplan for Asheville’s River Arts District café and drop it in downtown at the Grove Arcade.
This leads us back to franchising, a word and a world that (understandably) gives some of you the shivers. Franchising stimulates some ideas of McDonald’s, and O’Charley’s, or Tropical Smoothie Cafe. And no disrespect to those companies, but Summit is not them, either.
Franchising provides Summit a solution to growth as a brand where local matters, and also gives us a platform to help other entrepreneurial-minded folks bring a Summit community space to their neighbors. If there were going to be 75 Summits, or frankly even 7, how could I “own” them all in a way that stayed true to the “local” feel? I can’t know 7 cafés worth of customers, or even 7 cafés worth of staff, in a way that everyone deserves — Summit the brand included. The Summit brand is best enjoyed locally, and we either had to put a hard ceiling on our future, or we had to chart the best path forward.
Not only is franchising the right answer, it’s also the exciting answer. If you’ve stepped foot into our cafés in Charlotte’s NoDa neighborhood, or Birkdale Landing in Huntersville, you’ve seen the positive impact that franchising has. Local ownership requires local engagement, which is what makes Summit a Summit, and what makes Summit successful.
Our vision for the future of Summit is to become a coffee brand that’s admired nationally, but loved locally. When someone goes to our RAD café and thinks that is Summit — the one and only — to us, that’s a win. We are in the business of creating intimacy at scale, to borrow a term from Sweetgreen. That’s why we hand select the neighborhoods where Summits will go. That’s why we spend dozens of hours meeting with, and vetting, prospective franchise partners. It’s why café design is done one at a time, and in-house. Each Summit should feel like Summit, and building on the solid foundations that lead to business success. But each Summit also should reflect its neighborhood, the owners who bring it to life and the customers who are using it.
So here we are, swimming in this pool among other franchise business, but super aware that being in this pool was an active choice. And every time we award another franchise to another deserving local entrepreneur, we’re choosing this same pool again.
Local cafés deserve local owners, and we’re on a mission to prove that we can scale local, that we can scale intimacy, that we can scale Summit in a way that is distinctly that — Summit.
Interested in bringing a Summit to your neighborhood? Chat with us today.
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