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Ann Arbor 200

AADL Talks To: Wei and Lisa Bee, Owners of Sweetwaters

When: June 24, 2024

Lisa and Wei Bee
Lisa and Wei Bee

In this episode AADL Talks To Wei and Lisa Bee, owners of Sweetwaters. Recently celebrating 30 years, the couple tell us about the origins of the business, what has changed over the years, and how they incorporate elements of their cultural heritage into their menu and marketing decisions. They also reflect on how the store has weathered recent changes like COVID-19 and street renovations.

Transcript

  • [00:00:09] AMY CANTU: [MUSIC] Hi, this is Amy.
  • [00:00:10] ELIZABETH SMITH: And this is Elizabeth. In this episode, AADL talks to Wei and Lisa Bee, owners of Sweetwaters. Recently celebrating 30 years, the couple tells us about the origins of the business, what has changed over the years, and how they incorporate elements of their cultural heritage into their menu and marketing decisions. They also reflect on how the store has weathered recent changes like COVID-19 and street renovations. [MUSIC] Thank you for joining us.
  • [00:00:36] ELIZABETH SMITH: Today. Usually, we just start by asking what brought you each to Ann Arbor, and did you grow up here?
  • [00:00:41] LISA BEE: Well, thank you for inviting us. You want me?
  • [00:00:43] WEI BEE: Yeah, go ahead. Go first.
  • [00:00:45] LISA BEE: Well, we both came here as students. We went to the University of Michigan and graduated. I'm actually from Cleveland, Ohio. That's where I grew up.
  • [00:00:57] WEI BEE: I'm from Saginaw, Michigan.
  • [00:00:59] ELIZABETH SMITH: So when did you first open Sweetwaters? Where was the original location?
  • [00:01:04] LISA BEE: We opened in 1993 and the original locations on the corner of Washington and Ashley, and for sure, you're too young. [LAUGHTER]
  • [00:01:15] AMY CANTU: I'm not too young. I was there the first year.
  • [00:01:18] LISA BEE: You were?
  • [00:01:19] AMY CANTU: Oh, yeah.
  • [00:01:21] LISA BEE: Those listeners that don't know, Washington Ashley was kind of a-
  • [00:01:28] WEI BEE: Rundown.
  • [00:01:30] LISA BEE: Rundown, a little bit of a red light district area, and not ideal. But we were in our 20s, and that was the place that we could afford. [LAUGHTER]
  • [00:01:43] ELIZABETH SMITH: Do you still operate at that location?
  • [00:01:45] LISA BEE: Yes, we do. Yeah. That's going on 31 years.
  • [00:01:50] AMY CANTU: I remember Joan. Can you talk a little bit about Joan?
  • [00:01:54] LISA BEE: Yeah. She's still there.
  • [00:01:57] AMY CANTU: But she was there every day for years.
  • [00:02:00] LISA BEE: Yes, absolutely. Joan is my mom, also from Cleveland.
  • [00:02:06] WEI BEE: Can I jump in.
  • [00:02:08] LISA BEE: Yeah.
  • [00:02:09] WEI BEE: Also known as the flower lady.
  • [00:02:11] AMY CANTU: Yes. Always a flower.
  • [00:02:12] LISA BEE: Always a flower. She's been with us from the beginning, and now she's not there every day. She used to be there every day managing the mornings, and so she knows the whole morning guests. There's a group of guests that come in every morning called the Breakfast Club. They still come in, and she still sees them. But now she's more on, she comes in as needed. Helps out a little bit here and there, but certainly not to the extent of when you knew her. [LAUGHTER]
  • [00:02:49] ELIZABETH SMITH: When you got the location, you mentioned it was kind of rundown, what led to you being able to purchase the space, and what was located there before?
  • [00:02:57] LISA BEE: So the only reason why we knew about the space is because I worked in the space before. It used to be a stained glass studio, so I used to help build stained glass windows there. So I knew of the two guys that owned the building. We thought this is a really nice corner. It reminded us of a place that we had been to in New York.
  • [00:03:24] WEI BEE: Cafe Lalo.
  • [00:03:26] LISA BEE: Cafe Lalo was a little bit off the beaten track, at the time, so was Washington and Ashley, it wasn't, like the main drag. In terms of cost, we had family helping us and a lot of sweat equity. We were there every day from open to close.
