Entrepreneurs who Turned Their Passion into Profit

Every dollar spent at a small business gets returned to the local economy one and half times, so it’s not a surprise that small businesses are sometimes called the life-blood of the local economy. Here at CenterState CEO, we are lucky to support and work alongside many of the entrepreneurs who are making our neighborhoods more vibrant and helping our region grow. 

On this episode of Talk CNY presented by NBT Bank, we’re excited to introduce you to two of them: Michelle Cruse of Cracked Bean Roastery and Keeli Manning of Doomsday Pasta.

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Michelle Cruse Website | Facebook

Keeli Manning Website | Instagram

Host: Katie Zilcosky LinkedIn

Transcript

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This is Talk CNY, a semi-monthly podcast by Center State CEO. We're an independent nonprofit committed to creating inclusive, equitable, and sustainable economic growth in Central New York. Join us as we meet the people and explore the projects driving the regional economy forward. This is Talk CNY, presented by NBT Bank. I'm Katie Zilcosky, director of communications at CenterState CEO, and your host for Talk CNY. Each dollar spent at a small business is returned into the local economy one and a half times. So it's no wonder that small businesses are sometimes called the lifeblood of the local economy. Here at Centerstate, CEO, we are lucky enough to support and work alongside many of the small businesses and entrepreneurs that are making our neighborhoods more vibrant and helping our region to grow. On this episode of Talk CNY, presented by NBT Bank,

