Q You and husband Roy own Beaners Coffee Haus and you have two young children. You certainly have enough on your plate. Why take on another job?

A Beaners was to the point where it was able to be manager-operated. There was someone who wanted to step up into that position. I thought, OK great. That allowed us to have time to do something else.

Q Roy still works there full time too?

A No. He's three hours there, then he takes the baby. He does all the running for Beaners and he has the baby the whole time.

Q How did you get interested in this job? Did they approach you?

A Shannon (Kenevan, Harmony Cafe's director) had come to me for advice. He said, "We have this position open. What would you expect at Beaners if you hired someone for this?" We were chatting and it dawned on me, "Hey, maybe I'm interested in this position." We've always been part of Harmony because Beaners supplies all the coffee here with our wholesale business. From the very beginning. We set up the cafe here and got all the staff trained. We'd always been a part of it.

Q Was Shannon surprised that you were interested?

A I think he was. They had talked about the position before internally and they said they wanted "Someone like Angela who knows coffee and loves people and loves to work and understands nonprofit."

Q Because you come from a for-profit business background, you must have seen this place though different eyes.

A In order for this whole place to be successful, we have to break even. It only took about two weeks of observing when I realized coffee's not going to cut it to cover all the expenses here. We need to figure out something else to bring in more income. It wasn't even covering itself, much less supporting the programs. The coffeehouse was this big weight that Goodwill was pulling along. They're like, "OK, if we can't get this coffeehouse where it needs to be, then we'll continue with the space for programming but the coffeehouse portion is just going to not have to be there."

Q Shannon said you inspired the renovation. What did you see that could be improved?

A I had a small idea to make things more functional. It turned into a huge project.

Q Your suggestions led to putting in a bigger kitchen and offering food, which happened Sept. 17?

A Yeah. I thought, "What could we bring in that would be fairly simple that wouldn't cause a huge disturbance with our existing team and their expertise?" I figured out a menu that would be easy for everyone to adjust to. We make it all here.

Q Were you happy with the menu?

A I was happy with it, and then when we opened, listening to feedback, we had to change it again. We had surveys we passed out to everybody. We made immediate changes. As soon as I hear things twice, I do something about it. We adjusted our prices a little bit. We decided to include sides with the sandwiches and wraps. Our portions were a little skimpy. Little things that made them happy.

Q How's it going so far?

A Since that happened, it's been really good from the numbers standpoint. We had done some projections when we went to Goodwill (with the proposal). We have a 2½-year payback on the investment. So far, it's on or above my projections. That's exciting for me. It weighs on you when you don't know. Projections are your best guess.

Q How much was the renovation?

A It was around $50,000. We bought a display case, but the other equipment we pretty much had. It was flooring, plumbers, electricians, the contracting portion that was the bigger investment.

Q What other innovations will you suggest?

A Right now, I'm just making sure this is good. I don't need to have any more ideas at this point. Far into the future, the biggest idea is to offer everything we have here to other places, other cities, other communities. Right now, we have this in the Fox Cities. I feel like poor Green Bay and poor Oshkosh. They don't have anybody who does what we do.

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