  • [00:03:46] WEI BEE: Amy, I don't know if you're aware, but something magically happened after we opened. The city announced that they were going to redo the sidewalk so they tore it all up, put new concrete. Then after that, I heard the brew pub was going to open across the street, Grizzly Peak, and then next thing we heard the owner that owned Downtown Home and Garden. Mark Hodesh came back because he saw it was like, oh, it's really happening in this corner, and within a few years, it really blossomed into the corner, as you see today so it's very vibrant. I don't want to take too much credit, but I feel like we started the little resurgence of that corner.
  • [00:04:29] AMY CANTU: Yeah no, it's a really fun place to hang out. It's colorful, and just down the block you've got the Fleetwood and yeah, it's really nice location. That site was the American Hotel years and years ago and it has a lot of history, and it's beautiful inside. The woodwork is fantastic, the ceiling is lovely. Can you talk a little bit about the efforts you put into designing it?
  • [00:04:55] LISA BEE: Sure. The ceiling is the original tin ceiling from the hotel, and we didn't really know too much history about the space when we first got it until I think his name was Ernie from across the street from who owned the Del Rio, and I can't remember it was a relative of his maybe that wrote some of the music for Wizard of Oz do you know the story?
  • [00:05:23] AMY CANTU: Yeah.
  • [00:05:23] LISA BEE: Well, he came in, and he brought us this large picture of what the space used to look like. I don't actually remember how he had that picture.
  • [00:05:33] WEI BEE: He just had it. It's such a historical building, and he was proud of it, and when we saw it, we were like, wow. I think the picture was taking in the early 1900s or something.
  • [00:05:45] LISA BEE: It was amazing. We were really looking for a space that had a historical feel to it with the brick walls, and the tin ceilings was cherry on top that we wouldn't normally be able to afford to put in, so we definitely wanted to keep that. We worked with a lot of local woodworkers and carpenters at that time and so much fun. Just that wavy wall that's in the front. I'm so glad that you are nodding because the person who did that is still in Ann Arbor. Harold? Do you know Harold?
  • [00:06:26] AMY CANTU: Is it Harold Kirchen?
  • [00:06:28] WEI BEE: Yes.
  • [00:06:29] LISA BEE: Wow, you do. I remember him making that, and we were trying to figure out, cause I wanted it to be wavy, I don't know how to explain it, like on the side, but also wavy on the top, and so he took tent poles to form it.
  • [00:06:49] WEI BEE: Amazing.
  • [00:06:49] LISA BEE: Yeah. It was originally made out of drywall and had a faux painted finish, and that lasted, I don't know, 20, 25 years and then when we did the renovation, we decided to put glass tile and mosaic on there.
  • [00:07:11] ELIZABETH SMITH: When was the renovation?
  • [00:07:14] LISA BEE: Time has flown by. I think it's been 10 years. [LAUGHTER]
  • [00:07:16] WEI BEE: Ten, 11 years ago.
  • [00:07:19] LISA BEE: We've only done one renovation to that store and it's 30-years-old.
  • [00:07:23] ELIZABETH SMITH: I was curious about the atmosphere of Ann Arbor at the time when you opened. There weren't really a lot of coffee shops, so what led to the decision to make the coffee shop, and how did you distinguish yourself from other businesses in the area?
  • [00:07:37] WEI BEE: I grew up in a Chinese family restaurant background, and when we met at school, I always knew that we were going to open our own business. What kind of business we didn't know so we took a couple of years to find jobs, and then eventually we just said I think it's time. We like Ann Arbor so much. We decided to put down our roots here, found a great location.
  • [00:08:02] LISA BEE: I think the coffee house—the reason why we thought about that is because as students, we enjoyed going to coffee houses. We were really fortunate to have a lot of financial help from our family so we said, okay, if we're going to do a coffee house, we're going to put together our restaurant experience with our experience with going to coffee houses, and we're going to make a really nice, premium elevated coffee house. We invested quite a bit for the time. That was really how we wanted to distinguish ourselves from other coffee houses, it's going to be really beautiful. It's going to offer premium products, and also, we were going to have a very large tea menu, which we still have today. So there's a lot of unique teas that a lot of coffee houses at the time only offered, like Earl Gray, English breakfast so we had a lot of very Asian based teas, and today, our Dragon Pearl Jasmine is one of our most popular teas, and that's something that no one had 30 years ago. Those were things that we did to differentiate ourselves in addition to, we continued to have globally inspired beverages. We love to go to Vietnamese restaurants and they have Vietnamese coffee, so we have our French Vietnamese Au Lait Bringing those experiences that we had personally into our business, that was the most fun of all.
