"I'll Just Do My Own Thing." Coffee, World Travel, and Rochester City Ordinances with Abe Sauer
Collider is passionate about sharing the stories of Rochester entrepreneurs and small business owners! We recently had the pleasure of meeting with Abe Sauer, owner and founder of Old Abe Coffee Company, writer, and a Rochester entrepreneur since 2014, who shared his story, personal experience with opening a successful food business, and insights on the Rochester entrepreneurial landscape.
Photo by Corrie Strommen
Many of us are used to the sight of coffee shop owner and meatless bahn mi connoisseur, Abe Sauer, peddling away on his bike, pulling his coffee cart downtown or to the farmer’s market. Or seeing him behind the counter of his brick and mortar, a charming little home turned mural covered coffee house and restaurant. While a coffee cart may be a bizarre and rare sight here, Abe, who lived for many years in China and New York, found it odd that Rochester, with its bustling downtown full of Mayo Clinic employees on the hunt for coffee and food, lacked any kind of vendor presence when he moved here with his wife and two children in 2014.
Abe was born and raised in Wisconsin on a dairy farm. He went to college at the University of Wisconsin Madison and early on knew that he and college were not a good fit. He joined a study abroad program in China and when the program ended and the rest of the class flew home, Abe chose to abandon his college pursuits and stay in China…for the next seven years.
“At that time, in the early 90s, China was in a period of opening and growing economically. I was young, nineteen or twenty, and just thought ‘why not?’ There was an embassy attached to the school I had been going to and they hired me since I spoke the language, was living locally, and knew the layout of the city really well. At that time, it was like the Wild West, which is cliche to say, but they would just give me work without asking for any qualifications, no one asked to see a degree. They would ask if I could do a job, I would say yes, and if I could follow through I could keep the job. So I would do all kinds of things for them. I also did networking and events as a personal side business.”
He continued, “I was living with friends in the cheapest possible cement apartment, so even though the level of failure was high, I could still make it in the city. It was a great place to be creative entrepreneurially with very low consequences.”
Photo provided by Abe Sauer, from his time in China.
After his time in China, Abe moved to New York and lived there for the next eight years. He initially worked as a secretary, using his meager salary to rent a tiny, “roach infested Queen’s apartment” and “live off of day old bagels.” During that time he decided to finish his liberal arts degree, enrolled in night school, and passionately pursued writing. He started writing for some magazines and after completing his degree, landed a couple of marketing positions, one of which led him to move to Minneapolis.
In Minneapolis, Abe met his wife, they married, had two children, and decided to head back to China. “She had never been there, I still had contacts and opportunities there, and we just decided to go for it. The kids went to school there and it was a crazy and fun couple of years.”
Upon returning to the states, his wife accepted a job at Mayo Clinic and he applied there as well. Despite years of marketing experience, he was not hired, he suspects because he did not have an MBA. Undeterred, Abe shrugged and thought “I guess I’ll just do my own thing.”
He continued writing and consulting. Some of you may be familiar with the Minnesota classic children’s book, Goodnight Loon. A little known fact is that Abe wrote back in 2012! Along with children’s literature, Abe wrote for publications such as Esquire, The Atlantic, Reuters and The St. Paul Almanac.
During this time, while walking around downtown in search of coffee and discovering lines out the door of a skyway Starbucks, Abe saw the clear lack of coffee shops to fuel the patient and Mayo Clinic employee population of downtown Rochester. Inspired by the vendors that were a constant part of his life both in China and New York and a personal love of good coffee, Abe decided to jump through some city ordinance hoops and avoid the high rental costs of downtown spaces to open a mobile coffee cart.
“I looked up the ordinances, and had to play with an allowance they had intended for flower and newspaper vendors. Food wasn’t allowed, so there was another hoop to jump through. But, you know, I’m pretty good at reading directions, so I figured out a way to make it work.”
“At first I was just giving coffee away.” Abe admitted, chuckling. “You could tell that all of these people staring at me, of course, would love a free cup of coffee, but in a very Minnesotan way, couldn’t get over the embarrassment of walking up to a guy in a bike pulled coffee cart and asking for free coffee. Which was such a change from my experiences in New York, where if someone was giving away something it would be gone in minutes. It was very interesting learning the habits of the consumers of Rochester, which are very different from what I was used to in New York or even Minneapolis. Rochester has a very unique consumer environment. It has so much money, but it spends it in ways that are not easy to predict.”
Something clicked in the community in 2014 and 2015. “You saw this explosion of more localized, unique ideas and a strong demand for that. Which has continued up to now.”
