AADL Talks To: Lisa Tuveson and Ken Pargulski, Longtime Espresso Royale Employees & Owners of M36 Coffee Roasters and Cafe

Wed, 08/28/2024 - 9:47pm

When: August 8, 2024

In this episode, AADL Talks to Ken Pargulski & Lisa Tuveson. Ken & Lisa were both long-time employees of Espresso Royale. When the company closed in 2020 they carried on the legacy and lessons they had learned by opening M-36 roasters in Whitmore Lake and their own cafe on South U. They tell us about the coffee house culture of early Espresso Royale, the company’s expansion, and its community impact.

Transcript

• [00:00:09] KATRINA ANBENDER: Hi. This is Katrina.
• [00:00:11] ELIZABETH SMITH: This is Elizabeth. In this episode, AADL talks to Ken Pargulski and Lisa Tuveson. Ken and Lisa were both longtime employees of Espresso Royale. When the company closed in 2020, they carried on the legacy and lessons they had learned by opening M36 Rosters in Whitmore Lake and their own cafe on South U. They tell us about the coffeehouse culture of early Espresso Royale, the company's expansion and its community impact.
• [00:00:37] ELIZABETH SMITH: Thank you for joining us today, Ken and Lisa.
• [00:00:41] KEN PARGULSKI: Thank you for having us.
• [00:00:42] LISA TUVESON: Thank you.
• [00:00:43] ELIZABETH SMITH: Where did each of you grow up and what brought you to Ann Arbor?
• [00:00:46] LISA TUVESON: Well, I grew up in Manchester from, like, three years old till 18, and then I lived in Boston for 10 years and then came back to Michigan to Ann Arbor in like 2000 for work. I worked for a company Espresso Royale that used to be here. I was in Michigan working for them in Ann Arbor. Then I moved to Boston and opened coffee houses. Then they moved me back here in '99--end of '99.
• [00:01:13] KEN PARGULSKI: I actually grew up outside of Chicago in Oak Park, Illinois, and also worked for Espresso Royale back in that time, that was early '90s in Champaign-Urbana, where we had cafes and then moved out to Boston, and that's where I met Lisa. Then I was moved back to Ann Arbor where their headquarters was. Then that's end of '99 for me as well.
• [00:01:40] KATRINA ANBENDER: The first Espresso Royale was founded here in Ann Arbor on State? No, where was the [OVERLAPPING]
• [00:01:45] LISA TUVESON: The first Michigan one was actually in East Lansing, I believe, on Abbott--long time ago. In '88 I think, or in '86 or '87. In '87, they opened in Ann Arbor on State Street. But they already had one in Kansas. That was the first one in Oklahoma. People who started that company came from California across the country. The first college town they came to, they opened a cafe. I think it was Normal--or Norman?
• [00:02:11] KEN PARGULSKI: Norman Oklahoma.
• [00:02:12] LISA TUVESON: Norman, Oklahoma. Then they went to Kansas, Manhattan, Kansas and then they went to East Lansing, Ann Arbor, and Urbana, Illinois U of I campus at the same time. The sixth cafe was State Street, Ann Arbor. That was in the late 80s.
• [00:02:28] ELIZABETH SMITH: The founders were Marcus Goller, and Charles Lawrence. Do you have any stories about them? Where you had a relationship with them?
• [00:02:37] KEN PARGULSKI: Absolutely. We had a relationship with him. I didn't work as directly with Marcus as Lisa did until I moved here. I met him prior to being here, but my biggest recollection of Marcus, I think Chuck was gone at this point when I was here was how he would take his break. Our main office used to be on Main Street in Ann Arbor, and he would come out and just walk around the building every single day. Anytime we came in either for a visit or we came--whatever, we'd just go on that walk with him. Among other things, there was just a big portion of how I think too is like you need your little moment of space.
• [00:03:15] LISA TUVESON: I worked with Marcus like the first day of work at State Street in Ann Arbor, and I had no idea who he was, like that he was the owner. Him and his wife worked at the State Street store. They'd opened and it was really busy. It was the only place in Ann Arbor to get, like, coffee, and it was different. It was tables. It was counter service, which wasn't really a thing then. This is before Starbucks. Starbucks never did counter service until, like, way later. The store was really busy, and so I was a little bit sarcastic. I was working with them. I'm like, people who tell me to do certain things, and I said, I would say, why? They said, the owner likes it that way, and I had no idea. Him and his wife are the owners.
• [00:03:50] KEN PARGULSKI: Was it him saying that?
