Business Beat Podcast Episode 4: Interview with Nate Fru of Baristas – July 9, 2024
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Business Beat Podcast Episode 4: Interview with Nate Fru of Baristas – July 9, 2024
Introductory paragraph: This episode of the Grand Island Police Department's "Business Beat" podcast, hosted by Police Chief Kevin Denny, features an interview with Nate Fru, co-owner of Baristas coffee shop, along with his wife Emily and staff member Ashton. The conversation covers the history of Baristas, challenges of running a small business, leadership philosophy, community policing, and plans for a second location.
Discussion Items
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Baristas History and Ownership: Nate Fru explained that Baristas has been at its current location (940 North Webb) for about 15 years. He and his wife purchased the business from the previous owners, Laney and Jewel Faye, in September 2021. Both are Grand Island natives (Northwest High School graduates, class of 2007 and 2009) and previously ran an inflatable games rental business for six years, which they sold just before 2020.
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Challenges and Operations: Key challenges included supply chain issues during COVID (with unpredictable shortages of cups and other supplies) and staffing difficulties. In the first year of ownership, six staff members were pregnant at staggered times, representing half the workforce. The business currently employs two managers (Ronald and Ashton) and a mix of high school students, recent graduates, and more experienced workers, recruited through word-of-mouth.
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New Location in Prairie District: The Frus announced a second Baristas location in the Prairie District, north of Husker Highway on Prairie Commons. The site will be a freestanding shop with a single drive-thru and a mezzanine seating area, aiming for an early 2025 opening. The location is about five to six miles from I-80 and is intended to be part of Grand Island's growth.
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Leadership Philosophy: Nate and Emily emphasized modeling behavior, caring for employees, and being vulnerable as leaders. They referenced a local leadership summit and stressed that people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. Police Chief Kevin Denny agreed, noting the same philosophy applies to policing.
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Policing Perspective: When asked about police-community relations, Nate Fru reported positive personal experiences with the Grand Island Police Department, praising their professionalism, efficiency, and caring attitude. He expressed that the department seems approachable and coachable.
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Menu and Service: Baristas offers a wide variety of drinks and pastries, including cold brew, breves, drip coffee, and seasonal specials. Pastries include scones, cinnamon rolls, muffins, brown butter rice crispy treats (from Redbird Bakery and Don Finn), and biscotti made by a former employee. The drive-thru aims for an average 90-second transaction time per car.
Key Outcomes
- No formal decisions or votes were made, as this was a podcast interview. The primary outcome was the announcement of the second Baristas location in the Prairie District with an early 2025 target opening.
Note: This summary is based solely on the provided transcript, which is a podcast episode rather than a traditional city council or board meeting. No agenda or minutes were available.
Meeting Transcript
Hey everyone, Kevin Denny, police chief here in Grand Island. We're on episode four of the business beat. We're here at Baristas with Nate Fru. And Nate, tell me a little bit about Baristas, how it came to be, and uh what your passion is, because my passion here is the Americano. Yes, sir. Well, uh Baristas has been at this location in Grand Island for probably about 15 years. Um the previous owners, Laney and Jewel Faye had owned it up until uh my wife and I purchased it from him in September 21. You know, I was coming here enough as a customer. I figured, you know, maybe I should just buy the place instead. Uh but what my wife and I we love coffee. We anytime we travel to cities, like we enjoy going to coffee shops because we feel like that's how you get a feel for the community as a whole. And you know, we just wanted to create a space where you know people gather over a good cup of coffee and have conversation and you know, do study. Um it's just it's a nice thing to be able to create a space for for people here in town. Now, what's your background uh before the 15 years, you and your wife? How did you guys meet? And uh, you know, what's what's the full background there? Okay, yeah. Uh well, we both graduated from Northwest High School here in town. I I was in 2007 and my wife in 2009. Um went to college and we got married in August of 2012. So it's coming up on what, 12 years now? And uh do you know the date in August? Uh yeah, August 4th. Okay. August 4th. That's it. 8412. Okay. I always get my feet held to the fire on our we're in July. Okay. So July 15th. But yeah, we um we got married and then we were finishing school, first couple years of our marriage, and uh we saved up some money and we purchased uh an inflatable games rental business uh that we ran for six years. Um and that was I mean, that was a lot of nights, weekends, holidays, big events. So it was a lot of fun and it was a good time, but it would have been difficult with the family. So we we sold that actually right before uh 2020. So it was kind of perfect timing for us, and and uh we just kept our our nose down and um liked this place and knew the owners a little bit, so we approached them and they were interested in their next phase in life, and so it just kind of came about just by asking them the question and being familiar faces with coming here quite a bit. What did what's been some of the challenges or things that you that you thought you would uh deal with and some things that you didn't even anticipate dealing with? Yeah. Well, I think what what we knew we were gonna deal with, especially you know, during just coming around of COVID was um you know getting the product and getting it on time and we figured there would be a little bit of struggle there, but the craziest struggle was it was something different each month. It wasn't like we can expect, okay, cups are gonna be tough to come by this time of year, but it was just you know, just a lot of interruptions and readjusting, finding new places and getting creative that way so that you know you could still be open and still offer a good product. So what have you learned about yourself as far as like leadership and another business, owning another business? What what have you learned about all that? What's been the biggest like takeaways, I guess. Yeah, I I think uh a lot of times people view like owning your business as you know a kind of kind of a cool thing, but really you're working twice as hard, you're working twice as long. You know, you're looking at things so much differently than everybody else. Um but it's I mean that's what you sign up for when you know when you're running something, you're putting your name on it. And so just what we've learned about ourselves is you know, we really enjoy, you know, leading the charge. Now we really enjoy giving employees, customers, people an opportunity to to find their passions to grow in their own leadership. And you know, owning a business has been great to be able to do that and owning the coffee shop. We've really enjoyed, you know, we have such a great team here.
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