Not an Expert? This Brooklyn Café Owner Shows Why That's Your Advantage

Entrepreneur

Discover how one neighborhood café's resilience, data-driven decisions, and love for people made it a local legend. In the latest episode of our series America's Favorite Mom and Pop Shops®, we're giving you an inside look at Poppy's, a beloved food business in Brooklyn, New York, founded by Jamie Erickson. Her journey offers incredible lessons for aspiring entrepreneurs who want to do more than just make a profit—they want to build a business that is a true cornerstone of their community.

Transcript

00:00The ironic part for me is that I'm not a chef and started a food business.

00:03Yeah.

00:04I never thought that I would be as big as we became.

00:08When aspiring entrepreneurs want to open a business,

00:11there is one phrase that always holds them back.

00:14But I'm not an expert in that.

00:16I'm not an expert in that product.

00:17I'm not an expert in that service.

00:18But you know what?

00:19There's only one thing you need to be an expert in, and that's people.

00:23Today's mom and pop shop owner proves that if you care about people,

00:26you can build anything.

00:28This is Jamie, founder of Poppy's.

00:30It's a food company that started small, survived a life or death pivot,

00:34and expanded to become a pillar of the neighborhood.

00:37And today, I'm not just watching Jamie work.

00:39I'm getting in there myself.

00:41I'm making pastries, I'm serving regulars,

00:44and I'm going to find out what it takes to turn an idea into a community institution.

00:49Hey Jason, I got your coffee.

00:51Great.

00:51Now let's get inside and get to work.

00:52Let's do it.

00:58My name is Jason Pfeiffer.

01:02I'm the editor-in-chief of Entrepreneur Magazine.

01:04And with CLA, we are meeting these entrepreneurs to understand

01:08what it takes to build meaningful businesses that last.

01:11So what would you normally be doing if there wasn't a camera crew following this right now?

01:16Uh, I'm going to check in on our kitchen.

01:19This is our production kitchen.

01:21Here we do a lot of behind the scenes prep for the cafes,

01:24and we do all of our catering out of this kitchen.

01:27Okay, let's see how it works.

01:30This is our executive chef, Sharon.

01:32And this is focaccia?

01:33Yes.

01:33We switch our seasonal focaccia every single week.

01:36Charles, coming at you.

01:39Here we have all of the different orders that are going on.

01:42We have a team of amazing in-house delivery staff who do so much more than delivering.

01:47Going above and beyond to make sure that the customer has the best experience possible.

01:51That's kind of just what it's all about.

01:53And now that you've seen how the focaccia is made,

01:56let's see how the sausage is made.

01:57Jamie, how did this all start?

01:59I started after working in restaurants.

02:02My eyes were open to a whole world of catering that wasn't speaking to event catering.

02:08I very much understood I had very limited funds to start a business.

02:13So I knew how to cater from the sales standpoint.

02:17I needed to find the right chef who could execute my vision.

02:20And then from there, I knew I could start building up funds

02:23because it was a much more sustainable business model.

02:26The ironic part for me is that I'm not a chef and started a food business.

02:29Yeah.

02:30I bet a lot of people think that it's strange in some way that you're not a chef,

02:34but I wonder if you see that as an asset.

02:36It's 100% an asset.

02:38I can sell it better because I'm not the artist making it.

02:42It gave you a nimbleness, a detachment from the final product,

02:46which entrepreneurs need.

02:47If you get too tied up in your own vision,

02:50then you can't recognize what other people actually want.

02:53And so you build this catering business and it picks up.

02:57It does well.

02:58Instagram at the beginning was amazing.

03:00And I think a lot of that was due to my own deliveries

03:04and talking to people in person and being like,

03:07you like that post that, you know,

03:08I never thought that I would be as big as we became.

03:11And they were really big,

03:13catering everything from private parties to corporate events and photo shoots.

03:17But something was missing.

03:18I always wanted to have a cafe.