  • [00:09:29] AMY CANTU: Can I ask, what's the inspiration for the name, Sweetwaters?
  • [00:09:34] LISA BEE: We get asked that question a lot.
  • [00:09:36] AMY CANTU: It's a great game.
  • [00:09:38] LISA BEE: The answer is so much more simple than people expect, and it's mostly because we're trying to think about what unites all the products that we have and it's water and what's a nice adjective? We don't want to call it bitter water. We're like let's do Sweetwaters. But then, really it was going back to our cultural heritage and it's how does Sweetwaters sound in Chinese? We wanted to make sure it sounded nice because sometimes translations from English to Chinese doesn't sound right, and so Wei was the one who, why don't you say how you say? I don't actually speak very well in Chinese.
  • [00:10:21] WEI BEE: I don't know if you guys speak any Mandarin but in Mandarin, the character sweet is called tián. It has a really nice sound to it. Then water is shuǐ, so Tián Shuǐ simple as that. But one interesting thing about our logo that I want to share is everybody asks, what is it? At the time when we were constructing our cafe, my parents were starting to go to China quite a bit because we have some relatives there. One of these trips he asked me he goes, hey, is there something that you need there? I go, yeah actually, can you just give me a chop of our cafe? 'Cause we already picked the name Sweetwaters and I had no idea where he was going to get it.
  • [00:11:07] LISA BEE: Let me interrupt. Do you know what a chop is? If you see Asian scroll paintings at the very bottom, there's a red stamp at the bottom, and so that's usually made with a chop, and it's like a vertical piece of stone that's engraved at the bottom, and it's usually the authors or the artist's name in characters. Those are engraved and then they put it in red ink, and then they stamp the bottom of the scroll, that's their signature. That's what a chop is. Go ahead.
  • [00:11:40] WEI BEE: Either comes in a round or square. Next time, if you see a Asian painting, you might see it, and then you know what it is. It's called the chop. My dad goes there, and the funny story is he just saw some guy, random guy, set up his shop on the sidewalk next to the hotel that he stayed. These masters they put everything on their bike, and they bike to the spot, and they set up shop there. He just told the guy, he goes, hey can you make this tián shuǐ chop for me? Interesting thing is you want to jump in.
  • [00:12:16] LISA BEE: He ended up making it out of ancient Chinese pictographs. Instead of the normal characters that you see today for sweet and waters, it's actually a pictograph. I know that people can't see but this top is sweet and then you see how these look like waves of water. But that's not how you write Sweetwaters today. Some random person, we don't know in China had came up with our logo that we used today.
  • [00:12:47] AMY CANTU: That's a great story.
  • [00:12:49] WEI BEE: He brought it back and I said, wow, what is this? He said, that's the character. I loved it. We just used it as our logo ever since.
  • [00:12:59] LISA BEE: The reason why we even needed a chop is that what we used to stamp all of our cups, because we only had one location. We couldn't get custom printed cups. Part of the side job for the baristas, was to put three stamps on every single cup. We just had plain white cups. Thankfully, the baristas don't have to do that today.
  • [00:13:22] WEI BEE: I want to go back to that simpler time, so cool.
  • [00:13:27] ELIZABETH SMITH: I guess this is a good time to ask, when did you start expanding beyond that first location?
  • [00:13:32] LISA BEE: Oh, my goodness. Kerrytown is our first franchisee, which is only like a few blocks away from us. He will be 20 years at Sweetwaters next year. That's when we first started dabbling, dipping our toe into it. But when we really started expanding more quickly, it was probably about seven or eight years ago.
  • [00:13:59] ELIZABETH SMITH: You own and maintain four locations, is that correct?
  • [00:14:02] LISA BEE: Correct.
  • [00:14:03] ELIZABETH SMITH: Then how many franchises are there?
  • [00:14:06] LISA BEE: Thirty five.
  • [00:14:11] AMY CANTU: How many states?
  • [00:14:13] LISA BEE: Was it 12 states? Twelve or 13 states. We just got a franchisee. They opened two locations in North Dakota, so that always throws us off—is it12 or 13?
  • [00:14:27] AMY CANTU: How similar are they to the flagship stores and the ones that you operate here? Do they have the same amount of teas?
