Doing Business Differently — Bryant Martin — Ep. 027

Hello everybody, welcome back to another episode of Anabaptist Perspectives. I'm here with Bryant Martin. We're in State College, Pennsylvania. It's a little different for, in the Anabaptist world, especially the conservative Anabaptist world, to have something like this in an urban setting where you've started a coffee shop/café right here in downtown, near a college. Tell us about that. Like, what's the vision? How did this thing get started? What inspired you to do this? My wife and I, Lynelle, have lived in an urban setting ever since we got married in 2008. Three years ago, we moved here to State College, Pennsylvania, with the dream of starting an urban café or coffee shop where we could naturally reach out to the people living in this area.

So when we got here, there were several others in the congregation here who had that same vision. And we began to pray about it together. We began to pray about specifically for a kingdom embassy that we could have right in downtown, right next to Penn State University. There's 45,000 students. There's 45,000? 45,000. That's a lot of people. Wow. There's international students here from 130 different countries. Wow. So lots of opportunity. And so we began to pray about that. And then, so we moved here in 2015, like I said, in February of 2015, exactly seven years basically after we got married. And then later that year, in August, as we've been praying about the congregation, we discovered this place here was for sale.

And so we began to pray about it. We began to interact with the owners. And within several days, we had to move very quickly because there was another party that was interested as well. We were able to acquire this place. A month later, September 8th, all these details I haven't forgotten because it was a very big time for us. We actually were able to open the café. God really brought together a lot of different resources. We did not do it on our own. He brought people to work alongside my wife in creating the menu.

You know, numerous ones from our congregation jumped in and helped. And so really what you see here is a combination of many, many people that God just brought out of the blue. In thinking about how we started here, it's really important, I believe, to talk about how we got the name and a couple other details surrounding this actual location. So my wife and I had a name in our back pocket for a couple years of what we would call our café when we started it. And after we leased this location, the leasing company said, "There's no way you can have your name because it has coffee in it." And our biggest customer is Starbucks, which is 50 feet away from us here.

And so that was kind of a blow because we were really looking forward to having that name. So we began to pray about it. Lord, you know what name would you have us to use here? Within about a week after we leased it, this all was happening. I was still working for a former company that I was part of. One day I was talking with my wife on the phone and she was headed downtown here to the café. And I said, "Hey, Lynelle, what is this street right next to our café? What is it called?" And she goes, "It's called Sewers Street." I was like, "What? Sewers Street? Really?" And so, Sewers, of course. A Sewer went forth, sowing the word.

There's so much packed into that, so much meaning. We began talking about it and out of that came Sewers Harvest. Another really neat thing that happened too in that time, so I told you a little while back, earlier we were praying as a congregation for a kingdom embassy in downtown State College. About a month then after we were even opened up maybe, we realized that this parking lot here is called Ambassador Square. And actually this building that we're in is called the Ambassador Building. And so that really was a blessing to realize that because, wow, you know we wanted an embassy, you know a piece of the home country on foreign soil. And then it felt like God just really, really blessed that.

I remember hearing about when this thing opened and hearing about how quickly it grew. Can you speak into that a little bit? We're right downtown. We have four floors above us, about, I think, 200 students in this building. Wow. Surrounded by apartment buildings. The campus is just a half a block away. 45,000 students. Of course, you know local people as well. So at first, you know we're kind of tucked in the center of this building, back behind Starbucks against the street. So we're kind of backing off the main walkway. And we didn't do any advertising either in starting. We just felt like we had to first figure out the conquer the mountain of coffee and cuisine because it was so new to us.

And all of our staff that was coming on had no experience. So we just opened up our doors one day. And I remember our first two customers in the door. It's Paul, who lives four stories above us here. He's still here. I spoke with him today.

And then also an international student from Kuwait who became good friends with, had him in our home for dinner. He and his father actually. So I'll never forget those two customers in the door. But yeah, so it started off very slow. And then our name started to get out. One of the things that the restaurants around us who were telling us is that you need to be open on Sunday and that you also need to be open late because after two o'clock, you can really make a lot of money off the crowds coming out of the bars. And so I knew those two weren't an option. We did have some evening hours at first, but as we started getting into it and started getting busier and busier, and all of a sudden our team was hitting 18 people.

