Published: Tuesday, September 22, 2009
At Arlington Farmers Market, dreams of business success
Recession gave many vendors a entrepreneurial kick-start
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Heidi Hoffman / The Herald
Caroline Sumpter, owner of Fiddlehead Coffee, roasts coffee beans while visiting with (from right) Aaron McGuire, Janice Shaughnessy and David McGuire at the Arlington Farmers Market.
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Heidi Hoffman / The Herald
Caroline Sumpter, owner of Fiddlehead Coffee, roasts coffee beans with a homemade roaster behind her booth at the Arlington Farmers Market Saturday, September 19, 2009.
ARLINGTON — There's the photographic face of the farmers market, the shopping baskets laden with lettuce, the couples eating ice cream.
Then there's the economic underbelly: Every booth has a cash box and a bottom line, every sale is one tiny sidestep around the commodities market.
Every booth has a story, too. And at the Arlington Farmers Market one Saturday morning in September, those stories came punctuated with shrugs and smiles and tales of a “now or never” kick from the fabled R-monster: recession.
This is where recession dreams play out, after metaphorical pink slips and faltering industries came calling.
“Now is the time to really go for it,” said Elizabeth Campbell, owner of Three Fingers Farm in Arlington.
Campbell, a former University of Washington employee, grows produce on her five-acre property while looking for part-time work in a job market just starting to yawn and rub its eyes again.
Who knows when a job will come along, bringing with it health insurance and a regular paycheck. Until then, Campbell has her carrots and her peas. And she's thinking about making goat cheese next year.
“I'm just taking an opportunity and a passion and running with it,” she said.
Up and down the rows of tents, you hear more of the same: The recession came. I thought I'd take a shot at making a dream happen.
Making Fiddlehead Coffee
Caroline Sumpter occupies one of those tents every Saturday. She and her husband own Fiddlehead Coffee, a small-batch coffee roaster based in Arlington.
Sumpter roasted coffee for years, but just for herself. That changed when the school she helped found ran out of money earlier this year, making a hiatus inevitable.
Fundraising events for the Stillwater School are still under way. In the meantime, Sumpter is in business for herself, using a small roaster designed and built by her husband.
She roasts about 40 pounds of coffee a month for a small group of customers, many of whom pick up their orders fresh from the Saturday market every week.
“When the school slowed down, that gave me time to actually think about it,” she said. “I thought, ‘I love this. I'm going to do this.' ”
Sumpter is trying to grow her customer base, but doesn't want Fiddlehead to get too big too fast. She has two young sons and works as an artist when she finds extra time.
And she needs the business to pay for itself, one reason she uses her homemade roasting machine.
“It's all about salvaging and recycling and using what you have to make it work,” she said. “We didn't want to take out any loans or anything.”
So she repeats the process again and again Saturday mornings. The pale beans go into the roaster, the foil cover goes over them. Soon the soft popping starts, paired with a sweet smell like fresh cookies or butterscotch.
Once dark and toasted, the beans go onto a scale, then into a brown bag.
“When you get that perfect roast — oh, my gosh. It's heaven,” she said.
“Something to fall back on”
For workers dealt layoffs, starting a small business isn't an uncommon card to play.
Nine percent of job seekers who found work in the second quarter of this year ended up starting a business, according to data from Challenger Gray & Christmas' Job Market Index. That's about twice the percentage for the same demographic in the outplacement firm's second-quarter report from 2008.
Those numbers include non-employer firms like Sumpters' company, which have no paid employees. Non-employer firms account for about 75 percent of small businesses, according to the Small Business Administration.
So Sumpter is in good company — in more ways than one.
Back at the Arlington Farmers Market, she spends her downtime talking with Tamila Morgan at the neighboring booth.
Morgan owns UrbanFarm Naturals, a soap-making company. She uses Fiddlehead coffee in some of her products.
“Caroline delivers it to me warm and fresh. Oh, it's heaven,” she said.
Morgan still works in aviation, but said concerns about the economy motivated her to start her business at home.
“I always wanted my own company,” she said. “But also, it's good just to have something to fall back on.”
Two tents to the right, Luke Kooyman sits behind a table of carved wooden toys.
He's an unemployed construction worker who used to build high-end residential homes. For a while, he found work in commercial development. Then that industry slowed to a crawl, too.
Kooyman wants to stay in business for himself, building furniture and commissioned pieces. For now, he's trying to weather a real-life catch-22: the economic downturn that spurred him to start his company, Lak of Ink.
“With the economy so slow, it's hard to even get this to support itself,” he said.