• [00:03:52] LISA TUVESON: No, no. They like it that way, and I'm like, really? Whatever, and then I made a comment to Amy, who was his wife, about honey being bee spit. She's like, oh, and then I found out, like a week later that they were the owners I'm like, great. Hope I was not too inappropriate and off the cuff. I mean, I worked with Marcus closely for, like, almost the whole time I was there, so I was at Espresso Royale for 30 some years when they shut down during COVID. He's the one who moved me to Boston to open coffee houses. Him and his wife moved there as well. It was like a branch we were opening. Chuck was in Illinois opening coffee houses, and he went to also like, Minneapolis, where we had some. I knew both of them. We'd have these great meetings with all the managers and the team like every year, like at a, either--usually at a place like one time we went to, like, a--I think I feel like it was was it Higgins Lake? At that point, I feel like half of the lake was dry and half was not dry, and it was a bunch of young managers early 20s because those guys were not very old when they started. They were like 22. Then we would have these great intense meetings, and then they would just really party really hard. Then we got in trouble because we were on this lake that was dry and they were loud. But, I mean, it was a great time, great time to grow up and learn from people who were really passionate about what they did. The camaraderie in the team was awesome, like, top to bottom.
• [00:05:20] KEN PARGULSKI: Coffee was definitely, I mean, it was jammimg, I mean, even today, it still is, but it was just you just rocked the whole time, so it's pretty cool.
• [00:05:31] KATRINA ANBENDER: When did you both start working for Espresso Royale, and what were your first roles there?
• [00:05:37] LISA TUVESON: 1989, I was a crew person, a barista.
• [00:05:40] KATRINA ANBENDER: Which location?
• [00:05:41] LISA TUVESON: State Street, Ann Arbor.
• [00:05:43] KEN PARGULSKI: I started '94 in Urbana, Illinois. That was mine. I was also a barista as well, so, counter barista.
• [00:05:51] ELIZABETH SMITH: How did your careers progress from those initial positions? What were each of your titles when Espresso Royale closed?
• [00:05:58] LISA TUVESON: When I started with Espresso Royale and when Ken did, even though it was later, the company was growing very quickly, they'd opened two, or three stores because the initial investors were just, like, open more, you know what I mean? It was a new thing. We were in the Midwest, too, which was different. I was like California is where all the trends for stuff like that start, usually like food and beverages. I was just a team member, then I became assistant manager of the State Street Store very quickly because I was responsible. My parents raised me to work hard, work means work. Work hard, talk to people, get things done. They saw me as a good leader, so they asked me to move to Boston. I was like 20, I think. I said yeah. I moved to Boston, we opened our first store there, and we were out there and Dunkin' Donuts started out in Boston. We opened our first store on Gainsborough Street near like Symphony Hall in Northeastern University, and people were confused about what we were doing. You don't have pizza? They're like, you don't have pizza? Got any donuts? Like, no, we have coffee, and we have some pastries. We got from the North end. Then school started. We were really slow first couple of months. We opened the summer and classes started and it took off. Then people understood, because there was nothing like that there either. No counter service coffee place. I became the regional manager of Boston. We opened four stores, five stores. I became vice president and I didn't know it. They put my name on stuff. What happened was they told me, you're the vice president. I said, I'm I? I would travel back to Michigan and go to other places where they needed help. I lived in Boston though, so I was like, half and half. I traveled to Minneapolis and would help out. I'd come to Ann Arbor and help out because Marcus meanwhile moved back here to stabilize Ann Arbor. They were growing here. Then he asked me to move back here in '99. Then when it closed down, I was VP of operations still. This change the role changed over the years, about what exactly I did, but basically just means you learned to do everything. I mean, that's the business it is, you learn to do it all. We weren't like super hierarchical. We weren't, like, you stay here. It's like, you know how to do everything. You help were you need to help.
• [00:08:13] KEN PARGULSKI: My career, I started '94 as a barista, and as Lisa said, Espresso Royale was growing, so they had, like, this manager university program that they did, and I was out of college and just didn't know what I was doing and said, I'm going to try that. I went through the training, and right as I finished, they were opening stores all over the place, and they're like, we're not sure what we're going to do yet. I'm like, I was still in Urbana living there, and that was a couple months, a couple of months, and Marcus called and said, I need you to go out to California. We have some cafes, and they had Santa Cruz. It was in Santa Cruz. I went out there and the guy who was running the store, at one point, he was probably your role or similar role.
• [00:09:02] LISA TUVESON: He hired me.
• [00:09:04] KEN PARGULSKI: He hired you. I went into his cafe and helped learn how to manage, and it was a supremely busy location, at least for how I had been going in my career at that point. After I did that, I was out there for a month or so, came back to Urbana, and then they said, Well, we're going to send you out to Boston. Went out and managed two or three of the cafes that were out there and in that time, started going around to other locations and training people as we opened cafes, they wanted I would train crews and train managers and kept doing that until I moved back here in '99, and around 2000 moved out of the managing part, and moved into the office, and there wasn't a whole lot for me to do. Actually, going back to Marcus and I, we started a pizza business together for like a year, I think we did it. Then so I left the company at this point for about six years. Then Marcus approached me in 2007 and asked if I wanted to open a roaster. I said absolutely. We set up our roaster in Whitmore Lake in our current location. It was in a warehouse. I set it all up and did all the stuff. I mean, in the interim of me leaving, I had worked at a couple of retail places and learned, like, logistics and stuff like that. It just helped my career here. At that point, I started running the roaster. We put a bakery in in 2009, so I was running that. Still did manager training around the country. Then in Illinois, we opened a bakery, so I helped with that, and then COVID shutdown, and that was it.
