Tea for two and two for tea

Where life's weary chase is unknown

I started this newsletter to document the journey of getting this store open, which is something I pretty much failed to do. Every so often, I would have a few weeks of consistent entries, and then something would make me shut down—like how long things were taking and how much frustration I felt about it and how I got exhausted hearing myself say the same things over and over again.

I also had big plans to take pictures and video every day, but then there were huge stretches of time when those pictures would have looked the same day after day and week after week.

But sometimes I find a pic that does help me see how dramatic the change is.

(The above picture is no longer accurate, actually. I’ve since realized it was deranged of me to paint all that trim dark green, so it’s all white again now.)

At some point I’m going to try to go through all my pictures and match up angles for a bunch more before and after shots. For now, I’ll let you know what’s been going on here for the last little while!

Afternoon Tea

Since the departure of the catering company who was running a restaurant out of our kitchen, we’ve been finding our own footing when it comes to food. Haritha has been making really lovely soups and sandwiches (alongside the baked goods he took over production of in December), but it’s been a lot to manage on his own. We were so lucky to be joined part-time by Morag, a complete dynamo.

Thanks to that extra support, we’ve finally been able to launch the weekend Afternoon Tea we’ve been daydreaming about for a while! Our treasured friends Jairus and Natalie came to be the first to try it last weekend, and Jairus took so many incredible pictures, like this one. If you are nearby and looking for something to do on a Saturday or Sunday, we’d love to help make that day special! Tea is $25 per person, so this Tea for Two tray is $50.

Leveraging a niche part one:

I have to give a grateful shoutout to

Anne Helen Petersen

. I really love a well-curated online community, and has clearly attracted a great collection of doers and dreamers over at

Culture Study

. When I saw that Anne sometimes turned her comments section into online classified ads, I knew it would be worth the $5 a month investment to be part of it.

In her Summer Solstice Edition open thread, I made a comment that gave a quick rundown of what we are up to here at the shop, and encouraged readers to come stay in our camper for either a creative collaboration or as weekend getaway. The comment was “liked” by 55 people, we and we got a combined total of over $750 in camper bookings and folks buying stuff from our online store.

As an interesting (to me!) contrast, when I had the most popular Ask Me Anything on Reddit for the day, the post got 246K views, and zero online orders. I’m not complaining! I’m thankful for the success of that post, and I don’t feel entitled to anyone’s money! But it’s a good lesson in that it is way better to be seen by the right people than the most people.

Leveraging a niche part two:

Similarly, when people come into Rosefinch Mercantile, they either want to look at all of the items we sell or none of them. I am 100% okay with this, because I’d rather cater to a specific customer who I know I will like than to try to have something for everyone (including creeps who I might not enjoy!).

When I describe my target market, it’s always some variation of “You were a goth in high school and have since come out as Queer and/or a Socialist.” My secondary market is probably the parents—or the children—of people who fit that description.

This is an over-simplification for sure, but anyone who would be horrified to be described that way probably wouldn’t like what we are up to here. And if having a few people walk in and immediately walk out is the flipside of someone squealing with delight at everything on our shelves, I’ll take it.

Take a one minute browse yourself, via this video!

rosefinch.mercantile

A post shared by @rosefinch.mercantile

Rosefinch as a community launchpad

In other dream-come-true news, please humour me for a moment and scroll back up to the top of this entry and admire the utterly charming crocheted creatures in my header image.

Their creator is Port Medway’s own Heather Stevens, the driving force (with encouragement and promise to attend) for us to start this weekly event which has healed my lonely heart.

Heather only started making these stuffies around the same time that these weekly meetups started last November. Which blows my mind because they are so magical and well made. Since then she’s sold so many! In addition to the ones she’s sold directly through her own contacts (and their contacts!), I love that she’s also selling them to her fellow Crafternooners, to customers who have been here when we are all squealing over her latest creations, to people who have met her here and then commissioned her to make specific things, and to me when I buy a bunch at once to sell at the store!

It makes me so happy to be a tangible part in connecting rad makers with rad buyers!

What’s next at Rosefinch Mercantile?

We are chugging away on the last stretch of renovations on the shop, which will involve opening an accessible sunporch area that we are painting the colour of pistachio ice cream!

Speaking of ice cream, we are still making ourselves crazy trying to get our soft serve machine up and running¹.

On the dream-no-little-dream front, I’ve applied for funds for a very ambitious three-year community project based on this research.

But mostly I just want to have some time to sit and enjoy the space and eat a cucumber and cream cheese sandwich. Maybe today will be that day!

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Thanks for reading! If want to support everything we are trying to make happen, here are five ways you can do that:

1. Subscribe to our Canadian Makers Surprise Package.

2. Order something from our online store, like these Radical Tea Towels:

3. Help get the word out to any locals or online shoppers who might love us!

4. Book a sleepover in our backyard! More details here:
   
   

5. Click this button and upgrade to a paid subscription²:

Quick note! I have gotten a lot of new subscribers in the last little while, which is genuinely thrilling! It’s been a while since I updated, so if you signed up and are now thinking “What is this, anyway?”, this entry is the best entry point into this whole endeavour:

1. Do you know that a used commercial soft serve machine costs $13K?? That’s why we are trying to repair the two (!) old ones we have.

2. This newsletter currently makes $546 a year from subscriptions. My goal is to get it to $6000 a year. I know that will take a while!