Nan Eskenazi, Founder at Good Earth Coffeehouse grew up in the Pacific Northwest where naturally coffee was an integral part of her life.
After moving to Calgary, she wanted to create a business that was an extension of her values and lifestyle. Nan and her partner Michael Going founded the first Good Earth Coffeehouse in 1991 and set out to serve exceptional coffee and wholesome food, in an authentic coffeehouse environment.
“My passion has always been brand development, marketing and of course great coffee,” she says.
Growing up she lived in seven or eight States before she was in Grade 5. Her father served in the air force and the family did move around a lot. They finally settled on Whidbey Island in Puget Sound, north of Seattle, Washington.
Eskenazi went to Western Washington University in Bellingham and then at the University of Washington in Seattle.
“I graduated with a degree from the School of Communications. It was a real focus on marketing and advertising but it was a broader communications degree and I also spent a lot of time investing in the graphic program and indulging in the anthropology courses,” she said.
Why did she move to Calgary?
“Well I fell in love with a Calgarian,” she laughs. “And it didn’t hurt that I heard it was always sunny here. My husband Michael Going and I were both working in the shopping centre industry, very immersed in retail,” she said.
“I was marketing director at a regional shopping mall in the Seattle area and had been through the ICSC program. I really learned how to work with a large group of constituents. There were 150 retailers where I worked and they were neither my employees nor my bosses. The parallels between working with a group of retailers in the shopping centre industry and working as a franchisor with a group of franchisees, they’re very comparable. The kind of dynamic of communication and working together toward a common goal.
“When I moved up to Calgary I was ready for a change. I had already opened one little espresso bar in the shopping mall where I worked so I had a little inkling of what that felt like. My sister helped me out with that and when I moved up here Michael and I founded Good Earth in 1991 and opened our first location together.”
Eskenazi says she liked the idea that coffee is something people can enjoy every day. It can be a meaningful and enjoyable part of a person’s daily life.
“But larger than that I really liked the idea of a coffee house as a place in a community where people could gather whether they knew each other or not. I really liked the idea of a coffee house as a gathering place and wanted to try and create that with Good Earth,” she explains.
Eskenazi says one of the important parts of what she does is trying to make sure that the values at the core of the brand are woven through what the company does.
“I try to nurture and protect our brand by bringing decision-making on our team back to values or voice the customer perspective in conversations. I think that’s a really important element of my role. Much like coffee houses, I think a leader really has an important role to play to bring people together so that they can move the brand forward,” she says.
“Bringing people together and encouraging relationship building and really trusting the people that I work with, being curious with them, asking questions. I’m reminded almost on a daily basis how important relationships are in what we do and I think this is true throughout life but right here where I’m sitting I’m thinking about relationships with my co-workers, my team. I’m thinking about relationships with suppliers and how those bear fruit. The relationships with our franchisees, we call them partner. And obviously the overriding picture of the relationships we’re building with our customers and our communities. That’s so core to what we do and how we grow.”
Eskenazi says the brand has been bringing people together since 1991 and it has worked on making ethical choices that address social and environmental considerations.
“We aim to serve our best coffee and our food and attitude every day. We want to do all of this while fostering a greater good. We think that a community-oriented business like ours can help make the world a better place. That sounds kind of lofty but I think it’s a human responsibility.”
Those values come from her parents. She says they were wonderful role models.
“I asked each of them a number of years ago what they most admired in their own parents. The answers were really simple. They admired their parents for compassion and seeing humanity in every person they encountered. That was just a really nice thread through my life.”
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