03:21I just knew that that business model was going to be a much, much tighter margin business.

03:28And so it started as a pop up and then a weekend cafe.

03:31And then we added Fridays.

03:33And finally, I worked up the funds and got to work with a designer I was really excited about.

03:39And we were supposed to break ground on March 20th, 2020.

03:43So that didn't happen.

03:46It shut my company completely off.

03:48It was a moment for me to really think, what do I want out of my business?

03:54Like many businesses at the time,

03:56Jamie pivoted her made to order cafe from the outside in,

03:59giving her customers what they were asking for, ready to go food.

04:03I'm data driven.

04:04And so all these things actually taught me something from the business standpoint was,

04:08wow, we're actually getting quite a few sales because the food is all ready to go.

04:14And what happens when you have everything just ready to, you know, grab and go.

04:19And so I switched my whole model.

04:22This also goes back to the detachment that you have that is such an asset where you're not obsessed with

04:28being able to make the most amazing made to order sandwich or whatever.

04:32You're obsessed with what do people want and how do I deliver it to them?

04:36They wanted efficiency in their time.

04:39This is a group of parents, people running to the train.

04:41And what this person wanted was something sweet.

04:45So Jamie took me to her pastry kitchen to see her recipe for success.

04:49Alice, meet Jason.

04:51So Alice, yeah, what are you doing here?

04:53Um, so this is our pumpkin brioche roll.

04:56It's sort of our fall special.

04:57The dough rests in the walk-in for, um, overnight.

05:01So how many days from beginning to end?

05:03It's a three-day process.

05:04Wow.

05:05So a lot of the reason why when you're calling places and they have a 72-hour lead time at least,

05:11it's because things just don't happen overnight.

05:14Yeah, I've wondered that.

05:15I thought, can't you just make some more?

05:17Yeah.

05:17This sounds like a tricky balance because you have to work very far ahead to make these specialty items.

05:24You don't want to have too much because then you're going to create spoilage of something

05:28that you spent a lot of time and a lot of labor making, but you don't want to have too

05:31little because then everyone's really annoyed.

05:33So how do you figure out the right amount of this to make?

05:37We study numbers.

05:39The numbers don't lie.

05:40Every week we make predictions based on historical data.

05:45So the longer you're open as a business, the more data points that you have and the better

05:50you get at predicting what you need to make.

05:53And I think it's really important for people to hear because this here is just deliciousness,

05:58but to run a business, this also has to be data-driven.

06:01And I don't think people look at this and think data-driven, but they should.

06:05I think Jason wants to see how they get cut.

06:07Yeah.

06:07Can I do some cutting?

06:08Yeah.

06:09All right.

06:10Somebody is going to buy this and they are going to have no idea it was finished by a total amateur.

06:15Boom.

06:16That is very satisfying, I have to say.

06:18Okay, friend, go be delicious to somebody.

06:20Boom.

06:21Boom.

06:21And as I spent time at Poppy's, I experienced something you can't measure.

06:26Jamie and Poppy's connection to the community.

06:29And I couldn't help but join in.

06:30Beautiful.

06:31Oh, that was terrible.

06:35No, that's great.

06:36Abstract.

06:38Terrific.

06:39All right, I got a pumpkin cake for Sebastian.

06:41All right, enjoy.

06:42That looks delicious.

06:43It looks delicious.

06:44Enjoy it.

06:45How do you do?

06:46Yes.

06:47Here we go.

06:47Jamie, I wonder as you think about this business, what comes next?

06:54Knowing myself as an entrepreneur, I know that I'm always looking for that next challenge

07:00to think that this is it is a joke at this point.

07:04But I think the quest and the drive for wanting to please people and bringing joy to another community,

07:13another neighborhood is really what drives me.

07:16That's great.

07:17Well, cheers to Poppy's.

07:20At the beginning, I said that if you focus on people, you can build a great business.

07:25But Jamie taught me an important nuance.

07:27When you listen closely enough to those people, they will lead the way.

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