• [00:10:49] KATRINA ANBENDER: At what point did you two meet each other? Was it in Boston or was it here?
• [00:10:54] KEN PARGULSKI: I was in Boston. I was becoming a new manager. That was my first official assignment, and I rented a U-Haul from Ann Arbor and drove out, basically tried to go overnight. Didn't make it stopped in Dorchester. Where was it?
• [00:11:10] LISA TUVESON: Dorchester.
• [00:11:10] KEN PARGULSKI: Dorchester.
• [00:11:13] KEN PARGULSKI: No, it wasn't Dorchester, it was.
• [00:11:15] LISA TUVESON: Wester.
• [00:11:18] KEN PARGULSKI: Wester. Crashed overnight in a hotel and got up and went. I was supposed to be there at 12:00, and I was two hours late and still rolling in, and that's before cell phones and stuff. I had a call I'm like hey, I'm sorry, I'm late. My first meeting with Lisa was in her office, and I'm sorry, I'm late, but, yeah, that's how we met. Then we became friends, and continue on.
• [00:11:47] ELIZABETH SMITH: Lisa, you opened the cafe on South U, is that correct?
• [00:11:51] LISA TUVESON: So, COVID shut down, we all lost our jobs because Espresso decided not to reopen and to shut down, there was about 300 of us throughout the company. Over the years, they sold the Boston stores to somebody else out there. They sold the California stores, they condensed it to Midwest, so it was Illinois, Minneapolis.
• [00:12:11] KEN PARGULSKI: Madison.
• [00:12:12] LISA TUVESON: Madison, Wisconsin, and Ann Arbor and East Lansing. There's about 300 people. We all got laid off, and both of us worked there. Ken said I don't want to stop doing this, I love this. There were still a lot of customers, you couldn't go anywhere, who wanted coffee beans and stuff like that. We bought the roaster from Espresso Royale as they were shutting down because he knew how to do that, we knew how to do that.
• [00:12:32] KEN PARGULSKI: I was still doing all of that at the same time, I actually never stopped working.
• [00:12:37] LISA TUVESON: Because the grocery stores ordered coffee from us. We did that wasn't even a year, was it? It was one year.
• [00:12:49] KEN PARGULSKI: We officially started in June of 2020 by May.
• [00:12:55] LISA TUVESON: Was it May?
• [00:12:56] KEN PARGULSKI: I think in May of 2021, the landlord from South U approached Lisa.
• [00:13:00] LISA TUVESON: Because she was the landlord from Espresso Royale, and she knew me. Since I opened that cafe in 2004 for Espresso Royale with a team of people. It was still empty, obviously, COVID--things hadn't opened up, really, you know what I mean? They weren't back to normal. Michigan had school in person, then they didn't. It was just an odd time. She approached us and me, hey, will you open this cafe up? I was like, no, [LAUGHTER] that's so much work. Because I was in operations, I did a lot of stuff I helped open the roaster. I did whatever, but, operations is different. Opening a coffee house and having a huge team and all that. I have done it, yes, at that time, I was like, I don't know about that, seems a headache.
• [00:13:42] KEN PARGULSKI: We were both like do we really want to do this?
• [00:13:42] LISA TUVESON: Doing roasting stuff and a roaster, and doing mailer is way easier, [LAUGHTER] but I think it took a couple of months of her trying to find someone else to run it and have us consult and all this back and forth. Maybe I can pay you this consulting fee and you can do it, and I'll be your partner, and I was like, okay, I don't want to do any of that, we'll just do it ourselves, [LAUGHTER] That's what we did. We're going up on our third year was today, August 9th, is today 9th?
• [00:14:10] ELIZABETH SMITH: Happy anniversary.
• [00:14:12] KEN PARGULSKI: Today is the 8th.
• [00:14:13] LISA TUVESON: Today is the 8th? Tomorrow is one year, three years we've been open. We opened on the 9th of August in '21.
• [00:14:19] KEN PARGULSKI: It's pretty cool.
• [00:14:21] LISA TUVESON: We opened, and we didn't have any money. We lost our jobs, we weren't getting paid or whatever. We were lucky the government paid people a decent unemployment, for a while, but we ended up hiring a lot of people we worked with before, who all lost their jobs. The coffee industry and coffee houses are pretty unique. They're fun. They can be fun, your customers are usually very nice, great people, especially students, they're the best ones, I think, actually, because they're like happier. Middle-aged people, they're very optimistic about life versus someone who's in middle age. They're like, "Oh God." We're a little crankier, but our customers are great over there. We opened the store we had and most of our team was people that we'd worked with before. The manager we hired managed for us that store for Espresso Royale, I hired her to do that. She actually still works over there with us, and there's still a bunch of people from Espresso Royale that work for us over there. I run the coffee house, and Ken runs the rooster.