we introduce you to two of them: 0:56

Michelle Cruse of Cracked Bean Roastery and Keeli Manning of Doomsday Pasta. Well, Michelle, thank you so much for being here today. Thank you. Thank you for having me. So tell me a little bit about the Cracked Bean Roastery. Who do you work with? What is the business? Where are you? We are a coffee roaster by passion, and we are also a brick-and-mortar traditional coffee house and cafe. That's great. So who do you work with? I know we have a wholesale program that supports probably 20 different bakeries and cafés in the area, and we're always looking to grow that. And then of course, our own café that we support. Specifically, if you're looking for other cafés that we support, Darwin's right across the street, carries our cold brew all of the time. The Sweet Life of a Baker, Ann Cheryl, carries our coffee. We stock coffee all of the time down at Green Hills Farm. So if you love our coffee and you want to buy retail bags and we're not open, you can grab coffee there. Bella Vita Bakery in Oneida. Local Roots... The list goes on. Yeah. Cracked Bean is how many years old now? I started the company in 2018 as a passion side hustle. Everybody has side hustles and for us it was just roasting coffee. We wanted a better cup than what we were finding in Central New York and started probably 15 years ago roasting just at home. Oh wow. How do you roast at home? What was that like? We started with pan-roasting. So you can roast just over a steel, not steel, but cast iron pan. We evolved into popcorn like the old-fashioned turnstile popcorn pan thing. And then we bought a prosumer roaster, so you can roast like 500 grams at a time, a little bit more than a pound green at home. It took us all day Sunday to roast cool down, heat, back up, roast, cool down just for our own coffee consumption. We go through a lot of coffee at home. But still just for two people. Three people. Two people. Two people, yeah. For two people, that's a lot of work. We were going through like eight just ourselves. And so we had a great opportunity to partner with Simple Roast in Auburn. Simple Roast was looking to expand their roastery program and the business that they supported for themselves, and they needed to scale by buying a bigger roaster. And most small micro roasters don't have the capital to push out for a new roaster and then cycle repeat. So what we did with Simple Roast was we purchased their roaster. They still used it. So we paid them in advance. They still used it. And in the meanwhile, they taught us how they were roasting, learned how to tear it down, clean it, put it back together. And then when his new roaster came in, we installed that roaster in our garage at home. Oh my gosh. So that we could roast for ourselves, but in larger batches and take a shorter amount of time. That very quickly evolved to having way too much coffee at home. It's kind of like you plant one zucchini plant, you want zucchini,. Right? But you just can't plant one plant. So you plant like eight and all of a sudden you have so much zucchini that you're ... Making zucchini bread ... And you're ding door dashing, leading zucchini on people's doorsteps. We were doing the same thing with coffee, and, finally, we had a large group of individuals saying, you really should start a business. We're like, oh, no, no, no, no. We have kids at home. We have businesses of our own. We are working for someone. There's no way that we can add on one more thing. And we did anyhow. And so it was a side hustle. We had great teams and employers in 2018 that were very aware of our side hustle, and we roasted, sold out of our roastery in Manlius at the time. On Saturdays, while we were fresh roasting, and then also went to some local regional markets, so farmer's markets and just sold Whole Bean and that was it at the time. No crafting coffee for people. COVID changed the world for everyone, and we got the great opportunity to expand our business. Lots of businesses retracted in COVID. We expanded into the brick and mortar and opened our brick and mortar location on James Street in 2021, early 2021. And we've been running nonstop ever since. I bet. Yeah. It's a really popular location and store itself. Still growing, still growing. So we started just Glen Roasting and just myself in the cafe. We outsourced all of our baking at that point in time with local bakers and very quickly found that we couldn't do it on our own. So we hired a person and then a person and a person, and by the end of 2021, we had a small army of baristas. In 2022, we started baking a couple of things in-house, we just wanted different offerings that weren't provided by our wholesale bakers. And in 2023 I transitioned to baking everything. For the most part. We still partner with Sweet Praxis for wholesale items, for just a few, for four different items we get from them. Vegan items, primarily because we're not a vegan bakery and everything else is made by hand at James Street. What was that transition like? What were you doing before? I have a master's in education and I have a master's in executive So you weren't roasting coffee and baking full time before? No restaurant experience. No entrepreneur experience. No brick and mortar cafe, bakery experience. Baking at home. Just things that I love, but that's it. So what was that transition like to start a brick-and-mortar store? To start selling items? To start baking on your own? Well, because we have a passion for coffee, the coffee piece was really easy. And that's really where my passion still lies is the coffee. We are ever so much in the pursuit of a better cup and sourcing better beans or different beans from different areas all over the world. We're really working with small farmers who can be sustainable in their regions of the world. The baking piece of it is out of a desire to have a product that our consumers really want and crave. And then in addition to that, we wanted to be able to have quality control, have product consistency and flexibility, if that makes sense. Just stock and flexibility. So we trialed and errored it and it's been fun. I'm sure it's been challenging too. The baking is fun. It's a lot of work. It's definitely an opportunity for the business to grow and expand our offerings. It's not something that I am exactly passionate about, if that makes sense. Yeah. Because the coffee is really where my passion lies, but it's