- Married couple and business partners Lauren Culley and Jeff Excell own Fox in the Snow, a nationally sought-out bakery and coffee shop.
- In 2013, the pair left behind their full-time jobs in Brooklyn to set up shop in Culley's hometown of Columbus, Ohio, where she saw a need for a place that served well-crafted coffee and from-scratch pastries.
- Fox in the Snow, recently named to Food & Wine Magazine's list of the "2019 Best Coffee Shops in America," has grown to include three locations which, together, grossed $3 million in 2018.
- Culley and Excell credit Fox in the Snow's success to their high tolerance for risk and their willingness to adapt as their business — and their roles — evolve.
- Click here for more BI Prime stories.
Filling a void in the marketplace is often considered the key to entrepreneurial success. Throw in hand-poured coffee and from-scratch pastries, and you've got a recipe for a sure-fire hit.
It's this winning combination that led Fox in the Snow founders and married business partners, Lauren Culley and Jeff Excell, to establish three thriving locations in just five years.
The Columbus, Ohio-based cafes, recently named to Food & Wine Magazine's list of the "2019 Best Coffee Shops in America," grossed $3 million in 2018, surpassing the owners' wildest aspirations for their business.
Here's a look at how Culley and Excell did it:
'Chasing happiness'
The pair met while working together at specialty roaster and retailer Blue Bottle Coffee in Brooklyn. Excell had been managing the front of the house for about a year when Culley was hired as a pastry assistant. Though Excell had spent more than a decade in the hospitality industry, Culley was a relative newcomer who'd left behind a career in publishing to pursue her passion for baking.
After a full day at her desk job, Culley spent her evenings volunteering at bakeries, where she swept the floors and wrapped cookies in exchange for baking instruction. While her decision to ultimately give up that day job may have seemed "crazy to outsiders," Culley told Business Insider she has followed a singular guiding principle throughout her career.
"I've tried to prioritize chasing happiness down whatever avenue that led me," she said. "When I first started working in a kitchen, I was so happy that it just seemed like there wasn't another choice but to do this."
Still, her subsequent transition from full-time baker to business owner wasn't a move she'd anticipated making so quickly.
While visiting her family in Columbus, Ohio, Culley wanted to go out for cappuccinos and freshly-made pastries. When her mother told her a place like that didn't exist, Culley's initial disappointment morphed into motivation after her father suggested she come back home and build the type of cafe she believed the area needed.
When Culley returned to Brooklyn with a craving to open her own coffee shop, Excell was all in.
"I love the business, but for me, I met Lauren and I knew that we were supposed to be together, so if she said, 'Let's go live on a farm in Vermont,' I'd have said, 'Yeah,'" said Excell, who describes his wife and business partner as "the most ambitious person" he's ever met. "For me, it was a person choice. I knew that I would be good at it (running a coffee shop), and that I would enjoy it, but first and foremost, I knew that I wanted to be with Lauren."
A high tolerance for risk
While saying goodbye to their home, jobs, and friends to start over might seem like a big leap, Culley and Excell agreed that in addition to their mutual love for coffee and pastries, they also shared a "high tolerance for risk."
Embracing that spirit of adventure, the couple left Brooklyn in late 2013 and began an exhaustive search for the perfect venue in Columbus. When Culley spotted an ad on Craigslist for a vacant, 2,400-square-foot garage, they knew they'd found their business' flagship location.
"It was one of those things where you walk in and immediately it feels like home," recalled Culley. "It was an empty garage in 20-degree weather. There were no lights and no heat and no plumbing, and we could barely contain our excitement. We took one loop through and asked, 'Where do we sign?'"
Opening on a shoestring
Aside from $300,000 in financial backing from family who believed in their business plan, Culley and Excell said they were "broke" when they moved to Columbus. The pair took on full-time jobs and worked tirelessly to bring their vision to life on the side.
"Most of the money that we anticipated putting into this really beautiful shop actually ended up going into electricity, plumbing, HVAC, all the stuff you can't see," said Culley. "So once our money was gone, our beautiful marble and brass cafe that we had imagined, we couldn't do anymore. We had to reimagine what the cafe would like look."
With no other options, the couple adopted a DIY mindset. Excell poured the floor on his hands and knees. When they ran out of money to have the shop wallpapered, Culley painted it herself.