• [00:15:27] KEN PARGULSKI: Yep.
• [00:15:28] KATRINA ANBENDER: You said you opened that store in 2004 when it was Espresso Royale, the one that's on South U. Can you compare, what the competition was like from other coffee shops then versus now?
• [00:15:40] LISA TUVESON: There's more competition now because--Starbucks, I don't know if they were actually open then on South U, I can't remember if they were open. There wasn't anything really over there. Before Oasis moved, there was Rendezvous coffee shop, but it had been the downtown deli and bagel shop thing that was on main street where the Starbucks ended up going in, too. The place that had been there walked away and left all their stuff. There was less competition then, there's more now, there's people who have opened, trying to copy us next door, right down the street. Starbucks is there, and then there's other places that offer coffee, and there's going to be a bagel shop across in the new building. They know Joe's Pizza people, and they're opening a bagel shop, diagonal from us in that building across from us. It's harder now, but Espresso Royale was a pretty strong company in Ann Arbor, a lot of people knew who they were. It just all depends on what's happen though, there's a lot more people, too, it's different. Those big buildings they've put up, there's people right next door to us. They've knocked down all the older Ann Arbor businesses, which is sad, but I understand it, but it's sad.
• [00:16:59] ELIZABETH SMITH: What were the hours like early on, I know that I read in the newspaper, it was like 7:00 AM to 1:00 AM, a lot of open hours. How did you manage that, and did that change over time?
• [00:17:10] LISA TUVESON: Do you want to talk about Urbana because you worked there when they were like overnight, didn't you at 24?
• [00:17:14] KEN PARGULSKI: When I started in Urbana, they were actually 24 hours. That one, I don't--was that the only one that was like that?
• [00:17:22] LISA TUVESON: I think so.
• [00:17:22] KEN PARGULSKI: I'm not sure why, but it was busy 24 hours a day. When we were out and about after going out, we would go get some coffee. The hours for here, yeah, 7:00-1:00, that was pretty standard 7:00-12:00.
• [00:17:35] LISA TUVESON: It used to be midnight at South U. Then, over the years, we looked at how many customers do you actually have after 12 o'clock, how many did you have after eleven. It's usually one person comes in and they sit there the whole time. People don't want to be out, especially women walking around at night, at two in the morning unless they're with a group going home, but you can't staff more than one person if you have two customers. I think a long time ago for Espresso Royale, we were a little busier at night after 10, but we also had the self served coffee, and people would just take it, I think because you could, I know they did. Espresso Royale when they closed, I think we were open until nine in the summer and 10 still during the week during the school year. When we opened, we do seven in the summer and eight during the school year. I always toy with staying open until nine, but really, the people where we are, they don't want coffee.
• [00:18:33] KEN PARGULSKI: They're going out.
• [00:18:33] LISA TUVESON: They're going out, I mean, that depends on the area you're in, I think. State Street, way more people walking around locally. South U is a complete student, like young student area. It's like bizarre, it's so close, but they're so different. The demographics are so different. In the summer, it's very different. You can be on South U, there's no one walking around, you go to State Street, there's tons of people, because it's more of a neighborhood. We're open until eight in the school year, we might go up until nine. It's easier to find people if you close a little earlier. I mean, I don't know, people, are more serious about studying now?
• [00:19:06] KEN PARGULSKI: That's actually I think still one of the effects of COVID is that businesses learned, hey, this isn't feasible for us to be open this late. Like Lisa said, coffee is not a commodity at 10 o'clock at night if you're going out.
• [00:19:21] LISA TUVESON: Maybe to a few people, but not as many as you think, you know what I mean?
• [00:19:26] KATRINA ANBENDER: Espresso Royale really opened during the era of coffee houses, can you describe what that culture was. That isn't something that I see with the newer stores that have opened as much.