With time, Abe’s coffee cart would become a popular downtown staple. Shortly after opening it, Abe had made the switch to a mostly vegetarian and vegan diet and was doing a lot of cooking for himself. He observed that there were very few plant based food options in Rochester and decided to try selling some food on the cart as well. Sure enough, people liked it! As demand grew, and winter made outdoor vending an unpleasant prospect, Abe looked toward finding a permanent space for his business, The small house that would become Old Abe’s Coffee Company was found near Cooke Park, where he has since established a beloved local restaurant and hangout spot for the vegetarian and vegan foodies of Rochester (or anyone who likes dang yummy food and coffee).
Old Abe has recently adapted to adopt another local favorite, Drift Dough Doughnuts. “It was just a good fit. The owner’s heart was in his other business in Decorah and he was kind of a satellite owner and wanted to move on. I wanted to have more food options for morning business and they had already figured out some vegan, gluten free, and dairy free doughnut recipes. So we took on their baker. It’s been a good transition; we’ve been able to get really creative with doughnut flavors since they lend themselves so well to so many different iterations.”
Photo by Corrie Strommen
This isn’t the only recent development, however, as Abe has also purchased a neighboring space and hopes to expand to provide overflow seating there, and- good news for dog lovers- build out a dog run between the two spaces! Fingers crossed all goes as planned!
A Rochester entrepreneur for many years now, Abe has some good insights about the entrepreneurial ecosystem of Rochester.
“If there’s one big problem I would point out, it would be that Rochester, as a city, has a tendency to invest in the one, big, expensive idea that is the ‘game changer’ in their minds, instead of investing in a ton of fast and dirty small ideas. I think that the latter are what people actually want. There’s very little risk to the city in investing in a bunch of fifty-thousand dollar ideas around town. There’s a ton of risk in investing in one twenty million dollar idea, and if that idea doesn’t work, there’s the inevitable feeling that you need to keep throwing money at it to keep it going instead of being really honest and admitting that it just didn’t work. So you’re throwing money at a dying idea, and money you invest in something that’s dying is money not being invested in something that is growing.”
“I joke about Rochester being like a treasury bill, it isn’t going to boom overnight, but it is the most secure investment you can make, because it just grows at this slow, reliable pace, like a municipal bond. The city is very consistent from a financial perspective, which is good, in many ways for our local economy. It does, however, tend to make people extremely risk averse, in my experience. Most people don’t move to Rochester because they are risk takers, people come here for the safety and reliability of the jobs they can find here. People want predictability and safety. Rochester has those things. I think that the risk averse nature, or more traditional nature of the city, in a bad way, sinks into the way the city governs itself. The city has many restrictive ordinances, which are harmful to entrepreneurs. If you come along and do something that Rochester has never seen before, it can be extremely hard to get people to see your vision.”
He continued, “On the other hand, many of the entrepreneurs who I know in the city have a support network either through their spouse or family that is grounded in one of the core businesses in Rochester. Mayo Clinic is the obvious one. A lot of people start these businesses with one person working a very reliable job and supporting them, giving them the entrepreneurial freedom to go start another venture. In this way, a safety net exists while you’re taking chances up front. Rochester’s economy allows for that. Because my wife worked at Mayo Clinic when I was first getting started, I didn’t have to bring home a paycheck. It may not have worked out if that option wasn’t available to me. At times when I was getting started, I was working eight hours a day and making forty-five dollars. I think it’s much more difficult for people without a financial support network to go out and take chances entrepreneurially.”
“In that sense it’s a great community to start a business in, because it has that safety net for entrepreneurs. But at the same time they face these extreme headwinds from ordinances. Which is a culture born out of that economic safety. When you have a bunch of medical professionals and IBM engineers in a town together, you aren’t going to get a risk taking town.” he concluded, laughing.
He advises aspiring Rochester entrepreneurs, in partial jest and seriousness, “Get a spouse with a stable job or live at home with your parents.” His core advice is to have a good perspective and attitude toward what you can live without and, though it may be uncomfortable for a time, adjust your life to pursue your idea. Tough it out.
While Abe admits that he doesn’t have a lot of free time, one of his favorite pastimes is swimming with his children. “Perversely, I also love reading city ordinances, agenda packets and things like that. Mostly because you start to see trends and patterns in them that predict the future of Rochester’s growth in a way, which I find super interesting. It’s also a hobby that I can do at home, not on my feet.”
Thank you so much for taking the time to read Abe’s story! If you find value in this content, please consider donating to help Collider continue amplifying the voices of Rochester entrepreneurs. You can also learn more about Old Abe Coffee Company by clicking the link below!
Article by Corrie Strommen, Director of Community at Collider.
