Becoming a Local Coffeeshop - 3 Strategies that Apply to You and Yours

Your local Endiro will be truly local - genuinely connected to and engaged with your community for the sake of good.

The above is one of our most important brand promises.  Of course, we understand why most international food chains follow the brand strategy of creating a consistent “look” and essentially replicating that whenever and wherever they open a new location. A Starbucks, for example, always looks exactly like a Starbucks whether you find it in Chicago, Manila, London, or Beijing. Customers are reassured by the familiarity.  It speaks to them of product and experiential consistency, which can be attractive, especially when you are experiencing a bit of cultural disorientation in a new city or country.

The problem with this approach is that it makes the coffee shop an erasure of context – it becomes a place that is different from the place around it. Historically, however, the coffee shop is not supposed to exist separate from the community.  Rather, the coffee shop is supposed to be a vital part of any neighborhood – a critical component of the soul of the city. 

We have made the choice to do things a little differently and to pursue the idea of always being truly local. We do this in at least three ways:

Design – It’s important to us that every Endiro branch looks more like it’s community than like some other Endiro branch.  For this reason, we love to revitalize old buildings, upcycle “junk” from around the area, rescue and repair cool old antiques that we find, utilize local art and artifacts in the design of our spaces, and to otherwise honor the history and culture of the community around us.

Wherever you find an Endiro, you will always get a strong taste of Uganda – that’s our home. But, we also want the Aurora shop to feel like Aurora, the Mbale shop to feel like Mbale, the Moroto shop to feel like Moroto.

Engagement – Appearances are meaningless if they are not backed up with action.  We desire to be truly engaged with the local community wherever we have a coffee shop.  We want to celebrate local artists and musicians.  We want to partner with and highlight local charitable organizations.  We want to create space for local change makers to meet and collaborate.  We want to be active in community organizations that are making a difference in the neighborhood.  We will always be looking to deepen our engagement locally in meaningful ways.

Leadership – It is important to us that we create career opportunities for locals.  Most restaurants do hire locally, so that isn’t a big surprise.  We are going a step further by working as hard as we can to create career pathways for those on our teams.  We believe in promoting from within the company or community whenever possible and in spending time on intentional leadership development for every person who works for Endiro.  Moreover, we try very hard to hire as diverse a staff as possible so as to bring together the rich ethnic and cultural diversity that our communities have to offer.  

The dream would be to see a growing number of people come to us in entry level positions and to move up to become top leaders of the company and the community – or even to move on from Endiro to do even greater things in the world.

What about your company? Your church? Your organization? Even your family?
Are you local to your city or just located there? Do you look like the community or do you just look like yourself? How are you engaged in the life and soul of your city? Where are you finding your leaders?  Are you building them up or just hiring leaders that others have built up? What strategies have helped you to become truly local?