  • [00:14:35] LISA BEE: They all have the same menu in terms of the beverage menu. They look similar but we have them, because sometimes they have different configurations. We'll work with that and we have drive-throughs now. That's very different. We don't have a drive-through ourselves. It's a little bit fun and interesting for Wei and I. I know the first time Wei I went to visit a location farthest West was Arizona, and it was very odd for us to see the exact same or very similar store. Seeing people in Arizona enjoy the same drinks that they enjoy here and seeing how much passion franchisees have very similar to us. It was a little bit twilight zone feeling. What do you think?
  • [00:15:30] WEI BEE: Is very bizarre. Because we weren't part of the construction. Normally I'm very involved. I go there all the time and you just hear about the store being built, and then all of a sudden you show up and it's right there operating. That to me was really odd feeling.
  • [00:15:47] LISA BEE: But fun.
  • [00:15:48] AMY CANTU: Going all the way back, I know you mentioned that you wanted to have a variety of teas right from the go. How over these years, since the early '90s, how has your menu changed? What did you decide we really should do this, or this isn't really working? How has it changed over all that time?
  • [00:16:06] LISA BEE: We definitely in terms of food, we have more food with hot sandwiches. In terms of drinks, cold brew has been something that's been very new within the past—new, I say within the past probably seven, eight years. But we found different ways to customize it to make it more like Sweetwaters. Most recently, we've come up with mocktails. That's been really fun and I should talk about Kerrytown, Kerrytown this year they have an alcohol menu. It's beer, wine and actual cocktails, so that's something that we're testing. That's something that we 30 years ago, would not have Thought.
  • [00:16:57] LISA BEE: The other things that we say 30 years ago that we had, we don't thankfully don't have today, we had a smoking section.
  • [00:17:04] AMY CANTU: Isn't that wild? Yeah. It's really changed.
  • [00:17:07] ELIZABETH SMITH: We have some old photos of that and I was whoa, that's so weird.
  • [00:17:10] LISA BEE: Wow.
  • [00:17:12] ELIZABETH SMITH: I was curious about when you do implement a new menu item. What is that like? Does it get distributed to every franchise?
  • [00:17:19] LISA BEE: Yeah, well, we generally do some testing, and all the product development testing actually happens within the first location, the one on Washington and Ashley. Then from there, as long as we don't need to test a new process or anything like that, then we just launch it across all of our stores and all the marketing that goes with it. It's great fun. I think franchisees are always looking for new products, new promotions. It's fun for us.
  • [00:17:50] AMY CANTU: Speaking of the marketing, how has that evolved over the years? You have obviously a very nice look and branding, but how involved are you in that process, and who do you work with to do the branding design?
  • [00:18:02] LISA BEE: Well, part of the reason for that consistency is I'm involved heavily in the marketing because that's one of my favorite things, product development and marketing is my favorite things to do. That's really why we got into this business as just being able to have that direct contact, control over those things that we love. I think the marketing stays consistent. Just my involvement, the marketing team that we've built around it. We used to, for a very long time, have our own internal graphic design team. Since then, our team has grown, and we've decided to work with an agency. We love the agency that we work with, very consistent. Most of our vendors, if we haven't worked with them continually for 30 years, we've worked with them for at least 10 years.
  • [00:18:59] WEI BEE: I will say the difference between when we first opened 30 years ago and now, as far as marketing, is so different. When we first opened, it was, you serve a good product, give good service. It's mostly word of mouth. People like it. They'll tell their friends, but now, everything is so different, social media. Everything digital, third party. I never thought.
  • [00:19:24] LISA BEE: Do you know what the third party is? It's like Uber Eats, DoorDash.
  • [00:19:27] WEI BEE: DoorDash. It's just so different. It's not good or bad, but it's just the new landscape of doing business now.
  • [00:19:34] LISA BEE: Having an app. We never had an app. That was a COVID innovation, so we put that together very quickly.
  • [00:19:44] ELIZABETH SMITH: Did you work with a developer for that?
  • [00:19:47] LISA BEE: Yes, we did. We found a vendor, and we worked through a few things.
  • [00:19:52] ELIZABETH SMITH: Now that we're on the topic of COVID. What else did you have to change during that time, and how have things changed since?
  • [00:19:57] LISA BEE: I don't know. Did you come into our stores during COVID?
  • [00:20:00] AMY CANTU: I did.
  • [00:20:00] LISA BEE: Did you see the time when there was literally one person working there, and we had a general store?
  • [00:20:06] AMY CANTU: Yes.
