Find Your Summit

How do you lead a dynamic staff in 2023? Emma Rieves, Summit Coffee's Head of Davidson Operations, draws from her experience managing 20+ peers to offer advice on hiring, managing, leading, and navigating the service industry. Emma discusses the importance of creativity and curiosity among her staff, how to lead with empathy, and what we can learn from seeing Lizzy McAlpine in concert.

You know what we love? Hospitality. We love to share it, experience it, talk about it, argue about it. On this week's podcast, Brian and Laura banter about what hospitality means to us, sharing good (and bad) examples while acknowledging that it's not a one-size-fits-all idea. Tune in, get excited, let's talk hospitality!

Summit Coffee's Chief Concept Officer, Dora Callahan, stops by the podcast to stress how imperative it is for a business to have a clear identity. We talk about how to craft an identity for your startup or existing business, how identities evolve, and why sometimes knowing what paths NOT to go down is just as important as what paths to choose.

How do you lead with purpose? How do you identify which purpose is right for both you and your business or brand? Tim Helfrich, owner of Summit Coffee since 2003, walks us through his process, what he's learned through years of leadership, and how to navigate the sometimes frequent conflicts between purpose and profit.

The Find Your Summit podcast is a product of Summit Coffee, an award-winning coffee roaster and retailer based in North Carolina.

Summit Coffee CEO Brian Helfrich introduces us to the 4th season of the Find Your Summit podcast. This 11-episode season focuses on what it takes to run a coffee business. The episodes will feature insights, anecdotes, and hopefully some entertainment from various people in the Summit universe. In Ep. 1, Brian previews the season and provides a little background on how we got here and what's been happening with Summit in the year (whoops) since Season 3 wrapped.

On today's episode we say good-bye to co-host (or host?) to Leah, our Marketing Manager. We talk about what inspired this journey and her time at Summit. 

This week we discuss the new opportunity Summit Coffee has and how we went about creating a new brand for this project!

For thoughts, questions, and collaborations contact [email protected] 

This week we have a 3 person episode featuring Dora Callahan! We talk about finding balance with life and work, and what our lives would look like if we didn't experience the pandemic. 

This week we chat about revising Brian's word for the year and how the weight of decision making is a season many business owners and leadership go through. How do you decide on such big decisions?

This week we're back from a short hiatus and discuss what felt like a loss last week on a few different things Summit discovered. Send thoughts to [email protected] or watch the episode on our YouTube channel!