Today we’d like to introduce you to Lydia Baskin.
Hi Lydia, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
I began as a barista at a locally owned shop in 2011. Later that year, for my wedding, I hired a coffee caterer to serve espresso and she is still the detail most people remember. In 2014, I started working for a large corporate coffee shop as a barista and saved to start my own coffee catering business. I was able to save up enough that I launched my first business, Caffe Corretto: Espresso Catering. I left the corporate coffee world and began working for a local coffee roaster with the task to grow their public retail space, all the while catering on nights and weekends. When COVID hit in 2020 many of the shops the roaster serviced closed and even the front end I had helped build up was temporarily closed to the public. No one was throwing any events I could cater. Business slowed for everyone and the lack of human connection was daunting for me, a naturally gregarious person. I noticed a run down and then vacant hot dog stand on the side of the road I passed twice a day. It needed work but I had time on my hands. Everyone thought I was mad but myself, my husband, and my parents worked on it on and off for five months and turned it into a respectable coffee shop. I left my job at the roaster with the blessing of my boss and kicked off Big Shot: Coffee House in January of 2021. We have survived and thrived even with the onslaught of massive coffee drive thru chains infecting Tyler and its surrounding towns. Last year I launched the Tyler Coffee Crawl and have now held 3 very successful “crawls”. By tying together the locally owned coffee shops and the fans of such shops I have discovered my next passion of building up our local coffee community. I plan on hosting another crawl in May and a latte art competition in July. My dream is to make Big Shot the launching point for more events and businesses where the goal is to bring together coffee fans in support of one another.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
The launch was fantastic, numbers wise, but I was working on average, 115 hrs a week not including running errands. Once I was able to train my staff and start replacing myself, my life became more manageable.
Also, about 6 months after opening, other coffee businesses began opening in earnest. In the past 5 years, Tyler,TX has had four Dutch Bros, four 7 Brews, five additional Starbucks (there are eleven now not including the licensed stores inside the mall, Target, UT Tyler, Barnes and Noble, etc), 4 Scooters (they opened in the small surrounding towns but much of Tyler is commuter based), a PJs, and six locally owned shops all open. So we’ve been handling an oversaturated market as well.
Lastly, I wish I had been less naïve with my hours. Originally I was open as late as 10pm on Friday and Saturday night. Now I am open 6am-6pm Mon-Sat and 8-3pm on Sun. Much more manageable.
Other than that the shop has done really well and I’ve learned a lot.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
My goal with Big Shot and Caffe Corretto and the other future businesses that will be DBAs under Baskin Coffee, LLC, is to grow and educate coffee culture in the Tyler, TX area. I would like to make coffee and coffee culture approachable and unintimidating. My menu is expansive and comprehensive. Whether catering a wedding or working the Sunday morning rush, I try to be as friendly and relatable as possible, putting people at ease with the ordering process. My staff emulates this and the result is a 4.9 star rating on Google, the best in our area. The reviews themselves are more likely to comment on the intense friendliness of my staff than their tasty drink. This combination of kindness and lack of judgement it the core of or mission statement. Make coffee well, make it approachable.
There are a few things about Big Shot that I think tends to stand out in people’s minds and the biggest one is probably the fact that we sell cigars. They pair surprisingly well with coffee. We keep a small humidor and a cigar guide to help the customer find a pairing. We also make and sell our own ice cream, which is used in our Java Shakes and Affogatos. Maybe a careful observer would also note the uniform we all wear. Following the tune of our Rose the Riveter-esque logo, we all wear jumpsuits. Though I am personally surprised by how few people seem to notice.
I think I would like your readers to come away from this article with a sense of understanding that our shop is people focused, then coffee focused. We are small but we’ve held our own in an overflowing market. We are making our mark and that mark says, you’re welcome here.
Risk taking is a topic that people have widely differing views on – we’d love to hear your thoughts.
It is hard to consider an entrepreneur as anything other than a risk taker. To be an entrepreneur is to be a risk taker. I have met many in my life and of course more now that I am one. When I began Caffe Corretto: Espresso Catering, it was about the safest risk I could possibly take. I saved up and put the business together with no debt. I ran it part time while maintaining a full time job. None of this mattered however when the world entered crippling pandemic. So then I took a major risk. I still mitigated it as much as possible. I purchased second even third hand equipment, I used much of what I had for my catering, I took my own 401k out and a few small loans. Nothing could have prepared me for the amount of time it would take for my life to stabilize. The absolutely rocky economy, insane inflation, compromised supply chains, influx of coffee businesses, the tax on my personal life. Craziness.
Now I realize that whether or not you take risks, “riskiness” will find you. I had the most stable, manageable business I could hope for and a pandemic hit. Five years into running Big Shot, it is as stable as can be and I’m sure something insane and out of my hands will happen to it, that’s the nature of life. I suppose to sum it up, I used to operate as low risk as possible, but you can’t control everything so go ahead and take educated risks. Life is too short and as long as you don’t end up in the hospital or jail, you’re gonna be okay.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.bigshotcoffeehouse.com
- Instagram: @bigshotcoffeehouse
- Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/bigshotcoffeehouse.com
- Twitter: @bigshotcoffeehouse
- Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/bigshotcoffeehouse
- Yelp: http://www.yelp.com/bigshotcoffeehouse
- Other: tiktok handle – @bigshotcoffeehouse
