A NEW NORMAL

While we’re wrapping our heads around what our new normal is, we’re seeing all sorts of content from homies around the world.

One of those homies is Drift Magazine. A coffee culture focused magazine that we stock in the shop. Each issue, they focus on a city and the coffee culture within it. Beautiful photography, and quality journalism. They sent us a little template of a few questions that with some thought, allowed me to get out of the black & white of our operation. I figured it’d be a good second blog post to answer at least a few questions to tip toe into some more emotional waters that surround us. So the following is a straight copy & paste of what we sent to them.

-What's your name, the name of your shop and where is it located?
Will Remsbottom. I own Scrimshaw Coffee, a small multi-roaster in sunny San Diego, CA, USA.

-Are you still operating? What has changed?
We are! As an essential service, we’re allowed to serve only take-out. After many conversations with our crew, and a slow calculated analysis of our business, we’ve decided to keep going. It’s weird to minimize our business to just a shell of what we built it to be. But the community keeps showing up, and needs us, so we’re going to keep rocking, even if just minimally.

-What has been the most difficult these past few days/weeks?
From a hyper personal perspective, the hard, on-edge conversations with staff, vendors, landlords, etc., and constant moral internal battles. This is my first business, and we’ve faced our share of challenges this first 2.5 years, this is just the next, bigger one. I’ve adopted the mindset of if it is easy, I’m not trying hard enough. This is just another un-asked-for challenge. From the global perspective of the business, halting special projects, or any and all unnecessary excess cash flow to preserve whatever fuel is in the tank. With that said, we are small enough that our liabilities are low, and I’ve poised the shop to still be able to operate bare & naked. I’ve been blessed to not have to lay any employees off thus far, and have re-organized our P&L to delay that for the foreseeable future.

-If you had to temporarily close, are you relying on online sales?
Fortunately no, we were not forced to close - however we have bolstered our online sales with pre-order merch. We’re scrambling to figure out a system. We’ve literally never capitalized on our online presence to drive revenue, thusly our core business does not depend on it. Due to this unique situation, we’ve bolstered online sales to supplement our peoples cut in hours with online merch sales. 100% of proceeds, after cost & overhead, goes directly to our crew.

-What can be found for purchase online?
As of now, our OG Scrimshaw logo shirt, our enamel pin, and coffee retail. We have a bunch of stuff coming down the pipeline, which we are so stoked to talk about - will deserve a whole blog post itself, next week.

-What brings you hope?
I’m a 28 year old business owner, with peoples livelihoods depending on my decisions, but in a guilty sort of way, I am appreciative of the challenge and going to learn everything I can. I want to stow these skills away. I know I will come out of this wiser and stronger than before - it’s a once in a lifetime opportunity to hone this weird skillset of adaptation and nimbleness. It’ll let me weather the next storm with more ease and grace. Additionally, our crew understands that our community needs us and we need them, and they’re down for the cause which has left me speechless. And finally, from a community perspective, it has been so rad to watch people STILL show up, after all the physical, virtual, and service based barriers we’ve placed before them for our safety and theirs. If you’re one of those patrons, thanks for the continued support. You’re incredible & YOU bring us hope, daily.

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I’m not sure if that’s much of a window into our world, but hopefully it gives at least a bit of insight to where my head is at. Not planning on going anywhere, whether that’s out of ignorance or optimism, only time will tell.

-Will Remsbottom, ‘17 til infinity.

“Peril knows no bounds / and terror won’t slow down / but there’s a whole low down of beauty to be shown now” - Little Mercy, DOOMTREE