  • [00:20:07] LISA BEE: Toilet paper and whatever.
  • [00:20:09] AMY CANTU: Yeah.
  • [00:20:11] LISA BEE: It was odd. It was weird to walk into certainly the Washington and Ashley location and see nobody there and people coming in one at a time because everyone was so concerned about multiple people in the store.
  • [00:20:31] WEI BEE: I was surprised that people were even coming in based on what we're going through, but some people didn't want to get cooped up too long, to get some fresh air.
  • [00:20:42] LISA BEE: It was definitely a ghost town. Some innovations, some of the bright side of that innovations that came out of COVID is we did six packs. We did drink six packs, and we did dreamy cold brew kits where people could bring our drinks home in packaged bottles and still enjoy Sweetwaters. Those things still exist today. People use them for different purposes, for catering or road trips, stuff like that. Those are fun to do.
  • [00:21:16] WEI BEE: That's when the third party really exploded because people were ordering from home and then just being delivered.
  • [00:21:25] LISA BEE: On the app too.
  • [00:21:27] AMY CANTU: Was that a scary time for you? That would have been difficult with income.
  • [00:21:31] WEI BEE: Very scary.
  • [00:21:32] LISA BEE: It was horrible. It forced us to definitely think outside the box. There's no giving up. It's like, you just have to figure it out. Fortunately, we did. We had a great team. We had some great advisors that helped us through it, too. All those relationships really came in handy during an emergency.
  • [00:22:00] AMY CANTU: Well, it's interesting to that I think one of the first places people really wanted to go when they could get back out after COVID was just to hang out in the coffee shops and bring their laptops and work again. That social environment is huge in your space.
  • [00:22:14] LISA BEE: We were really surprised when things start, at least somewhat getting back to normal when people were coming in that people came to us and thanked us for staying open through COVID, when we really felt like, thank you for coming in. Thank you for coming back. If we can't do it without you.
  • [00:22:36] ELIZABETH SMITH: I was curious about the BakeBar.
  • [00:22:38] LISA BEE: It's giving me shivers.
  • [00:22:39] ELIZABETH SMITH: In 2013, you are working with Bryant Stuckey, who was a decadent delight, and then you found a bake bar.
  • [00:22:48] LISA BEE: You really did your research.
  • [00:22:50] ELIZABETH SMITH: Is that still in existence, or has it changed?
  • [00:22:52] LISA BEE: No, it's not.
  • [00:22:54] WEI BEE: I wish it was.
  • [00:22:55] LISA BEE: We really loved it. We are still friends with Ryan Stuckey.
  • [00:23:00] WEI BEE: Super guy.
  • [00:23:00] LISA BEE: Anytime we need special occasion cake, we still do that with him. I love doing bake bar. I thought that was so much fun to be able to create any really sweet that we loved. It's also an amalgamation of all the different bakers that we had worked with throughout the years. We had, I don't know if you know this baker, but her name is Barbara Steer. I think she's still in Ann Arbor.
  • [00:23:30] WEI BEE: She does not bake anymore, but I think she still.
  • [00:23:32] LISA BEE: Well, she stopped baking because we would work with her. She started with one store, and then she got all the stores, and we just ended up, I think, just too much, and then she decided she didn't want to do it anymore, but we're still great friends with her. We missed her stuff. Of course, Brian had his stuff too that we worked with. But we had asked Brian, there was this great thing that Barbara made, could you make it? We had a lot of fun, Brian and I just working together on those recipes and having them come back to life. Like a wave my magic wand, I would do it again.
  • [00:24:11] AMY CANTU: Who makes your pastries now?
  • [00:24:14] LISA BEE: Now we get them through much larger vendors. We also have ovens now within our stores, within our cafes like bigger bakeries outside. Some of them are French, some of them are out of Pennsylvania. There's some product that we get in that's raw dough, and then we just put in the oven, and then others that are just, we look for vendors that have the same ethos we do, looking at a real ingredient focus product. There's one vendor that we use that's also woman owned that also has a very similar mission, and we use her cakes.
  • [00:24:55] ELIZABETH SMITH: I was curious if there was a menu item that stands out as a favorite amongst the Ann Arbor community.
  • [00:25:00] LISA BEE: The Ginger Lemon Tea.
  • [00:25:02] AMY CANTU: Yeah. That's one of my favorites.
  • [00:25:09] LISA BEE: Wei's the one who used to make it from scratch every day.
