Kelsey Olson

“Opening Reverence Coffee was a joint venture. My husband is the one who really dove head-on into coffee. I, of course, like coffee and like to drink it, but he knows and learned all the nuances, the ins and outs of coffee.”

“As a family, we would always go out on weekends and enjoy good coffee. He was in sales and used to work remote from coffee shops all the time and whenever we would travel on vacation, we would always seek out local coffee shops. It’s just something we were passionate about.”

“Then our at-home set-up grew, he expanded that, made it really nice, and kept diving farther and farther into all the details. We felt like there was a void here in East Peoria of really good, third-wave coffee. He decided, ‘Hey, I want to open a shop.’”

“We don’t have any entrepreneurial experience. We’ve never opened up a business, so we’ve been figuring everything out on the fly. We don’t have investors or anything like that, it’s just my husband and me.”

“For us, it was just getting the place built out, getting it open and serving our product. That’s what our focus was on, because that’s what you need in order to bring in any income to pay all these bills that were growing. Our priority was getting the physical business up and going, and now we’ve got all these other things that you just don’t know and you don’t have time for.”

“Doing ST-1 filing every month is a big kick in the gut, every time. We’ve been buying our groceries and paying tax on that, then we’ve been paying tax at point of sale, on the apparel and merchandise that we sell, and now we’re getting kicked again on POS. It sucks – I’ve been paying double on everything when I don’t really need to, and I’m nervous because I don’t think I’m going to be able to recoup any of it.”

“But it’s also not knowing what you don’t know. No one from the state of Illinois is reaching out when you register as a small business with a cheat-sheet on what to expect weekly, monthly or annually, but they’re perfectly happy to slap a fee when you miss one of the smallest things. We’re trying to play by the rules. I feel like big companies have different standards and we’re getting hit the hardest when we’re just the boots-on-the-ground people trying to survive.”

“With all those things, it’s just a culmination of ‘Can you survive, keep a level head, and adapt to all the things that are changing?’ Somehow, we just keep figuring them out, or leaning on people we have connections with to talk us through everything.”

“We haven’t been able to afford marketing and advertising, so we’re just using social media and word of mouth. I took to social media venting, getting some stuff off my chest. That morning, I couldn’t pay our electric bill and it was a payroll week. I didn’t think we were going to make payroll, and it was just a scary time. I think when people can see you feel like that, like you’re a real human, it’s not this business running itself, it resonated. From that, they rallied and helped us cross that hurdle, and since then we’ve definitely felt extra people coming through the doors that haven’t heard of us before, or maybe some regulars coming in a bit more often.”

“I’ve had this question recently, about if we had any regrets, and we don’t. It throws off your whole balance of your life – when you’re a small business, your priorities shift and your balance definitely changes. But we’re still happy. I’m still in shock every day that we have this door open, that we can pay our staff and make customers happy. It’s still a roller coaster. It’s not for the weak, but it’s awesome to be an entrepreneur in this small business community.”

“If someone is contemplating starting a business, do it. I think if you’re confident in what you’re trying to bring to the table and offer, take that one big scary step, and from there you’re just falling right into it.”

Kelsey Olson
Co-owner, Reverence Coffee
East Peoria, Illinois