• [00:19:40] LISA TUVESON: State Street specifically. Have you--go in that place now, the right side was not--was just the left side. There's that wall between the two, you know what I mean? There's a different flooring or whatever. It was a place to talk and hang out, It was totally different, you smoked inside all the cafes, it was very smoky. But you hung out and talked, there weren't computers then, I mean, there was no cell phones. For our paperwork, we had the original Macs, those little ones like this, little cubes, and we'd send our paper. They would hold hands with it over a phone line, you can see it, shaking hands and getting the information. [LAUGHTER] Then we'd send everything in paper to the office, you know what I mean, but people would wait in line for tables, and they called it "Cafe Depresso." There were always nicknames for it, was beatnik-y, you know what I mean, but it was cool. People would be like, oh you're snobby, and then they're like, oh people aren't snobby here, everybody went there. There was a lot of conversations and the talk about shared tables, no big deal. There's an empty seat right there at that 18 inch round table, someone's going to sit at it. They don't know you, but they're going to sit there. They'd wait in line and then you'd be like, hey, sit with them, you know what I mean? It's completely different. Before COVID, people didn't talk so much in cafes. Everyone had a computer, and they barely talked. It would just be quiet sometimes, especially the non student ones like on Plymouth Road, we had one, in Woodland. You'd walk in, it was just like the music and no talking, strange. I always was like, wow, it's too bad, but now I feel like it's changed back a little bit because people do talk again because they lost that. People did for years, and some people still don't have that, they work at home only now. They crave that human interaction, I think, I see it. A lot of groups talk now, meet there and talk. We have professors having classes, little meet ups in our cafe all the time. In the summer, even now, people have their computers. Some people are by themselves, a lot of people have their computers, and they're talking with the people, and they're working together, which I really didn't see that much towards right before COVID. It was more just I'm by myself and whatever. People, I think, now actually will sit with each other because people do shared tables in all these restaurants now, it's more common now.
• [00:21:50] KEN PARGULSKI: It was a very cool atmosphere, it was when I was a barista, you knew everybody's name. Then as I became a manager, I taught everybody, Like Cheers, if people want to go where people know your name and they feel welcome. Like Lisa was saying earlier, people were excited, they were just I'm happy to be here. It was pretty cool, it was really cool atmosphere--and smoking, too.
• [00:22:12] LISA TUVESON: Lot of smoking.
• [00:22:12] KEN PARGULSKI: A lot of smoke.
• [00:22:13] LISA TUVESON: Like stains. You put vents in for smoking.
• [00:22:16] KEN PARGULSKI: Almost behind the counter even, but not quite.
• [00:22:20] ELIZABETH SMITH: In the early years, there's a lot of news reports that the shop was super popular, at the State Street shop, but that there was no pressure to keep purchasing coffee or pastries, you could just kind of hang out in there. How did you balance that, and what were the expansions over the years, allowing more people to come in and enjoy that space?
• [00:22:37] LISA TUVESON: How did you balance that in the early years? That's what it was. When they expanded, I lived in Boston, and they expanded the State Street store specifically. If you are unaware of this, but Ann Arbor is very expensive. Rent and all those places where we are. It's like New York rent, it's crazy. They expanded because we wanted to see more people, we wanted to whatever, was it wise financially?
• [00:23:03] LISA TUVESON: It was until Starbucks opened down the corner where Gratzi used to be, and then Kerry--you know it's all these people. Biggby had been on Liberty, they closed, and then The Lab. Near State Street, there's so many coffee houses. I think later looking back. That wasn't my decision to do that, but I think it was a regret based on the rent number. Not for people, cause that store was full all the time with people studying and hanging out. Maybe they didn't buy something every time, but usually people bought stuff. If someone was just hanging out all the time and harassing, we asked them to leave kind of thing. But even in where we are now, I sometimes want to tell people, I have people waiting for seats and you're not buying anything, or you came in with your Starbucks. Why did you come in? Go sit in Starbucks with your Starbucks. Why are you here? They have seats, why did you come in and sit in my front window with your cup? I just don't understand people. It's rude. But I know if I say that, I'm going to be put online somewhere and someone's going to post it.
• [00:23:58] KEN PARGULSKI: I give him one of our cups and say, can you just put it in this?
• [00:24:01] ELIZABETH SMITH: Just cover it. [LAUGHTER]
• [00:24:03] LISA TUVESON: To me, it's common courtesy. You know what I mean. You don't go to a restaurant and take someone else's food in with you. They don't let you do that.
• [00:24:10] KEN PARGULSKI: You said that was the reputation of the State Street store people--
• [00:24:12] LISA TUVESON: You could hang out.
• [00:24:14] LISA TUVESON: That's what happens at our cafe still. You want people to be there. We did ask people, hey, are you going to purchase something because people are waiting. But sometimes that's offensive if it doesn't come off right. Even though it is your space, it's like when people--do you have a public bathroom? I say I have a bathroom for my customers, but you can use it if you want. That's what I say to people. I wouldn't call it public because I pay for it, but you can use it. But it's not like a public restroom. Your taxpayer money does not pay for it. But I let people hang out and most of the time, they will end up buying something. Or they could be a regular customer just didn't buy anything yet.
• [00:24:55] KATRINA ANBENDER: Can you tell us about some of the arts events that Espresso Royale hosted over the years? Are there any that stand out in your memory?
• [00:25:03] LISA TUVESON: We used to have local artists on the walls all the time with the Ann Arbor Art Center. They would rotate the art in and out of all the stores in Ann Arbor. I don't remember any that stand out. There were so many over the years. Main Street used to have musicians and stuff like that. Programs like that are hard to keep up. For the Art Center it was, ended up being really hard and for our staff. If someone came in and damaged a piece. You know what I mean? We tell the artists, we're not responsible for these. Then sometimes arts would leave their stuff. They wouldn't take it. They would be taken down, they'd leave it in our office. Because maybe they're traveling. That program stopped after a while. It was pretty cool at the time. I don't do anything now because I don't really have any walls.