a business need and I just tackle it one step at a time. I mean entrepreneurship to you, it seems like it is this thing that has kind of naturally come along the way of your journey. What's that been like? I mean, did you anticipate having to engage in all these different business aspects because running a small business... Is much different than being involved in a large corporation? Yeah. I think that being involved in a large company with a mountain of teammate and support teams behind you, prepares you for leadership and prepares you for large businesses, but it gives you very little insight in the day-to-day operations of small business. We bootstrapped the business. We did not take any kind of funding or loans or anything like that to operate the business or really kind be operational at a great foundation from the leadership perspective and finding teammates, finding the right teammates, culture development, that piece of it. What I didn't really have a firm understanding of I think in the get go was chain supply. I never really had to fully handle the HR soft skills of my team development. I knew how to onboard the right teammates and I had a great training regimen, but I didn't really have a firm policies and procedures. I didn't have a system set up because when you're involved in a large-scale corporation, those things are already developed before when you walk in the door. When you start a small business, that's a huge learning curve that you're often not prepared for. So it's been a lot of trial and error and fun. So what makes you think that entrepreneurship was the right path for you? I mean, what made you feel like we're on the right path? We're doing the thing we want to be doing? Was it really the coffee passion and just pushing that forward? No, I think that starting the business, it was really about being something more. Being a part of a large company, you're one of 50,000 employees, and even though you feel like you're doing a great job and you're successful in that role, and the numbers for the business in healthcare are all going in the right direction, I didn't feel fulfilled. And I didn't feel like I was really building or a part of a community that was beyond myself. And so starting my own business allows me the freedom to cultivate a group of individuals or help cultivate a group of individuals who also want to be of something more, be a part of a community that is really fostering the growth of Syracuse and the growth of Central New York. And it's really in the end, it's not about coffee and it's not about the pastries. It's about bringing three minutes of happiness to somebody's life and being something, being a part of something bigger. The restaurant business allows us, or being in the coffee business allows us to be a sunny spot to love every person that walks the door in that moment with whatever they are going on in their lives and they're known and they're cared about, and we can hopefully have them leave in a better place than they came in. So that's really kind of what it's about. It's about building a better community. Yeah. That's great. I mean, that all sounds, I mean, I understand where you say now that the fulfilling nature of it. That does sound really great. Every day. And you are growing still. This vision is expanding. You're about to open a new space on East Genesee Street. Yep. We are growing second location at 719 East Genesee Street. We expect that location to come online somewhere between August and November. It's a completely different community with a completely different need and definitely under beveraged and under food served from a quick food service area, and it's really growing in that particular area. So it allows us to kind of expand our community base. It expands the opportunity to help mentor and foster relationships with young people and maybe not so young people. So we're excited. We're growing. Yeah. Well, Michelle, I really appreciate you taking the time to stop by today, and we're super excited for the new location opening Thanks. I appreciate the time. We'll be back with more Talk CNY in just a moment. But first, a quick word from our presenting sponsor, NBT Bank. At NBT Bank, we know that this day starts with this one. This day starts with this one because no matter how unforgettable the extraordinary days are, there's a lot of every day that leads up to them. You can count on NBT Bank to help you get started. NBT Bank, it starts here. This is Talk CNY, presented by NBT Bank. I'm Katie Zilcosky, director of communications at CenterState CEO, and your host for Talk CNY. On this episode, we are talking to entrepreneurs in the region in celebration of National Small Business Week, and I'm here today with Doomsday Pasta's Owner Keeli Manning. Keeli, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having me, Katie. So Doomsday Pasta, it's described as pasta for the end of the world. Yes. So can you tell me a little bit about that tagline? What does it mean? What inspired it? Yeah. It's really, it's a hopeful phrase to me. Doomsday Pasta was started in the pandemic. It was a I was home alone. I had a mill up the road. I had chickens from a friend, and I had this garden full of vegetables. And so pasta came very organically to me. It was just there and became this art form that I just fell in love with against the backdrop of it really seeming like the end of the world to me. Oh yeah. And so it was this idea of comfort food for that time. What did that look like? What did that feel like? And if we're all in this together, if it is about community, I can bring dinner. Maybe you can bring something else to the table. That's really lovely. I mean, what were you doing before Doomsday Pasta? If it started in the pandemic, you had a life before that? I did have a life before that. Just before that, I was working in an architecture firm and I was just an office manager, project manager for them. But before that, most of my life was in the other side of food, in grocery retail. I was a sales agent for a long time in Philadelphia. And so I was always selling food retail or working in a retail capacity with food and never really chefing it up. And so this now is sort of the culmination of everything that I've learned over the years. