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Celebrating Innovations, Opportunities and Cornerstones in Business For some, business is booming
WBy Jimmy Lovrien jlovrien@duluthnews.com hen the world changes, so do our spending habits.
While the pandemic has wreaked havoc on businesses like dine-in restaurants and entertainment venues, it’s also been an opportunity for some area businesses, or parts of businesses, to prosper.
At-home brew boom
Not having to go to the office every day means fewer people picking up a coffee on their way to work or walking over to the nearby cafe for a break. Meeting up with friends for a cup of coffee isn’t as likely now either.
But caffeine addictions are hard to break.
“People aren’t going out for coffee as much so more people are brewing at home,” said Eric Faust, owner of Duluth Coffee Company.
Duluth Coffee Company’s downtown Duluth cafe has been closed since March, and its smaller cafe next to Hoop’s Brewing Company has been sold.
While business overall is down 30%, Faust said selling beans to home coffee makers has increased in grocery stores across the state — up 50% in the Twin Cities market. He did not have figures available for Dulutharea grocery stores.
“When the pandemic hit, we found everybody was buying coffee in the grocery stores, so that business just increased,” Faust said. “It’s just kept us kind of stable.”
Russell Crawford, owner of Almanac Coffee, a roaster in Duluth Folk School in the Lincoln Park neighborhood, said he’s managed to grow his business by 10%-15% during the pandemic, even when the folk school’s Dovetail Cafe and Marketplace has been closed for much of the past year.
He’s done it by shifting focus from wholesale to bulk coffee sales and embracing the fact that more people would be drinking coffee from home.
“There definitely was this wave of unknown that kind of hit us,” Crawford said. “What I was able to do, and kind of what has made up for a lot of that, is just this pivot that occurred to a lot of people buying coffee from home.”
Now, he’s eyeing the addition of his first part-time employee in the spring to help.
“I am looking forward to more growth this year,” Crawford said.



