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 Location: Santa Barbara, CA
Established: December 2003
Employees: 7
C’est Cheese is a small downtown gourmet cheese, food and wine store.
www.cestcheese.com
After graduating from UCSB, Kathryn wished she could have stayed to live in Santa Barbara, but ended up moving east. On a wine-tasting visit with husband Michael in 2002, they searched for a gourmet cheese shop downtown to stock up for the weekend. Finding nothing, they began to dream of opening one and in February 2003 moved back with the purpose of opening their store.
Despite good credit, savings, and a solid business plan, Kathryn and Michael Graham were unable to obtain bank financing to start their business because they did not own their own home. They were able to get a startup loan through WEV’s Small Business Loan Fund and opened their doors in December 2003. In year three, nearly two years ahead of schedule, Kathryn and Michael were able to finish paying back the loan.
C’est Cheese supports many local nonprofits through event hosting, auction donations and more
What prompted you to go into business for yourself?
Michael and I have always had the dream of starting our own business and both of us share a very strong passion for food. I graduated from UC Santa Barbara and I always thought it would be a great place to live, but I left after graduating and moved back east. I didn’t return until the fall of 2002 when Michael and I came back to visit for the weekend. We decided to go wine tasting in the Valley one afternoon and we spent all of that morning walking up and down State Street looking for a small cheese shop to buy cheese for our wine tasting. When we couldn’t find one we were both surprised and inspired and thought that Santa Barbara would be a natural fit for a small gourmet cheese shop. So we immediately started working on our business plan and moved back to town in February of 2003 with the purpose of opening our store.
What has been your biggest business challenge?
I would say our biggest business challenge has been learning how to manage our staff. I think that when you start your own business, your drive and your motivation is inherent as the owner, but then bringing in staff and teaching them and trying to get them to have that same motivation and drive to grow a successful business is probably one of the most challenging things that I’ve encountered.
What has been your biggest business success?
Our biggest success here at C’est Cheese was definitely that in year three we were able to pay our loan back to WEV. We had anticipated that it would take us four and a half to five years to pay back the loan and to be able to do that in three years was a huge accomplishment for us. And then a year and a half after that we were able to also pay back our family loans that we had taken in order to start our store. And that was the moment that we had realized that we had created a successful and sustainable business.
Also, we make a lot of contributions to the community, especially the local schools. Michael and I just happen to be big into education and the impact on people’s lives over a long period of time. It also happens that we have some amazing schools here in Santa Barbara, both public and private, that I think are doing some amazing things. We also are big contributors to Planned Parenthood and we do an event with them almost every year. The other organizations that we’ve worked with are the Environmental Defense Council, as well as some of the local medical groups like the Arthritis Foundation and the American Heart Association, and so forth. We donate tickets to our monthly cheese tasting, or sometimes we donate to the auctions by giving gift certificates or baskets and so forth. And we’ve held a number of private tastings for different fundraising events as well.
Who is your ideal customer?
Our ideal customer here in C’est Cheese is really simply somebody who loves cheese and loves food. I think that there’s nothing better or more gratifying than when you have a customer in the store and you give them a sample of cheese and their whole face lights up and they get super excited because they just love the cheese that they just tried. They spread that enthusiasm not just to the other patrons of the store but also to the staff. And it’s just created this kind of culture and environment here in our store that makes it not just a great place to shop but also a great place to work in.
What has been the biggest surprise about owning your own business?
The biggest surprise in starting our store was that it wouldn’t only provide us financial income but that it would create this great community for us. I really had no idea how many friends we would make through running our store. Whether they’re customers or other people that we work with in the food industry here in Santa Barbara, it was just a huge surprise that we would create such a large and supportive community. It has given us just this huge sense of well-being and being a part of something bigger than ourselves.
How do you juggle all these things in your life to make it all come together?
I think that it is something that I’ll continually have to strive to be better at and it’s always going to be a work in progress. Finding a balance to my life in relation to my business as well as to my friends and family and things that I like to do outside of my store - volunteering in the community – is a big challenge.
What advice do you offer other women who are looking to start their own business?
The advice I’d offer to women who are looking to start their own business is that it is really critical that you write a thorough business plan before opening a store or a business of any kind. I know it sounds a little cliché but I feel in writing a business plan, first you’re forced to put your ideas down on paper, which I think is really a critical step in fleshing out the idea and bringing it into focus. I think the other part that is important is that it forces you to do a lot of research into your idea and ultimately you end up reaching out to other people in that industry and they end up giving you invaluable advice and information that you wouldn’t have gotten otherwise. Third, I think it’s so important to develop real financials. Because a lot of times you think the numbers are going to work, but until you put them down on paper and really start at the building blocks. Until we broke it down into that level we didn’t know if ours would be a successful model. And so, I think that forcing you to go through that process, even though it is very time consuming and seems daunting at times, is really essential to the success and health of a startup business.
How did WEV help you achieve your goals?
WEV helped us achieve our goal of opening our own business by providing us the financial support that we needed when traditional banks were not willing to lend to us. And just the difference in the whole process that program made was incredible; they were much more supportive through the loan process than anything that we had experienced with the traditional banks. They not only listened to our idea but they believed in our idea and then they helped us through that trying process of getting a startup loan, which is not an easy process to go through. In the end they awarded us the maximum limit for a startup business. We are eternally grateful to them for that, otherwise we really would not have been able to open our store.
Is there something that you learned from WEV that you use everyday?
I think that it is so amazing to have an organization like WEV here in Santa Barbara, because of the size of the town, but especially because it is a very difficult town to make a living in. There isn’t a lot of industry, and it is very expensive to live here. I think without programs like WEV a lot of people would have to leave, including myself and Michael, and find work elsewhere. But having organizations like WEV that support business owners as well as women business owners, allows people to create an income for themselves where they can live in such a beautiful place. And I think that without those organizations the town would be a lot less interesting and definitely a lot less diverse.
What does success mean to you?
I think originally when we started out our store I would have answered that question quite differently. I would have definitely said financial empowerment, ability to pay my bills, and have a nice lifestyle would be the markers of success. And while that is important and I definitely feel fortunate that this business has given us that, I think that gaining the respect of the patrons that come into our store, as well as the people that work here, and the community at large has really been what has made me feel particularly successful.
The biggest reward I get from my business is definitely the personal relationships that I’ve been able to build through all the people that I’ve met through running a store in a community like this, and that’s definitely by far been the biggest reward for both me and my husband Michael. And it also doesn’t hurt that we get to work in a place that we love, doing something that we love so much. We love great cheese, great wine, and food. So that’s just an added bonus on top of everything.
Photography courtesy of Meghan Nicole Photography: www.meghannicolephotography.com |