And so we began to cut back. Until today, you know we're only open five days a week, starting at 7:30, closing at 3:00. Yeah. And the one thing that I found interesting about what you're doing here is you give away a lot of your profits for this business. And why? It was the big question. And also what are you doing with the way God has blessed this business? Obviously, it's a for-profit venture. I mean, we're not, you know this isn't like a nonprofit ministry or something.

But how are you using this business as a way of blessing others, blessing the community, using it to reach out to the people around you? One of the things that we network with or maybe a ministry that we dovetail with is All Nations Bible Translation. Starting this café, it was like, how can we steward this space? How can we make it business's mission? Even though we are a for-profit business, how can we still rally around a common purpose that will give us purpose, that will give us that day-to-day drive to see Sewers Harvest not only be a place of mission, but also be a place where we are being profitable, where we are caring about each cup, caring about each dish.

We are committed to donating our net profits to All Nations Bible Translation and to other areas as well, fighting human trafficking and also local pregnancy resource clinic here. So this has been a two-and-a-half-year process. What have you learned?

That's a big question. But what's some things that you're like, "Oh, wow, you know I didn't know that two-and-a-half years ago." How has it impacted you? One of the things that we started out with was we didn't want to in any way pull ourselves away from our congregation here.

And those relationships, we have, my wife and I have several children. You know, how can we run, how can we be involved in the food industry and not harm other relationships? Anyone involved in the food industry knows the challenges that it brings to the table. It's often very demanding, long hours. We've seen, my wife and I have seen different times in our lives of friends who've been involved in that and how it has maybe in some place, some points done more harm than good. So that's one of the things we've learned. Probably second is we started out with a way too big of a menu.

People were telling us, you know, "Bryant, Lynelle, you guys have got to shrink that menu down." Yeah. You don't need a huge menu. And so we've shrunk that too as we went along. And sometimes we were biting our fingernails worried about, you know, how is this going to affect our sales? Because we did have customers, you know, walk out the door. So that's another thing we've learned too is that you don't need a huge menu. Well, and then the other thing is, so obviously you've learned a lot about the food industry, about setting up a café. How have people responded, the local community? Have they, I mean, obviously you're staying pretty busy. So yeah, what's the response been?

One of the, you know, obviously we're in a very liberal town. It's a college town, very progressive, very liberal. And so as we've thought about, you know, how do we want to present ourselves, you know, as a kingdom business? What does that look like? How does that feel?

One of our things that we talked about a lot was we wanted to be an oasis of friendship and fellowship. And so one of the realities of a college town is that 30% of students are like critically lonely. People have a facade on. You wouldn't realize that, but that is the case. One of the things we thought about a lot, thought about at the beginning a lot is how does that look? Like, do we put Bible verses all over the walls? So how do we want those first impressions to be when they come in the door? So trying to make an atmosphere where the atheist would feel welcome. And I have a good friend who comes in here every Friday, who is an atheist, and it's been exciting to see him coming back every Friday morning, spending several hours here working from here.

And so I believe that the presence of God is here with our workers. That's a huge part of that. Could you go into a little more detail, like on the impact? Like, what's the impact been on the local community? So I think of a conversation I had right there the other day with a student. She comes in every day. She talks about how she loves coming here to study because it's peaceful here.

The employees are so kind to her. And so she comes back every day. And I see her, I see the other day I saw one of the ladies who worked on the counter sitting with her and talking with her. And to me, that's thrilling to see our team being able to come out, sit down with them and talk with them. Another really important thing for me is a win for me is when I can take one of our customers and take them to one of our services.

Just the past Sunday, there was an Iranian couple with their son at our service and had supper with us. That's a win when I can get people from here to take that next step to come to my place for a meal, to come and join our congregation for a service where they can ask others questions. They can see how, what does it look like to be part of a body? What does it look like to be a follower of Jesus? And they can see a much better picture of that, a much fuller picture of that when they're with a body of believers in a worship service and a fellowship meal. And so that's exciting. That's a win.

Good stuff. Thank you, Bryant, for showing me around, letting me see your café. What you're doing here is very interesting. I find it very intriguing. Appreciate you sharing with us. And thank you everyone for watching. And be sure to come back for new content each week. We have podcasts and also a video format. And if you have questions for people like Bryant or maybe, yeah, want a little bit of follow-up, leave a comment. Let us know what you think. We'd love to hear from you. And we will see you in the next episode.