Read Amy Rolph's small-business blog at www.heraldnet.com/TheStorefront. Contact her at 425-339-3029 or arolph@heraldnet.com.
Find out more
Fiddlehead Coffee: www.fiddleheadcoffee.com
UrbanFarm Naturals: www.urbanfarmnaturals.com
Lak of Ink: www.kooymandesigns.com
Three Fingers Farm: www.3fingersfarm.com
Then there's the economic underbelly: Every booth has a cash box and a bottom line, every sale is one tiny sidestep around the commodities market.
Every booth has a story, too. And at the Arlington Farmers Market one Saturday morning in September, those stories came punctuated with shrugs and smiles and tales of a “now or never” kick from the fabled R-monster: recession.
This is where recession dreams play out, after metaphorical pink slips and faltering industries came calling.
“Now is the time to really go for it,” said Elizabeth Campbell, owner of Three Fingers Farm in Arlington.
Campbell, a former University of Washington employee, grows produce on her five-acre property while looking for part-time work in a job market just starting to yawn and rub its eyes again.
Who knows when a job will come along, bringing with it health insurance and a regular paycheck. Until then, Campbell has her carrots and her peas. And she's thinking about making goat cheese next year.
“I'm just taking an opportunity and a passion and running with it,” she said.
Up and down the rows of tents, you hear more of the same: The recession came. I thought I'd take a shot at making a dream happen.
Making Fiddlehead Coffee
Caroline Sumpter occupies one of those tents every Saturday. She and her husband own Fiddlehead Coffee, a small-batch coffee roaster based in Arlington.
Sumpter roasted coffee for years, but just for herself. That changed when the school she helped found ran out of money earlier this year, making a hiatus inevitable.
Fundraising events for the Stillwater School are still under way. In the meantime, Sumpter is in business for herself, using a small roaster designed and built by her husband.
She roasts about 40 pounds of coffee a month for a small group of customers, many of whom pick up their orders fresh from the Saturday market every week.
“When the school slowed down, that gave me time to actually think about it,” she said. “I thought, ‘I love this. I'm going to do this.' ”
Sumpter is trying to grow her customer base, but doesn't want Fiddlehead to get too big too fast. She has two young sons and works as an artist when she finds extra time.
And she needs the business to pay for itself, one reason she uses her homemade roasting machine.
“It's all about salvaging and recycling and using what you have to make it work,” she said. “We didn't want to take out any loans or anything.”
So she repeats the process again and again Saturday mornings. The pale beans go into the roaster, the foil cover goes over them. Soon the soft popping starts, paired with a sweet smell like fresh cookies or butterscotch.
Once dark and toasted, the beans go onto a scale, then into a brown bag.
“When you get that perfect roast — oh, my gosh. It's heaven,” she said.
“Something to fall back on”
For workers dealt layoffs, starting a small business isn't an uncommon card to play.
Nine percent of job seekers who found work in the second quarter of this year ended up starting a business, according to data from Challenger Gray & Christmas' Job Market Index. That's about twice the percentage for the same demographic in the outplacement firm's second-quarter report from 2008.
Those numbers include non-employer firms like Sumpters' company, which have no paid employees. Non-employer firms account for about 75 percent of small businesses, according to the Small Business Administration.
So Sumpter is in good company — in more ways than one.
Back at the Arlington Farmers Market, she spends her downtime talking with Tamila Morgan at the neighboring booth.
Morgan owns UrbanFarm Naturals, a soap-making company. She uses Fiddlehead coffee in some of her products.
“Caroline delivers it to me warm and fresh. Oh, it's heaven,” she said.
Morgan still works in aviation, but said concerns about the economy motivated her to start her business at home.
“I always wanted my own company,” she said. “But also, it's good just to have something to fall back on.”
Two tents to the right, Luke Kooyman sits behind a table of carved wooden toys.
He's an unemployed construction worker who used to build high-end residential homes. For a while, he found work in commercial development. Then that industry slowed to a crawl, too.
Kooyman wants to stay in business for himself, building furniture and commissioned pieces. For now, he's trying to weather a real-life catch-22: the economic downturn that spurred him to start his company, Lak of Ink.
“With the economy so slow, it's hard to even get this to support itself,” he said.
Read Amy Rolph's small-business blog at www.heraldnet.com/TheStorefront. Contact her at 425-339-3029 or arolph@heraldnet.com.
Find out more
Fiddlehead Coffee: www.fiddleheadcoffee.com
UrbanFarm Naturals: www.urbanfarmnaturals.com
Lak of Ink: www.kooymandesigns.com
Three Fingers Farm: www.3fingersfarm.com
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