  • [00:25:14] WEI BEE: I must have ground hundreds of pounds of ginger roots but it's all good.
  • [00:25:21] LISA BEE: Fortunately, we don't make it like that today. We have a co-packer that makes a concentrate for us, but with the same ingredients. Then internally in the stores, the stores then make the finished product but that used to be Wei every day.
  • [00:25:40] ELIZABETH SMITH: How long did you do that for Wei?
  • [00:25:44] WEI BEE: Ten years, at least.
  • [00:25:45] LISA BEE: At least 10 years.
  • [00:25:47] WEI BEE: I kept the recipe to myself. Even though when a lot of people were asking begging, hey, my mom is really sick in Arizona. She's not feeling well.
  • [00:25:58] LISA BEE: That is a true story.
  • [00:26:01] WEI BEE: Is there any way we try to make it at home. It's just not right. Is there any way you can share your recipe and luckily, all our baristas know well, only the owner knows it, and he's not here. That's how that went.
  • [00:26:17] AMY CANTU: They just have to get close enough. You also host events at your flagship location. Can you talk about how that's changed over time and what events usually happen?
  • [00:26:29] LISA BEE: If we do music, it's local singer songwriters, because there's a lot of licensing issues now these days but we also—our favorite is anything animal related, so doing the Humane Society, the Rabbit Sanctuary, those type of things. We also will bring in local businesses that are also baking product. I think we've done Marupo's Egg Tarts. The fun event that we do is Don't Tell Comedy. Have you heard of that? It's a secret comedy show, and they don't let you know where the venue is until the day before. We close the cafe a little early, and it's event only for ticket holders but anytime we have a way to bring in the community and host an event, we love to. The day to day things that we do is local art within all of our cafes. That's an initiative that we ask franchisees to do. We don't charge artists for that, but just the wall space, it's beneficial to us, beneficial to the artists to be able to put up their art work.
  • [00:27:48] WEI BEE: One of the day to day event that is one of my favorite is still happens every Saturday is a group of people from all walks of life, and they fill the whole back room and guess what they're doing. They're all speaking Spanish to each other, learning Spanish. If you guys ever want to learn Spanish, just go and they're so welcoming, and I love it. It's so vibrant. They take up the whole room. It's great.
  • [00:28:15] AMY CANTU: You have exhibits on the wall, too. Have you been doing that right from the get go?
  • [00:28:20] WEI BEE: Right from the beginning.
  • [00:28:22] LISA BEE: Always from the beginning. That's all the local artists coming in, and they change out their artwork probably every month.
  • [00:28:30] WEI BEE: The group that's heading in now is Women's Artists.
  • [00:28:34] LISA BEE: It's the Ann Arbor Women Artist's Association, but there's a few men in it, too.
  • [00:28:41] WEI BEE: How'd that happen?
  • [00:28:42] ELIZABETH SMITH: They recently expanded. I was curious about the “SweetStories” that you had customer driven stories about their experiences. Were there any of those that really stood out to you and made an impact on you?
  • [00:28:56] WEI BEE: Quite a bit. I don't know, probably a good number of guests meeting each other there for the first time.
  • [00:29:04] LISA BEE: We had somebody who had met at the cafe that ended up getting married at the cafe. We've had many baristas find their spouse, either it's a co-worker or a guest that they ended up marrying.
  • [00:29:18] WEI BEE: Somebody in the know told me one time said, Wei, I hope you realize how many deals.
  • [00:29:27] LISA BEE: Business deals.
  • [00:29:30] WEI BEE: Happens in your cafe, especially being in Ann Arbor. That's pretty neat.
  • [00:29:36] LISA BEE: We've heard a lot of authors have written their books in the cafe, so that was nice to hear. I'm trying to think of the other stories that we've heard. I can't think of any off top of my head.
  • [00:29:51] AMY CANTU: I'm going to ask a couple of weird questions, because I want to.
  • [00:29:54] WEI BEE: I like weird.
  • [00:29:55] AMY CANTU: This is weird. There's been the whole laptop revolution since you opened up, and people love to bring their laptops and sit for hours and hours and hours. Has that been a problem ever and how did you wrestle with it because I know that, turnover of tables is a way to make money.
  • [00:30:15] WEI BEE: Yes. That's a very good question. In the very beginning, I've always wanted to my cafes to be more of a gathering space for people to talk.
  • [00:30:28] AMY CANTU: Talk, yeah.
