Summit Coffee Featured in Atlanta Business Chronicle

as published in Atlanta Business Chronicle by Chris Fuhrmeister on 12/8/2021

A growing North Carolina coffee company with a family-friendly attitude is planning significant metro Atlanta expansion.

Davidson, N.C.-based Summit Coffee will open a franchise location in Roswell, CEO Brian Helfrich told Atlanta Business Chronicle. The company is negotiating to lease a space in the city’s historic downtown. Franchisees Brooke and Dustin Logan will own and operate the cafe.

Summit, a certified organic coffee roaster, is tentatively scheduled to open next spring. The company plans to open two more metro Atlanta locations in 2022, and it intends to have 10 local cafes by 2025.

The company extensively scouted metro Atlanta and initially will target suburban areas for its cafes. Summit intends to find micro-markets that are not yet saturated with specialty coffee shops, Helfrich said. It is seeking locations in the vicinity of neighborhoods populated by young families.

Each Summit cafe has its own design so that they all have a local feel, according to Helfrich. They have chic aesthetics that would be expected of any hip coffee brand. Customers posted up on laptops are not out of place. Summit serves a rotation of drip coffees with a full espresso bar, locally made pastries, craft beers and wines.

But it caters to customers with children, too. The menus include options for kids, and Summit offers crayons with branded coloring pages.

For more than a decade, millennials have driven the modern specialty coffee movement, opening and patronizing cafes in urban settings. Many millennials are now in their 30s or 40s, and Helfrich believes Summit's family friendly model is the logical next step for the industry.

"Specialty coffee hasn't always been the most approachable environment, where you can get an awesome cappuccino and also bring your 2-year-old," he said. "We want that to be the case, which is why we think our brand resonates as much in suburban towns as anywhere."

The first Summit cafe opened in Davidson, a small college town, in 1998. Helfrich's family bought the company in 2003 and operated the single location until 2015. Summit has been in a growth phase for the past four years, starting with its wholesale business, which now reaches clients in 30 states.

Summit historically has been self-funded, but it raised $1 million through a friends-and-family funding round right before the onset of the coronavirus pandemic with an eye toward expanding its brick-and-mortar footprint.

"We say we're a company that has the foundation of 23 years but operates, in a lot of ways, like a startup," Helfrich said.

He added that the pandemic has forced the company to "zero in on every dollar we were spending" by more carefully negotiating supply contracts and giving greater consideration to labor strategies.

While Summit hasn't been immune to supply chain issues that plague many businesses these days, it hasn't suffered from staff shortages. Helfrich attributes this to an "employee-first" attitude that means full medical benefits, mental health days, and a $17 hourly minimum at corporate-owned cafes.

Summit had its best financial quarter on record earlier this year, according to Helfrich.

The company has 12 locations open or in development. Its cafes currently operate in the North Carolina cities of Davidson, Charlotte, Asheville and Huntersville. The Roswell cafe will be the company's first outside its home state. The company has plans for Virginia and South Carolina expansion as well.

"Atlanta will be the first of what we intend to be a pretty thoughtful and quick regional expansion," Helfrich said.