A Right from the start, we had the intention that it would be a gathering place with a variety of features, including bringing diverse people together. A diversity of age, beliefs, backgrounds, interests.

Q But was a floating entity at first. Was it always planned to be a real cafe?

A It was planned to have roots in one location. The reality was that we knew what we were doing was a pretty ambitious project and we didn’t want to plug a whole bunch of energy, money and community dollars into something before we felt very confident that we knew exactly what we were doing. We didn’t want to go and spend $100,000 renovating a place, then find out, “Oh, this isn’t what we want to do.” Or “This isn’t something the community wants and needs.”

Q Where’d you get the $100,000?

A We didn’t take any loans. We had a number of different community groups and corporations donate the labor and materials. About $75,000 was donated. Of the $25,000 (remainder), we got rent rebates for $15,000 because we did the (renovation) work. Goodwill supported us with $10,000.

Q So you opened without any debt. Are you self-supporting?

A Half of the money we raise through sales, donations and fund-raisers. Goodwill covers half from sales at their retail stores.

Q What kind of annual budget do you have?

A It’s about $140,000. A good chunk of that is start-up capital expenses, such as the espresso machine, refrigerators and freezers, nine computers. Our ongoing operational budget should be less in the future. Goodwill gives us $70,000 and $40,000 comes from sales, $30,000 comes from grants.

Q Have you been running in the black?

A We’re right on budget. If anything, a little ahead. We’re on track to go over (projections) in sales and grants.

Q Do you have to make a profit or just cover expenses?

A I have two bottom lines. One is the financial bottom line, to cover expenses. At the very least, it’s to not be losing money. To make a profit would be great, but it wouldn’t really be a profit because it would go back into the program. The second bottom line is the mission work. It’s about doing positive things in the community and helping people out.

Q Did you write a business plan for this?

A Yes. I did it myself with help from folks at Goodwill and a gentleman from the SCORE program. I read some books, and the Internet has a lot of stuff about business plans. In a lot of ways, there are similarities to grants that we need to write. There’s a lot of the same information in them.

Q Obviously the difference between running a business and a nonprofit is profit. Is that the only difference?

A We always have two concerns. It’s not just about dollars. We’re also concerned about the folks who come in here. Recently an 18-year-old girl was thrown out of her house. The first place she came was here to tell us. Likely, if a person would come into another coffee house and tell them all of that, maybe they would have helped her, maybe not. They may have said, “Here’s your coffee. Have a good day. Good luck.” For sure, we’re going to help her. I call around the community to hook her up with programs and services, the emergency shelter, help get her a job. We do all that networking and referral. That’s where we’re different. We jokingly say we’re human service workers disguised as coffee shop workers.

Q On the business side, what have you learned from this experience?

A Food codes, health code standards, building codes. Renovating an old building to new codes was tricky.

Q Anything been a real eye opener?

A I have a great new respect for all the work that it takes to run a small business. It’s a lot of little things like ordering, inventory, doing the till at the end of the night, supervising a team of part-time people, trying to balance work shifts, making sure that shifts are covered and people get breaks.

Q Do you like all of that?

A Do you want the honest answer? Or the newspaper answer? I would much rather spend my time and energies looking at community problems and trying to envision solutions for them, helping people. Building community versus counting how many ounces of tea leaves we have.

Q So the obvious question is: If you had this to do all over again, would you still do it?

A Absolutely. I do think once we got into a groove of running the business side, things have gotten easier and easier. Ordering and inventory aren’t as hard as they used to be. We still have six months to a year to be really comfortable with the business aspects.

Q What advice would you give someone following in your footsteps, of adding a business to a nonprofit venture?