  • [00:30:29] WEI BEE: Not really loudly, but just like normal conversation. All of a sudden, you have a lot of these people come in with their laptops and they're actually working— school work or their work. Then there was a little bit of conflict happening. Some people would tell the group sitting next to them, hey, can you guys, please, you're being a little too loud. It was something I didn't expect, but but now I think it's okay. I think people have gotten used to, if you're there working on your computer, you're fine. But at the time, it was challenging. It really was.
  • [00:31:16] LISA BEE: There are obviously people that would turn around and say, this is a coffee house. I should be able to talk, to chat with my friends. It's not an office space. But fortunately, eventually, everybody kind of figured it out. Today, we still see people using it as an office space and meetings and stuff like that. But hopefully they're just a little bit more tolerant of each other.
  • [00:31:41] WEI BEE: The other thing, I hear some of the people that work in the cafe with their laptops. They say, it's too quiet at home. I want to be in the cafe where there's some noise. It's perfect. It's all worked itself out.
  • [00:31:58] LISA BEE: We do ask them to make a purchase every so often not to just stay there for fours hours and on one cup of coffee. Most reasonable people understand that.
  • [00:32:12] ELIZABETH SMITH: How has that dynamic changed with the Westgate library location if at all?
  • [00:32:17] LISA BEE: Well, that's not our seating, that's all the library seating, so we don't have anything to say about that, so as long as the library is okay but there are times we are actually open before the library is open. It's really interesting to come into the library sometimes on during those times of day and the library is closed, but it's completely filled. All Sweetwaters cups on every single table. It's very interesting to see. We are very happy to be at the library location.
  • [00:32:51] AMY CANTU: I think a lot of people thought this won't work. This is weird, but it really does.
  • [00:32:55] WEI BEE: Including me.
  • [00:32:56] AMY CANTU: Really? What were your thoughts?
  • [00:32:58] WEI BEE: I had some concerns at the time we were talking to Josie. I said, Josie I don't know because people are not going to like the noise.
  • [00:33:08] LISA BEE: Espresso machine, the grinders.
  • [00:33:10] WEI BEE: All that. The ice and the espresso machines steaming and she goes, you know what, we thought everything through. She goes, the cafe is going to be next to the children's area. There's going to be some noise. Then I'm like, I don't know. I said, what about the purists? There's library purists. They don't want any noise, and she goes no, don't worry about those folks, we built a reading room for them.
  • [00:33:37] AMY CANTU: You talked a little bit about the changes on that corner and the changes in town. Recently, they made that Ashley two way Street. Has that had any impact whatsoever, or did that change anything on that corner?
  • [00:33:52] WEI BEE: For my own view, I'm all for pedestrian friendliness. Whatever that takes for I don't like to see a lot of vehicles going by really fast. You'd be surprised when it was one way Street, every day, you would see a car going the opposite way.
  • [00:34:10] LISA BEE: The wrong way. Yeah.
  • [00:34:11] WEI BEE: Usually people that are visiting that are not familiar with downtown. Here's another car going the other way. But now with it being a two way, I think it takes maybe a little getting used to, but I think it's actually better and even when they redid the curb, actually force the driver to slow down, even better. I'm very happy with the changes. That's my view.
  • [00:34:36] AMY CANTU: You must feel that way, too about blocking off that street for outdoors.
  • [00:34:40] WEI BEE: Absolutely.
  • [00:34:41] WEI BEE: Absolutely.
  • [00:34:42] AMY CANTU: That's been a big renovation—innovation.
  • [00:34:44] WEI BEE: Yes. Actually, I wish that it could be done permanently.
  • [00:34:49] LISA BEE: Yeah, you see streets in Europe, and they have it closed, and they have those automatic, I don't know what they call bollards or something.
  • [00:34:56] WEI BEE: They come out of the street.
  • [00:34:57] LISA BEE: They come out of the street. It'd be great if they had that.
  • [00:35:01] ELIZABETH SMITH: What about broader changes in Ann Arbor over the past 30 years? What have you noticed?
  • [00:35:09] WEI BEE: A lot of new luxurious apartments going up. I say to myself like, wow, another one. No, it's such a great city to be part of.
  • [00:35:26] LISA BEE: I don't know we'll see it coming back, but a lot of work from home. The office landscape has changed. I hope that gets back, it's nice to see people downtown and working and meetings happening in-person. I see maybe it's very slowly coming back, but that was something due to COVID change that we didn't like seeing.