• [00:25:41] KEN PARGULSKI: It's a lot of windows.
• [00:25:44] LISA TUVESON: I would never want to put someone's art up in the basement. Some would probably just take it or something. They steal those signs off my bathrooms all the time.
• [00:25:53] KEN PARGULSKI: We did art in all of the cafes, though, in Boston and Illinois. Everywhere. It's just a chance to either support the local artists. It was very community based as well, so they're part of our community.
• [00:26:07] LISA TUVESON: I think for downtown areas, it's really good. Works better. Because usually, non-students are more apt to buy a piece of art for some money than student because they have somewhere to put it. You know what I mean?
• [00:26:20] KEN PARGULSKI: Money.
• [00:26:21] LISA TUVESON: That too.
• [00:26:23] ELIZABETH SMITH: Did you have live performances there as well?
• [00:26:25] LISA TUVESON: Main Street, we did. We've done it at a couple of other places. People have asked me about it at South U, but Ann Arbor has some serious permit things for live music. It's challenging. I could tell someone they could play in front of my store on the sidewalk. It's like a public property, and that would be fine to me. But to have someone come in and play in my lobby. If someone called the city, I could get in a lot of trouble without a permit. Because you have to tell you where how your emergency exits here. They already have this information, but it's like a big thing.
• [00:26:57] KEN PARGULSKI: There's not enough space there.
• [00:26:59] LISA TUVESON: There's not enough space there. Not when school's in.
• [00:27:01] KEN PARGULSKI: At Main Street, there was a stage, so definitely had--
• [00:27:06] LISA TUVESON: They had stuff like every week in the '90s in early '00s.
• [00:27:10] KEN PARGULSKI: 2000, 2002.
• [00:27:11] LISA TUVESON: But then they stopped, I don't know why.
• [00:27:14] KATRINA ANBENDER: What was the menu there? How did it change over the years?
• [00:27:18] KEN PARGULSKI: Much more complicated now, for sure. A lot more offerings. When I started, it was coffee, cappuccinos, and lattes and mochas, and that was almost all of it. We did some lemonades and stuff, but you got really good at coffee. Now when I barely go to the cafe to help, but I'm like, I remember all that stuff, but all the new stuff. It's like, we have so many signature drinks and stuff. It's like, holy cow, it's just crazy. You deal with way more of the beverages.
• [00:27:51] LISA TUVESON: It was--we didn't make brewed coffee when State--a long time ago. We started doing brewed coffee, like in a coffee brewer in Boston because that's what they drank there. We used to make it just Americano for everybody in Ann Arbor and everywhere else, and barely one got it. They got espresso and cappuccino. It was like 0.95 cents. It was 0.75 for a shot Espresso and 0.95 for a cappuccino. Over the years, we just did some pastries. But now there's a lot of food involved. A lot more sandwiches, lot of food because people look at cafes as like a restaurant now or full-service stop, because who wants to stop twice when they're on their way to class?
• [00:28:27] KEN PARGULSKI: We pushed that too a little bit.
• [00:28:30] LISA TUVESON: But students are looking for food when they don't have a dorm to live in where they don't have to make their own food. If you didn't go to the grocery store, and the grocery store is nowhere near you, you have to go really far to the grocery store. It's far. There's nothing at all near campus. You can go to like, Walgreens or CVS and grab, and Target, a little bit, but not much. It's hard, I can't imagine. I did it in Boston, actually. For beverages, it was just coffee mainly and some tea bags. Not many types of tea. You'd have a black tea and mint tea or whatever. Now it's different. We created our own chai in the early early. Was it '90s? Late '90s, we create our own chai blend to brew ourselves before Oregon chai was even a thing. We brew our own chai. We got everything as much organic things as we could and stuff like that. We started making matcha long before a lot of people. It's just that we are small. We aren't advertising like Starbucks about like what we can do. But we do a lot of signature stuff now, a lot more options. But the base is always the same. It's coffee.
• [00:29:36] KEN PARGULSKI: For the most part. We have espresso, tea drinks, and stuff like that.
• [00:29:40] ELIZABETH SMITH: When espresso Royale closed in 2020, that was not planned. It just came out of the pandemic, is that correct?
• [00:29:49] LISA TUVESON: Yes.
• [00:29:50] KEN PARGULSKI: Yeah. Obviously, a weird time anyway, the pandemic and all that stuff. About March, it was officially, everybody said, you got to shut down. Up until that point, Lisa, we were coming up with all these programs for cleanliness to make sure we were like hygienically clean. Trying to do individual wrappers and stuff, just doing as much as we could. Then the shutdown happened. Because we had so many cafes, and it was still a big cash business, I was like, you're not pulling in income for those rents. Everything was shut down and everybody else is not working, but I was still working and the main office was still rolling. I was starting to get a glimpse of what was going on, not knowing that that was going to be the end result, but it was a weird time anyway.
