August and September have been a business roller coaster for Simpatico Coffee.  In early August we opened our third location, at 975 Butternut on the North Side of Holland.  It's a beautiful space and a welcome addition to our corporate expansion.  It has a drive-thru and we are learning how to maximize such a feature for our retail operations.  If you haven't been to our new location, please stop in and say hi!  We have great staff, bake all of our own products, and we have free WiFi and comfortable seating.

In September, we closed our second location, which was in Downtown Market Grand Rapids. For the past year, this location had been under-performing.  Downtown Market is slowly transitioning itself from an innovative food hub into a food mall, which means it doesn't get busy until lunch hour.  This is a death sentence for a coffee shop.  There are so many great companies involved in Downtown Market, and we will miss being affiliated with them.  More than anything, we will miss our former employees.  They are fantastic people, deft baristas, and thankfully they have all found great new jobs. The gain from this important business lesson (closing a shop) is that we now know Simpatico Coffee works best in its own bricks-and-mortar locations - where we can market how we like, have hours which work for us, and free parking.

Closing a location is almost as much work as opening a location.  Luckily for us, most of the equipment from Grand Rapids will now be used to create the drive-thru expansion for our Holland South Side location.  We'll get going on that right after our new roasting facility is done next month.  Whew.  We're exhausted.  Who needs a cup of coffee? There is no rest for us however, because we're on an invigorating quest to improve all 5 aspects of our business operations: Coffee Production and Packaging, Wholesale Accounts, On-Line Operations, Retail Locations, and Farm Markets.  Please like our Facebook Page in order to check out our customer input polls.  We want you to help guide us into the future. http://www.Facebook.com/SimpaticoCoffee

After months of hard work and planning, we welcome you to our new website!  Simpatico Coffee makes the best reviewed Low Acid Coffee in the world, and we ship our products nation wide every day.  This website, along with Amazon.com and Ebay.com are Simpatico Coffee's best vehicles for attracting new customers to our amazing Low Acid Coffees.  If you love Simpatico Coffee and want to send us a testimonial, we'll be happy to consider it for inclusion on our website.

Along with our lineup of Regular and Decaf Low Acid roast profiles, we also make coffee which isn't Low Acid in nature.  Many customers wanted to be able to purchase these coffees over the internet too, and so you will find Oaxacan Gold, Mexican Amber Dark and Absolute Darkness available on this website as well.  Although the aforementioned don't score a pH high enough to be considered Low Acid, they still have our signature smoothness and robustness which makes for a great Simpatico product.  Our goal is to make as many friends and life-long customers as possible, and this new website is a giant step in this direction.

Many thanks to our marketing staff person, Sarah Goy, our web team at Slantcom: Mary Lukens and Dave Burdick, and our crack SEO consultant, Kate McPolin.  If you have any questions or feedback you'd like to convey, please hit the Contact button on the home page.

Alex Fink, Founder, Simpatico Coffee