  • [00:35:53] WEI BEE: Before COVID, we were open till midnight for the longest time. After COVID, we had to pare down our hours, but now we got it back to 11:00.
  • [00:36:06] LISA BEE: But I would say that's another change that pre-COVID it was nice to see so much night life and activity pretty late into the night, and now we probably are one of the places that are open the latest, and I would love to see that vibrancy downtown late at night again because it feels like if you don't have your dinner plans figured out by 6:00, then if you get there by 7:00 or 8:00, they're going to be closed or closing soon.
  • [00:36:36] ELIZABETH SMITH: How long have you been open late at night? Because usually coffee shops close at like 5:00 or 6:00, which I personally don't like. I'm happy that you're open that late, but what led to that decision to stay open so late?
  • [00:36:47] LISA BEE: Till midnight?
  • [00:36:48] ELIZABETH SMITH: Yeah.
  • [00:36:49] LISA BEE: Like I said our inspiration was this coffee shop in New York, and that was open late, and so we did that till midnight for good 20 years.
  • [00:36:59] WEI BEE: Well there was a stretch of time where we even thought about opening 24/7 24 hours.
  • [00:37:06] LISA BEE: We were much younger then.
  • [00:37:09] WEI BEE: We started a family, and then we decided, you know what? We need to get some sleep because I don't want to be waking up 2:00 or 3:00 O'clock in the morning and having to go deal with some issue, so we just kept it at midnight.
  • [00:37:24] ELIZABETH SMITH: What was it like raising a family while also owning a business?
  • [00:37:28] WEI BEE: Great. Because when you own your own business.
  • [00:37:33] LISA BEE: You get to make your own rules.
  • [00:37:34] WEI BEE: You can bring your own kid.
  • [00:37:37] LISA BEE: We had our kids start. We have three boys. They're age 30, 27, 21. Two of them already graduated from U of M. Third one will graduate from U of M as well. They all went to high school here in Ann Arbor. They've worked at the cafe since the time they could walk. Even they were in your backpack. He had a backpack and carrying our kids and working at the same time. That's the fun part of owning your own business. You can do those kind of things. But I also think we very much wanted our kids to be involved and see what it was like to own a business and not be like wondering what do my parents do? If they were here, they would tell you that, even though they're not involved in the business, at least the two older ones are not involved in the business anymore. They were for a considerable amount of time all the way to even after college in different forms, whether it's being a barista or helping in the office. But they'll tell you that they learned a lot, and they've used that experience for what they're doing today. Our oldest son has his own business, and our second son works in the corporate world, but he's taken certainly the things that he's learned to that.
  • [00:39:06] ELIZABETH SMITH: What are you each most proud of?
  • [00:39:09] WEI BEE: There's two things I'm really proud of, the friendships that I've made through the cafe guests. Number two, just the number of staff that came through, when they started to work with us they were young people, and a lot of them started out as being really shy, but because of the interaction, you're forced to talk to our guests, and then you work around with your co-worker and then you see them grow into I don't know, it's amazing to me like now they're all grown up and have their own families, have really high end jobs, things like that. For me, it's really what I'm grateful for.
  • [00:39:58] LISA BEE: I would say, with our teams, just like Wei said, when we started out, we were similar in age to our staff. Now we can be their parents and some of their grandparents. But really being able to see them go through their life, as a college student, and then still remain friends with them, and now they have their own families, and we still keep in touch with many of them. There's many out there that we don't know what's happened to them, but we would love to see them. They've all impacted our life and our memory. We were just talking about a couple of the people, we wonder where they are today. Usually, like, every Thanksgiving, a lot of those kids, well, they're not kids anymore, but would come back to Ann Arbor because they're families here, and they will come back and visit us, and they'll say, this was one of the best jobs that I had when I was in high school or college. That's definitely one piece of it. I wouldn't give up those relationships for anything. But the other piece is really being able to take our business and our brand and bring forth to the community wherever we are, our Asian heritage and to be able to share that with our guests. It's not until the past probably seven, eight years that we really celebrated Lunar New Year every single year and now we do this like it's a concentration that we think of, how we're going to celebrate this year or next year's Year of the Snake. It's like thinking of all the creative fun ways, as T-shirts or cups or what kind of drink or tattoo? This is not a real tattoo. But just what fun ways can we bring our cultural heritage to other people and just get them to know what it's like and I'm very proud of that.
  • [00:42:29] AMY CANTU: AADL Talks To is a production of the Ann Arbor District Library.