• [00:30:49] LISA TUVESON: People who actually owned the company decided that they weren't going to reinvest to open it back up because of the leases were huge and all that. But this is before any of the government assistance came out. You know what I'm saying? They just pulled it fast. They saw millions of dollars down the hole is what they saw, payrolls and inventories and rent, not knowing the future. But they were just protecting themselves, basically, which is fine.
• [00:31:18] KEN PARGULSKI: Even the cafes in Illinois, they were able to reopen that fall, but under a different premise. The guy who ran that region, all those landlords came to him and said, we want to form a company, still call this Espresso Royale. But they knew enough to know, I mean, at that point, and this is if you're talking four months later, five months later that the to go business started happening. People who withstood that test were able to start seeing the benefits of that. That changed the scope of the business there too.
• [00:31:55] KATRINA ANBENDER: This is going back a ways, but you talked about how many different locations all throughout the country that Espresso Royale had, and the initial one wasn't in Ann Arbor. Do you know how it came to be headquartered in Ann Arbor?
• [00:32:09] LISA TUVESON: They opened the most stores here, I think, in the area, but they also liked it a lot, liked the college town. The guys, they were from California, the guys who started it. It's similar for like Berkeley, Ann Arbor, and they're similar social scenes. They liked it a lot. They liked the people. They liked the feel of the town. This was when Ann Arbor was, like main street was kind of not great. There are a lot of out of business places there, old dress shops and the random stuff a long time ago. When the cafe opened on Main Street after State Street, it was the place to go. It was the only cafe for years and years, and then it wasn't anymore. Sweetwaters opened and then Zola and--
• [00:32:52] KEN PARGULSKI: Felix.
• [00:32:53] ELIZABETH SMITH: Felix was there and now that's something else, yeah. That's why I think the feeling of it and they saw opportunity. They like the Midwest more than California, even though they were from California.
• [00:33:03] KEN PARGULSKI: I don't know if their long term plan was to continue moving East. This would have been pretty centrally located from Norman, Oklahoma all the way to Boston and beyond that.
• [00:33:16] ELIZABETH SMITH: I was curious about, now moving back to M36, how you conceived of the name and how you framed your approach, and how it might be similar or different to Espresso Royale?
• [00:33:28] KEN PARGULSKI: We're located on M36 up in Whitmore Lake. We were going back and forth on names and back and forth for a while. Lisa said, why don't we call M36? We're on M36, and we're like, that's a great idea. This has a cool sound to it. There's a lot of cool cafes and I know always have a street name or something. We're, absolutely, that was it right away. At the time, we were able to use this logo of the road sign, and initially framed it. It was a little bit different for us because I was always roasting, but we did most of our business internally for our cafes and whatnot. We then had to become an outside sales group. We had contacted all of our old customers and we got them all back with our new name, and essentially, since it's me doing it, and I have been doing it all this time, I'm like, I'm the same person doing it. It's not any different. That was the biggest change was, at least for me was, I wasn't just automatically pumping out coffee. All of a sudden, I changed to on-demand ordering and things like that. The comparison to Espresso Royale is that this is where we grew up and a lot of how we run our cafes. Like Lisa said, we wear a lot of hats, and we do a lot of different things and that we just know you build your culture and you do everything you can. We've done that forever, and that's how we've been doing it still.
• [00:35:04] KATRINA ANBENDER: How is the cafe different now than Espresso Royale that used to be there? You did do a remodel before you opened as well?
• [00:35:11] LISA TUVESON: There was a remodel, Espresso Royale did a remodel. I did that right before COVID, and so I didn't have to pay for it this time.
• [00:35:17] KEN PARGULSKI: That was nice.
• [00:35:19] LISA TUVESON: I mean, the cafe itself, I didn't run that store anymore because I was so busy doing other things. I'm there all the time now, and I work counter all the time. As a company, we do mostly organic, all of our beans that are brand except for one or two are organic. What Sumatra and Super Jack? Everything else is organic like our house roast is organic. A lot of similarity things because we created a lot of those recipes for Espresso Royale, he and I did. It's like all the bakery stuff, we created it. We already had done that. I change things whenever I want, which I kind of did before too. It depends on what it was. I worked there a long time, and I was trusted to do things that I needed to do. The big things for us are we're responsible for all these people. He and I are. All these people work for us. That's probably the biggest stress and the greatest thing that we are able to provide people with jobs and hopefully they enjoy them. You know what I mean?
• [00:36:25] KEN PARGULSKI: Just going back to the past thing, it's we do know what a coffee house was, and that's the culture we want to have. Even if it's slammin' busy, you're still talking to people.
• [00:36:38] LISA TUVESON: I'd say our team they're super great. People are so nice. I expect them to be nice, but they're nice. Our customers are nice, so it really is helpful. But it's a great atmosphere, I think.