"Somebody said something to me early on that stuck with me. They said, 'You were lucky enough to be broke when you designed this,' because it meant that we couldn't over-design it, and it meant that we really had to work with the actual building itself and really play up sunlight, cement, and wood, and the natural feeling of it. So that's sort of where the aesthetic of it came from," Culley noted.
The couple opened their first shop on North Fourth Street, which features 1,700 square feet of cafe space and seating for 60, in October 2014 with $315,000.
"Looking back, now that we've opened a couple more shops, we don't know how we opened it for as little as we did," said Culley.
Growing pains
Culley and Excell weren't alone in believing Columbus was in need of a charming cafe that offered exceptional coffee and pastries.
"We were successful from day one, which was wonderful, but it also meant that we were unprepared and we had underestimated ourselves," said Culley. "From the outside people were like, 'That's a great problem to have,' but it's still a problem. We'd get there at 3 a.m. to start baking and we'd sell out way faster than we'd anticipated and I'd have to bake until 9:30 at night, shut down the cafe, go to bed at 10, and then start doing it all over again."
Based on their business plan, they'd hoped to make $3,000 on a Saturday and sell approximately 24 egg sandwiches. But they never anticipated the groundswell of support from the community, nor the way social media catapulted Fox in the Snow into the spotlight. Suddenly, the shop, which gets its name from a Belle and Sebastian song, and its logo became a focal point, with customers (and their babies and dogs) posing beside the building.
Though they were thrilled and grateful for the outpouring of support, it forced the couple to recalibrate.
"Social media took off and helped us in a way that we can't underestimate," said Culley. "But if you anticipate doing 24 egg sandwiches and now you're doing 400, how does that work? There's a whole different set of headaches. What we thought we'd be doing and what we ended up doing were wildly different."
The couple, who'd believed their main focus would be beverages, had to redesign the backend to accommodate the community's appetite. At the same time, Excell noted that because they'd set up shop on the cheap, everything — right down to the cafe chairs — began to break.
"We had to pour another $100,000 into the business that first year," he said.
Instilling core values
In order to avoid getting in over their heads, Excell and Culley kept it lean when it came to staffing.
"We didn't want to overstaff because we knew that could bury us," said Culley. "So we ran with four staff members for a long time."
Fox in the Snow now has 80 employees across its Italian Village, German Village, and New Albany locations. The owners feel fortunate to have two of their original hires still working with them.
"It wasn't a conscious thing, but because we under-hired, Jeff and I had to do every job in the shop basically," said Culley. "So every single person at the beginning of the business learned from working alongside us, from how we would treat people and how we would talk about the pastry, to how we would welcome people and how we would clean. So there's this foundation of people who really understand the core values and the feeling of the cafe just from having worked with us."
Adapting to change
In their day-to-day roles, neither Culley nor Excell has ended up doing what they'd imagined. They agreed entrepreneurs need to be nimble and accept that their job descriptions are fluid.
Culley said she expected to have her "hands in dough every day," but now she often deals with accounting problems — and for years the baker worked the register in the front of the house. "I'm not a barista anymore, I'm a business person," added Excell.
He said that it's natural for your entrepreneurial desires to shift over time.
"You think, 'This is how my life's going to be,' and that's what you want in your mind and then you realize as you go along your interests change. You're no longer satisfied with making drinks now, you want to build cafes, or now you want to see how many jobs you can create," he said.
In addition to the founders' roles changing, the enterprise, too, can take on a life of its own. One of the best pieces of advice Culley said they received before opening was to "let the business evolve and become what it wants to be."
"Don't force the idea of what you want it to be on to the business," she said. "I think you hold tight to standards and aesthetic and core values, but other than that, I'd say adapt ... Sometimes it can be difficult, but it's been the lifeblood for us to let it evolve and grow into what it is now. So I'd say let it decide what it wants to be."
Looking ahead
Culley and Excell said they have employees and patrons who are eager to see a fourth Fox in the Snow location in Columbus. But, for now, the founders are taking a slow and steady approach.
"Coming from Blue Bottle, we were there at a time of tremendous growth, and so that was sort of how we learned in a cafe that you were always growing and thinking ahead, and I feel really fortunate for that," said Excell. "I think that we're definitely ready to grow within Columbus, and then when the time is right we'd like to think about other markets."
Visit dearJulius.com to get free premium content for all of your lifestyle needs.
COMMENTS