Small business success stories in Sonoma County
A Santa Rosa cafe that’s become a morning institution. A website design company that infuses a little quirkiness while boosting the power of businesses. A Sebastopol organic coffee maker that scored success two years ago with an expanded coffee bar and now is preparing to launch its first packaged beverage product.
The three companies - Dierk’s Parkside Cafe, Link Creative and Taylor Maid Farms - will be honored Tuesday as part of celebrations across the country marking Small Business Week. Sonoma County’s event, staged by the Santa Rosa Chamber of Commerce, will feature celebrity chef Guy Fieri.
Since 1963, U.S. presidents have recognized Small Business Week to highlight the contributions of the little guys in the nation’s economy. Small businesses, defined as those with fewer than 500 employees, employ over half of all American workers and create roughly two out of every three new jobs in the U.S. each year, according to the Small Business Administration.
Santa Rosa chamber officials say such companies are the heart of their organization, as well as the key contributors to local schools, faith-based groups and nonprofits. Better than 95 percent of the companies in the Santa Rosa chamber have 50 or fewer employees.
“Small businesses tend to be the backbone of any community,” said Jonathan Coe, the chamber’s president and CEO.
The trio of companies selected by the chamber exemplify the dynamism of small businesses in Sonoma County. Here’s a closer look:
Dierk’s Parkside Cafe
Anyone in the restaurant business can tell you being an owner isn’t easy. The long hours, fickle food trends, some rude customers, unreliable staff and rising prices can take its toll.
Then there is the economy. According to the National Restaurant Association, the restaurant industry is expected a record $709 billion in sales this year. Despite six years of growth, the industry has taken longer than expected to recover from the economic downturn and is still below what is expected during a normal post-recession period.
In other words, you have to love it. And Mark Dierkhising loves it.
Dierkhising, 61, is the executive chef and owner of Dierk’s Parkside Cafe in Santa Rosa’s SOFA neighborhood near Juilliard Park and Dierk’s Midtown Cafe in east Santa Rosa. The two restaurants, which employ a total of 40 workers, are a cap on Dierkhising’s career. He started in the business by working for his parents’ restaurant in St. Joe, Minn., and brought his skills to the North Coast, where he operated restaurants with his siblings and then served as executive chef at Bluewater Bistro at Bodega Bay and Equus at the Fountaingrove Inn.
His philosophy is simple.
“It’s all about having fun and really tasty food,” Dierkhising said. “Our mantra here is to have a successful business that is harmonious and fun and gives staff and customers a value.”
He readily admits his cafe is not a normal kind of breakfast place. It caters to foodies who flock there for his Sonoma duck confit with scrambled eggs with hash browns and warm apples to a smoked salmon hash accompanied with oven-dried tomatoes, green onions, hash browns and eggs topped with Hollandaise. But it also appeals to those who want the basics: pancakes, eggs and bacon.
By targeting breakfast, it also has allowed him to have more of a life. Both of his places are open from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m., freeing Dierkhising to get home and spend more time with his wife, Karen, who is a librarian at Sonoma State University. His four children are all grown up, but none so far have joined him in the family business.
While the 16-hour days are a thing of the past now, Dierkhising said he still has to worry about keeping up with food trends, ranging from new breakfast joints to the offerings at Starbuck’s and Peet’s Coffee and Tea. The younger generation, which is not tied to a 9-to-5 existence, eats differently than their parents.
To wit: you can get a burger at 7 a.m. at his midtown location.
“As like any other business, if you are not keeping up with what people want … you can get hurt,” he said. “You can’t rely on your older clientele forever. … You have to have new clientele.”
He is considering opening up a “little bakery” for his customers - not wholesale - at his parkside cafe because “I want to create a couple of things I can’t find in town.” That includes croissants and brioche cinnamon rolls.
And at a time when many of those in his age group are thinking of retiring (“I plan on doing this until they take me out the door”), he is eying a new location in Petaluma, an area that he is extremely bullish on. “It’s staggering. It’s bound to grow,” he said.
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