• [00:36:51] KATRINA ANBENDER: How many employees do you have now?
• [00:36:53] LISA TUVESON: Like today? Or like in the fall when school starts?
• [00:36:58] KATRINA ANBENDER: I guess, maybe, what is the peak of how many people you employ?
• [00:37:00] LISA TUVESON: Like 35-40. Depends. Some students only work two shifts, two, four hour shifts. Some work five.
• [00:37:09] KATRINA ANBENDER: Is that for the cafe and the roastery then, as well?
• [00:37:12] LISA TUVESON: That's with both. The roaster has less.
• [00:37:16] KEN PARGULSKI: I usually have three or four the max. It's pretty--much less labor intensive.
• [00:37:20] LISA TUVESON: That's manufacture. It's streamlined, ours is customer service.
• [00:37:24] KEN PARGULSKI: Yeah.
• [00:37:25] LISA TUVESON: No but ours is like in your face customer service.
• [00:37:28] KEN PARGULSKI: We have now a lot of people walking into the roaster wanting to buy coffee.
• [00:37:33] LISA TUVESON: Like a latte.
• [00:37:34] KEN PARGULSKI: Like a coffee shop. We had talked about before we opened the cafe and Ann Arbor was, well, maybe we should do something out there. Then that this came about, and then that changed everything.
• [00:37:46] LISA TUVESON: We might.
• [00:37:48] KEN PARGULSKI: More and more people are stopping by and that's another effect post COVID is we have a lot of walk ins and it's great. Just building it in a different way out there.
• [00:38:01] ELIZABETH SMITH: You kind of mentioned that you had reached out to old contacts when you started this new business. But you sell your coffees at a lot of local businesses, Busch's, and Plum Market, and things like that. How do you typically establish relationships with companies that you hope to sell at, and what do you look for in partners?
• [00:38:17] KEN PARGULSKI: Well, going back to when we first opened the roaster at Espresso Royale, we were already selling one pound coffees of our brand Espresso Royale brand. It was just a natural thing to approach a grocery store. Again, back then, even in the early--well, this was about 2007, 2008, the iPhone had just basically come out. Cell phones were newish still, 10 years young. Reaching out was just you'd go to every single grocery store and either try to find a contact or talk to a manager or whatever. It was really literally going door to door to try to get into those places. Still is on a smaller scale, but we do, having established those relationships, now we have somebody distribute to most of those different ones, we have around Detroit as well. When we want to approach somebody new, we will literally just go and see who we need to talk to. It's the old school way to do it. Unless you know people, that's the only way we know how to do it, at least.
• [00:39:31] KATRINA ANBENDER: You've already touched on this a bit, but going back to the longevity of Espresso Royale, what do you think is the biggest change you've seen at the local coffee scene? Then what do you think allowed Espresso Royale to last as long as it did?
• [00:39:45] LISA TUVESON: Well, we had in Ann Arbor, we had the dominant name besides Starbucks. Starbucks was here way after Espresso Royale. We were here longer. The locations were pretty good.
• [00:39:54] KEN PARGULSKI: Reputation was a big deal. We were known to have quality, known to be fast. Again, that was establishing those roots of that coffee house culture. As people came in, even now being M36, people come in, and that becomes their place for four years if they're a student or longer.
• [00:40:15] LISA TUVESON: We have people come in the cafe, who used to go to Espresso Royale. We had someone the other day. "I have 10 coffee cup cards, I saved. I used to come here all the time." Every business has people make bad comments here and there online. That's what happens. But in general, Espresso Royale had a lot of customers, a lot of loyalty, a lot of following, because we did the best we could for the people that we worked with and for our customers. Treated the team really well, and the customers, so that's helpful.
• [00:40:49] KEN PARGULSKI: It was realizing that we're all just people. It was nice. We established great friendships with people who now come to us as well.
• [00:40:59] LISA TUVESON: The forward, going forward scene of coffee. Depends on where you're at. I still think it depends on your location. Is it convenience or is it someone's driving habit? Coffee is a habit. Your morning routine is a habit. Our goal is to get in your habit. But there's all these "Oh Starbucks sales are going down," this that and the other. Is that a backlash because people want local or whatever? It goes like this all the time. It always goes up and down because the demographic around them always changes. It's ever-changing. You know what I mean. Making a snap judgment on something like that to me is like, I don't think you can. You can't guess what people are going to do in these situations, I don't think. But people try. You got to keep doing the best you can, I think.
• [00:41:45] ELIZABETH SMITH: What are you most proud of?
• [00:41:47] LISA TUVESON: That we're still here. That we opened, and we have people working for us, and we pay them, pay our vendors, support the community, still in business.
• [00:41:59] KEN PARGULSKI: I would say, it was risky to open during COVID, so that was a big moment. That's definitely cool.
• [00:42:19] KATRINA ANBENDER: AADL Talks To is a production of the Ann Arbor District library.