SLO LIFE Magazine Oct/Nov 2019

ut, remember, Starbucks had 137 in its first five years [of expansion].
But we don’t want to go into malls, and we don’t want to do this as a
franchise. We want to go into Main Street USA, like the store we are
opening in Chico next month. It’s on 2nd and Broadway, probably the
best corner in town. And, it’s made possible by community investors
there; people who will go to the shareholder meetings and have real
input and make real decisions and make a real impact. And, it’s not just
talk. One of our big tenants when it comes to community enrichment
is training kids who work at the stores how to have excellent customer
service skills. We have very specific programs to do that and, in addition,
we offer them college scholarships so they can grow along with the
company. Every year, we take one day of that year and allocate 100%
of the sales to our scholarship fund, so pretty much every one of our
employees who applies gets some money toward school.
Wow. We also want to make sure that we’re taking care of not just
our team, not just our shareholders, but also to the best of our ability,
our environment. That’s why we keep taking steps in that direction,
such as the reintroduction of glassware in our parlors. When you
order our ice cream, we serve you in glassware rather than plastic
and paper. Real metal spoons. Real glass. Because the environment is
important to us, and every little bit we can do helps. It’s those little
things, like switching our cream vendor because they are closer to us,
and it doesn’t have to be trucked so far. With a B-corp, shareholder
value doesn’t have to be your number one concern. Of course, it is a
concern with us, and it goes without saying; but, really, it’s about our
team, our environment, and our community. We see all of those things
as equal parts. We believe that if you offer health insurance, for example,
which we started doing last February for the first time in fifteen years,
then by focusing on taking care of our team we are also taking care of our
shareholders.
Let’s talk about that idea some more... The reason community is a huge
value for us, and such a focus, is because we believe if we authentically
engage our community, we will enrich the community. When we
authentically engage, what that means is asking the question: “How can
we help?” Our arms are open to helping our community. If we do that
in an authentic manner, we will enrich the community. If we are able to
enrich the community, we build brand loyalty. It’s very simple. We can
track those things with data like a net promoter score, and a community
impact index, and counting the number of hours we volunteer, and
totaling the number of dollars we give to all of these organizations. I
mean, we’ve given thousands to various organizations over the years
and tracking that information in every market gives us the capability
to understand how that affects our business over time. That’s a big deal
to us. A lot of companies, they make all this profit, and they give a
few pennies to charities, and they call that their giveback program, or
whatever. We lead with giving back. >>
46 | SLO LIFE MAGAZINE | OCT/NOV 2019