It’s no secret that corporate America
has long hired ex-U.S. military personnel to provide day-to-day leadership in
the work force. If that trend is good
enough for the big companies it should be true as well for small
businesses. And it is. Here’s an example.
Barbara
Jeanine and Kathy Hansen spent many years in the U.S. Navy.
“When it was
time for us to retire from the service we looked at each other and wondered
what were we going to do now?” Barbara told this blog.
Long story
short, they decide after their retirement to open a coffee shop to fit in with
a mutual dream of owning a place with coffee, art and books.
Now, the
duo owns four coffee operations in the San Diego area.
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| Original site: Park and University, between Hillcrest and North Park |
The first
opportunity was to purchase a tucked away upscale hole-in-the-wall near the
busy intersection of Park and University Avenues. That was in 2011. It was already operating more
as a coffee kiosk than a genuine coffee house, but Barb and Kathy spent many
years building it into what it is today. It was called Industrial Grind Coffee, a name
that’s stuck five years later.
Customers
requested gluten free pastries and Barb created the first recipes that sparked
the purchase of our bakery. Now it is a full blown operation with retail and
wholesale accounts and many gluten free items (you can't tell they're gluten
free). Soon after that, “we realized that we really needed to start roasting
our own coffee. Now that operation is also running out of our bakery in
Santee,” said Barbara.
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| Industrial Grind's Tierrasanta location, near Freeway 52. |
In October
2015, they took over another operating coffee shop in Tierrasanta, and in July
of this year we opened our 4th location on University Ave in Hillcrest. Instead of creating cookie cutter shops, each
place is very different from the rest, but the menu line is the same at all
four.
“We have 1 5
kilo roaster at the kitchen and 2 employees that operate it,” Barbara added, “We
roast 10lb of coffee at a time and roast 1-2 days per week. We purchase our
green beans from a coffee supplier in town and roast the beans to different
temperatures to extract as much flavor as possible.
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| Industrial Grind's new location in Hillcrest, 1433 University |
“Of all of
our coffees, the three custom blends sell the best are Callie, Chief and
Master,” said Barbara, “It’s funny because I actually just ran sales for the
year to double check and it really is true. I think they are popular not only
because they taste good, but people enjoy hearing the story behind how they
were created: 16 Navy Chiefs got together and blended their favorite coffees to
create our Chief Blend. Same with Master, but it was with Navy Master Chiefs.
The Callie was created using the barista's favorite coffees at the time, and is
also considered our house coffee,” Barbara said.
The
Industrial Grind team says coffee tastes do vary based on location. There are
many reasons for this. When they take over a coffee shop, they want to retain
the customer’s base. That means keeping
the items that regulars are accustomed to ordering from the former shop. Also, they
discovered that their shops are in different types of neighborhoods. Some
suburban and some city, so this means the preference for decaf coffee may be
heavy in some shops and nonexistent in others.
The team has
also added new touches to their acquired shops.
They bake onsite calling their bakery items that the retail to other
stores as IG Bakery.
They bake the
majority of all items on the menu and they are all gluten free. “We do
outsource for croissants and bagels because our kitchen is certified gluten
free and so far we haven't found or been able to create a great gluten free
bagel or croissant,” added Barbara.
So far, so
good.
Industrial Grind
Coffee Locations:
--Original
site: 3922 Park Boulevard (between North Park and Hillcrest)
-- 6020
Santo Road (near Highway 52 in north Tierrasanta)
--New site:
1433 University Avenue (Hillcrest)
--Roasting
site (by appointment only): 9730 Cuyamaca, Santee.
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| Ingredients that go into IG Bakery's guten-free granola bars |
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