Today we’d like to introduce you to Maureen Bartosh.
Maureen, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
We moved from Phoenix AZ to Fredericksburg, VA in 2002. My husband commuted to DC everyday via the VRE train. There wasn’t a place for the commuters to get coffee/breakfast on their way. Remember this was early 2000’s 🙂
In 2006 a building near the train station went up for rent. My husband encouraged me to check it out. I had a restaurant and catering business back in Phoenix and I have had a long time love for coffee. It took a year to get through the cities requirements and build out the location for what we needed for a coffee shop.
We opened in Oct of 2007. It took a lot of work to break peoples habits and get them to become customers. I had experience with quality coffee as I had my own blend in my restaurant. The first train of the day was at 5am so we opened at 4:30am to give them enough time to get coffee and walk over to the train platform. As time went on we built our customer base not just from commuters but local residents as well. Many became friends and several still come in 20 years later.
When we opened in 2007 I had 10yr old twins and one at 17. It wasn’t long before the twins were helping customers on the register and my oldest on espresso drinks. Once that happened we switched to home schooling. It was a great way to teach the girls work ethics, capitalism, and people relations.
We have evolved as the market changes and took on roasting our own coffee. This is one of my favorite parts of the biz as to do my best to bring out the natural flavors of the different beans and growing areas. I soon learned the women farmers had to face many obstacles that the men didn’t. They were given lower prices at the sales, uneducated, abused and some not even allowed to leave the farm area. We then started buying from women farmers whenever their beans were available . We also worked with our local rotary to provide grant money for them to develop 2nd incomes with Bee Keeping. We are always on the lookout for ways we can contribute both locally and internationally in community.
Post covid was like starting over but we made it! We love creating and offering our customers the best we have.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Definatly not smooth LOL. We had many struggles. We had to deal with gov’t shut downs, weather, not being in the main part of town. (some considered it the bad part of town). Train stations expanded and took half of our customers to another location, the economy in ’08 and ’12 etc. and of course Covid. Each obstacle we dug our heals in and changed up things up and moved forward.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
What should you know- We make great coffee, we have a staff that is friendly and competent, We bake in house, we create in house syrups. We care about our customers and the community.
Fresh roasted coffee
We partner with other businesses / and nonprofits in marketing, wholesale customers, charities
Where do you see things going in the next 5-10 years?
This is a great question. As things happen so quickly now it’s difficult to predict that far ahead. We stay tuned to our industry for the latest and listen to our customers on their wants.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://2530espresso.com
- Instagram: 2530_espresso
- Facebook: https://facebook.com/2530espresso
