By Dawn Suiter

Connor Knapp of Piper & Leaf on Stepping Out of the Cage

Sit Down With Success is a feature of the Huntsville Business Journal on entrepreneurs and their keys to success. To read the full story, please visit the Huntsville Business Journal website.

Not far past the Tennessee River on US-231S/431S, the new Piper & Leaf Tea Company headquarters greets travelers with a roadside sign featuring its familiar logo. The building at the end of the gravel drive welcomes guests with raised herb beds and a large, inviting covered porch with rockers and picnic tables.

Founder and co-owner Connor Knapp comes from a multi-generational military family, all born in different states. “There’s quite a large age gap in the kids in our family so different ones of us lived in different areas and it wasn’t until I moved back that we had all ever been in one city at the same time,” he explained.

With a Mason jar of Front Porch Special tea in hand, I sat down with Knapp to discuss the past, present, and future of his company.

It had to take a big leap of faith to jump from being a Doctor of Physical Therapy to starting your own tea business. What was the deciding factor?

I did both for quite a long time and it got to a point where I had to decide on one or the other, ‘cause both were taking up too much of my time. You only have so many hours in a week and I valued the ability to work with family and friends and invest in our community, much more at that point than working in [medicine] ... it was really more about the values that I wanted in my community and in my life more than anything else.

People think that we’re this huge company that makes millions of dollars…it’s not true. It’s literally all our family walking around here doing things and we make a living–we don’t make a lot but the value is the quality of life and what we’re able to do.

When did you realize that Piper & Leaf was going to be a big success?

We were having some mild successes at the farmers’ markets. The whole design of the business…focused on compost with tea on the side made from our garden. We had it in little paper bags and we made a couple gallons of it every week. Long story short, nobody ever bought the compost but they kept buying our tea.

It was actually the Madison Street Festival in October of 2013…we had a booth and people were going crazy over it. We ended up with a line about 2½ blocks long. We kept running out and we kept having to run back and make more. We were carrying tea in five gallon buckets about six blocks because you couldn’t drive into the area. And while we were stressed out and trying to fulfill all the needs of the booth we noticed, ‘Hey, these people aren’t upset that are standing here in line for 30-45 minutes. They’re talking to each other.’

That was interesting to see, and it was more interesting to see that people started jumping in to help us be able to serve more customers faster. That’s when we realized that this was bringing the community together; this needs to be a full time business. Because that was the reason we started, to bring communities together. And that’s when we decided, ‘Okay, this is a full time business, we’ll pursue opportunities from here on out.’

What are the greatest challenges you’ve faced since starting your business?

One of the biggest challenges my family has faced in starting our business and have had to overcome is sourcing supplies. Both for our locally made tea blends and any other products or services that we use. There is a large gap between retail sources and industrial level sources for supplies. We have had to be creative and form our own network over the years. w

By Dawn Suiter / Photo by Steve Babin

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Boeing Discusses Its Economic Impact, Celebrates 60 Years in Alabama

By Dawn Suiter / Photos courtesy of Redstone Gateway and Dawn Suiter

Boeing, Alabama’s largest aerospace company, commemorated its 60th year of operation in Huntsville with a presentation last month at the Huntsville/Madison County Chamber of Commerce.

Chamber President and CEO Chip Cherry kicked off the event, noting that Boeing secured its first business license in Huntsville in 1962 and describing the company as “a big part of our heritage.”

Boeing Director of Missile Operations and Huntsville Site Leader Ramon Sanchez noted that Boeing began 60 years ago supporting the NASA Saturn V project at Marshall Space Flight Center and continues to perform and be a huge player in the space race.

“At Boeing, we work hard to maintain our presence and high wages providing for the highly-skilled jobs our operations require,” Sanchez said. “We’re looking forward and committed to the continued success of our customers, the economic health of the state, and contributing to the overall quality of life in our local communities.”

Senior Research Economist and Associate Dean for Economic Development Outreach Dr. Sam Addy of the University of Alabama’s Culverhouse College of Commerce and Business Administration then discussed the findings of a study commissioned by Boeing that outlined its economic and fiscal impacts on the state during 2021.

According to Addy, Boeing’s economic output was $2.731 billion in 2021, $663.2 million of which represents earnings for 9,402 direct and indirect jobs in the state, including 3,000 at Boeing. He stated that Boeing’s payroll last year was $302 million, with average earnings of $103,000 for Boeing workers and $55,000 each for indirect workers. In contrast, Addy said that the average worker in Alabama earned $51,000 in 2020.

Addy also stated that the company’s contribution to the GDP of the state is about $1.3 billion, and earnings generated $61.5 million in tax revenue, including $35 million in state and $26.5 million in local taxes.

“Boeing is a good corporate citizen—I can’t say it much better than that. But these are numbers and they’re quantitative aspects. The qualitative aspects go far more than one can say…I can say for sure that Boeing having been here for 60 years means they were contributing to the success, the attraction, the bringing of other businesses, the success of other businesses and entities in this region and the state,” Addy concluded.

Tina Watts with Boeing Global Engagement emphasized Boeing’s commitment to supporting the community, announcing that in recognition of the company’s 60th year in Alabama, Boeing is awarding two $60,000 grants. The recipients of these grants are the Boys and Girls Club of North Alabama’s STEM Career Pathway Program and the Huntsville/Madison County Chamber Foundation’s Hiring Our Heroes program.

“We’ve seen some huge impacts on our economy and on our area that have come from Boeing. The City of Huntsville is deeply grateful to Boeing for being our partner for the past 60 years,” said Mayor Tommy Battle. “That partnership is a partnership of success—Boeing’s success has been the City of Huntsville’s success and it’s been our whole area’s success. As we’ve grown over the last 60 years they’ve made the Rocket City grow.

“What Boeing does today makes us a center of excellence that few people can rival throughout the country or throughout the world,” Battle continued, crediting the company with helping Huntsville to earn the ranking of best community in the United States by U.S. News and World Reports.

Battle also thanked Boeing for the two grants, adding that he hopes some of the boys and girls who go through the Boys and Girls Club’s STEM program will one day work for Boeing.

“We’re also hoping that they spread throughout our community and are part of the group that helps us grow into the future. As I tell my department heads on a day-to-day basis, we may have just been named No. 1, but No. 1 was yesterday. Today we’re building on tomorrow…we have to keep continuing to strive to get better, to be a great community, and through awards like this we are becoming a better community.” w