EAST COAST COFFEE EXPANDING
Fast track to success leads to expansion
Initial success leads to expansion.
East Coast Coffee Company has opened a retail store to meet customer demand, a move that wasn’t a part of the original business plan.
“It’s where ever the business is taking us,” says owner Dave MacKinnon. “People are requesting that they can buy it directly from us and not at a grocery store and they want to buy it in bulk.
“We have a lady from Millville who didn’t want to drive to Sydney, she didn’t want to make the trip to buy her coffee.”
East Coast Coffee Company celebrated their two-year anniversary last month.
The idea behind the company was to provide organic, freetrade coffee, in eco-friendly K-Cup packaging, as distributors selling wholesale, with an East Coast twist.
Thanks to growing demand and popularity, East Coast Coffee Company has expanded to selling K-Cup vending machines for offices, whole beans, ground beans and it now has the retail store located in the North Sydney Industrial Park.
“There’s been more demand, people calling and saying they are more comfortable buying direct so we wanted to give them a deal,” said MacKinnon, who’s from Albert Bridge and calls himself a ‘Mira boy.’
“I’ve been at the bank, and had somebody stop me saying they want to buy East Coast Coffee in the parking lot,” he added with a laugh.
MacKinnon admits he has sold boxes of their coffee from the back of his van in parking lots on numerous occasions.
“The support we are getting from the local community is really amazing.”
Owner Dave MacKinnon
Amanda Mombourquette, Strait Area Chamber of Commerce
From the start, the company made a promise to stay as local as possible and to use only companies in the East Coast for making, packing and marketing their product.
But that dedication to local support isn’t a one-way street. MacKinnon praised local businesses and restaurants for supporting them with continuous monthly sales.
“We’ve only been in business for two years and as a small business it takes about five years to get everything going,” he explained.
“The support we are getting from the local community is really amazing.”
Part of the reason East Coast
Coffee Company decided to set up shop in North Sydney was to capitalize off the Marine Atlantic traffic. So far, it is working.
“On the first day we were open, tourists stopped in to get some coffee because they had it in their hotel room. They bought some in bulk to take home then asked if they could continue to get it from our website,” MacKinnon explained.
Online sales still account for roughly 80 per cent of the company’s revenues through their website www.easycup.com as well as www.staples.ca and www.amazon.ca . MacKinnon plans on expanding in the U.S. market via online sales soon.
Besides good coffee, MacKinnon said with East Coast Coffee Company people will always get good service as well.
“We’ll treat you better. That’s the one thing about us. We’ll always treat you better,” he said.