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, food seems to be a huge part of your background, but entrepreneurship, I mean, how did that, you're now a business owner. I am. How has that transition been? What's that been like? It's really different. Five years ago, it was just about making pasta, and now it's about managing employees and managing a budget and working within Salt City Market. So it's a complete learning curve, and I'm really proud of the work that we've done at Salt City and the food that we're creating. So it's exciting. Yeah. Can you tell me a little bit about the food right now? What's on the menu? What are you excited about? Yeah. So we try to pull from the region. We try to pull as locally as possible. And so right now we're a fully vegetarian menu at the moment. And so we focus on things like a locally grown polenta, and we are putting that with the marscapone into a ravioli. And we just linked up with this local maker of a wine flour, which uses the byproduct of the wine industry, specifically the Finger Lakes Wine Industry. And so we are making these Pinot Noir ravioli, and those are really exciting. And our classic black pepper, pepper, dell, we've switched to duck eggs exclusively, which are also local, which makes kind of a bouncier noodle. So we're in a early spring transition right now. That's nice. It's really fun, but the menu changes all the time depending on what I'm able to get and hold on to. Is that one of the fun parts for you, that sort of change of it, the kind of dynamicness of it? Absolutely. I'm super inspired by food. Food as a medium, as a vehicle for artistic expression. And so it's endlessly fun for me to think of new recipes and then to see them on the plate and see people's reaction to them. Now, when you started Doomsday Pasta at the start of the pandemic, did you kind of picture yourself where you are now? Did you say this is the long-term plan, or this is just something I'm doing to cope? In no way, shape, or form. I didn't think it was anything. It was just truly a hobby and a passion. And I was passing out pasta to my friends and family and my little group of six, and someone suggested that I try to sell it to more people. And so I started A CSA, which is a community-supported agriculture. I had a ton of clients that would pick up pasta every week that I would make. And it would be things like an elderberry, so pristine, a turmeric dough, or just really kind of out there flavors using a lot of local ingredients. That is where I thought maybe that's where we'll cap out. I never in a million years thought that it would be a cute little 15-foot restaurant at Salt City Market. Was there a moment for you where the switch was made, where you were like, this is no longer just me and my friends and me and my family, but this is something a little bit bigger? I want to put more time or more of myself into this. I think when I realized that I truly loved making pasta and really love the process. There's a theory in pasta making called pasta therapy where this meditation of rolling the dough and making the repetitive shape is a form of meditation and a form of therapy. I got really into that. Truly, I think without pasta, I'm not sure how I would've processed the pandemic. So it really, I think when I realized that and that I could maybe put that to work, that connection really for me is when it all came together. So what's it been kind of doing this full time now? So what it's been like doing this full time has been a wild ride. I mean, making pasta at home for a certain amount of clients to now opening it up to the entire city has been quite the transition. It's been really rewarding and really exciting to see people respond to foods that they haven't tried and to kind of push the envelope. Being a vegetarian pasta bar is kind of different, I think, for Syracuse. I'm really impressed with how people are consuming the food and enjoying it and giving us that feedback. Now, what has been some of the best advice or the best support you've received along the way? I mean, I'm sure because owning a business is a lot, you get a lot of work and you get a lot. You get a lot of feedback. Everyone has some thoughts. And I think some of the best advice I've ever gotten is just to stay as true to yourself as possible. That you will get a lot of opinions. That you will get a lot of input. And the most important thing is just to stick to who you are and to try to communicate that as best that you can to the customer. Yeah. I want to talk a little bit about Salt City Market, where you are right now. How did you first get into that, into the stall? You started in January, correct? I started in January. We first started talking, I think in November. They came across my Instagram and were really excited about it. And so they started a conversation with me about what it would look like to take over that pop-up space for a couple of months. And we agreed to do it from February through March, and then now it's been extended through June and potentially extended for a couple of more months after that. It's been really wonderful. I love the market. The vendors are incredible people, so hardworking, so salt to the earth, creating amazing food. And then the management team at Salt City Market is wonderful. Real people that care a lot about the community and about the vendors, so very lucky. Yeah, it's great. I mean, it really is a great space we're lucky to have in Syracuse. Yeah, for sure. So big question is five years from now, where would you love to see Doomsday Pasta? Oh, now that I think I am dreaming bigger, and I don't really know specifically what I want it to be, but I would love to be still a fixture of Syracuse and to still be providing good food to the community in some way. I'd love to be more involved in community projects and working with community centers and things like that, teaching classes, just continuing to grow as much as we can as possible, and support as many growers and farmers as we can in the process. Well, Keeli, thank you so much, and best of luck with everything. Thanks, Katie. Thanks for having me. This has been great. CenterState CEO's podcast Talk CNY, presented by NBT Bank, is available on all major podcast platforms or centerstateceo.com. Additional content and clips can be seen across CenterState CEO's social media channels. For new episode reminders, be sure to subscribe in your favorite podcast listening app, and don't forget to leave a quick review or five-star rating. Thanks for listening Talk CNY, presented by NBT Bank.