What's This Place? Behind the Clicks and Mortar with Miranda Black

The RE Place.

September 22, 2021 Miranda Black Mira Vuletic Season 1 Episode 2
What's This Place? Behind the Clicks and Mortar with Miranda Black
The RE Place.
Show Notes Transcript

Imagine opening a bricks and mortar store after the pandemic started? Your potential customers have disappeared from the streets. Walk-by-traffic is gone. Wage subsidies and rent relief aren't available to someone who opened up after March, 2020.  But Mira Vuletic had a dream to open a Zero Waste cafe and boutique...and the pandemic was not about to stop her.  Who is Mira Vuletic and what is The RE Place?  Let's go inside and find out.


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Imagine opening a bricks and mortar store after the pandemic started, your potential customers have disappeared from the streets, walk by traffic, the bread and butter of all retailers is gone. And there's no timeline for when it will be back. Government supports offered during the pandemic like wage subsidy and rent relief.

They do not apply to someone who opened up after March, 2020. Well, today we're going to talk to someone who did. I found this retail dynamo through my friend, Stephanie Almeda. She was in lockdown working from home and she found an article about businesses that opened up during the pandemic. We both wondered who would do that.

I invited Steph on the call because that's what friends do when it's locked down and people are isolated. We set out together to discover a store that opened on the damn fourth in the midst of lockdowns, confusion and epic uncertain. Who is Mira Validic. And what is the replace? What's this place? What's this place.

What's this place? This place let's go inside. I'm Miranda. Hi. Hi. Nice to meet you. And you are, I am Mira Validic co-owner of the replace and pour coffee based in Toronto. All right. And what is this place? What do you sell here at this store? It's a combination place, so poor coffee and the replace poor coffee speaks for itself and what we sell there.

Although I believe that. First of our kind in the greater Toronto area in that we are a package free coffee shop with zero paper cups in the store. Does that mean that people have, they have to come with us to go cup? How do you deal with that? People do come with their own cups and we pour it for them contactless.

So you are actually encouraged to bring your own cup. We also have a mug library that we've deemed. Uh, Gleevec library. The whole neighborhood has really rallied behind this ugly mug. So everybody brings their ugly mugs over, you know, those months are just dying to get rid of. I love it. Yeah. So they bring them, we clean them, sterilize them, and then people take them to go.

If they lost them, they keep.

It's ugly. The McGlynn library tumblers for sale, and we give two free coffees with a purchase of a tumbler, just so we can get people used to using the reusable eco-friendly eco-friendly living. And are those two separate businesses like corporations, or however you set up your. Are you filing two different?

I just wasn't sure, but yeah, totally. So again, I wrote this to you in an email and like owner definitely romanticized the whole. I do love it, but I'm still learning quite a bit. They are the same business spot thought because of the concept of eco-friendly living. I sometimes feel that being eco-friendly is a scary concept for the everyday consumer.

And people may say,

I just went to Costco or something like that. The stigma of it. So I saw how do I make people more comfortable with, how do I introduce eco-friendly living to the everyday consumer and what better way to build unity and to make the introduction than putting a coffee shop right in the front of the store and a specialty coffee shop.

We partner with a Toronto roaster to deliver a beans package free. The concept of coffee is not new to anybody. So I thought that the consumer is more likely to walk into the store, buy a cup of coffee and then drift to the back of the store and see what's up. It's like your lure, your Fischler, but doesn't love coffee.

Exactly. So when did you open the 23rd? Wow. It's even newer than I, yeah.

You are a retailer crazy enough to open during a worldwide pandemic business crisis. I find you fascinating. Take us over a little bit of that journey was the idea pre pandemic. So marina, my fascinating do you mean crazy? Is that the word you want to use for? Oh, I, I admire you. I think it's amazing. Thank you so much.

So there, there was like a very small window of putting the brakes on this thing and getting the heck out. Just pulling  the parachute, but I'll never forget this moment when the pandemic hit and it was like March and I was at the grocery store picking out you know, my fruits and vegetables. And I was, I was in a true panic. I'm like, what is this?

Am I going to bring this home to my family? I'm shopping all around me and I'm going to bring it in. We didn't understand what was happening. And I was in sheer panic and I was thinking, how do I protect my family? I just wanted to keep them safe. And so I just dumped in thought When climate change impacts really start hitting and we start really seeing what those impacts look like, there's not going to be any social isolating.

Or keeping your family at home in quarantine to really protect them. And I don't know what it's going to look like when climate change impacts hit but all I knew is that I wanted to do something about it. I want it to be a peace with it. My children, you know, future generations, like I I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna truck on and let's see what.

So you've got the idea in March. You got the idea for the store actually got the idea in November. So November of 2019, and I was sitting at my kids school and listening to a guest speaker, Sophie Robertson in the Toronto area. One of the things that she has said to us was that every single day in the greater Toronto area, Brace yourselves for 1 million cups.

Every single day, I end up in a Lynch just in Toronto, just in the greater astronomical. Right. And I looked around me and no other parents. Nobody knew that everybody was like, well, my own mother. You know, not really like hit hard. And then the other number that she threw out was that only 9% recyclables that really ticked me off felt like I've been like, well, what am I supposed to do with the plastic that I have at home?

What am I going to do with this body butter container? And I held onto it for like a month, or what do I do with that? I still have it for the record. So most people think that all plastic and paper is recyclable. You don't realize that when you're shopping, a lot of people don't think of those repercussions.

It's the magical solve is that while there is a recycling and it's okay. There a site. And I did some research on this, my research,

it was really corporations putting it on the consumers to do something with the waste versus consumers, doing something about corporations and forcing change. So we found companies, I started digging around and finding. What drop-off, whose conditioners to us pick up the waste, clean it up and resell, reuse their jars.

The replace was was, and there's very few in that marketplace. What did you find there? There really is just a couple is what we found, but what we're learning is that if you ask some companies are willing to make that change. Um, so not everyone, but the ones that we found for like our, what we call our tap wall in the back of the replace, we have 36 taps back there.

And it's anything from like your shoes, your conditioners, laundry detergent. Just so painful everything, bring in your container, fill it up on top and you never have to buy another container. Again, we found a company that had all those on it's a club back lease company, which is fantastic local in Canada.

And then we started asking the coffee roasters would be willing to do this. I don't want to get my coffee. I don't know what kind of eggs they are.

Let's give it a world. How do they deliver it to you? Then? These like 20 liter, the white food safe, Dennis. They fill it up for us. They drop off the beds, we use it clean it, sterilize it, and they pick them up one, the deliver the next batch. There was no resistance. You found a lot of people who are there on board.

I mean, they had to think about it. Like how can we make this. And we're able to deliver that it's such a small change. It probably makes a huge difference in terms of waste. Absolutely. I think when you ask you shall receive, you know,

and, and they're like, you know, I don't see. Let's give it a whirl. I'm wondering if maybe because of the pandemic, people are already being forced to think outside of the box. Maybe even a better time. There's better synergy between a retailer and their suppliers because they're willing to listen more.

Because they have to write, maybe I actually have,

this is your first business you, did. You have, what were you doing prior to this? I still am doing a full-time job and I think that's like, I know

I like. Hold up and disconnected from the full-time job just yet, because I have no frame of opening up in the middle of the pandemic heading into the winter. It's not, let's see what happens in the spring summer. It's already got some really good momentum, but I'm just not, not ready yet. Sure. The space you looked for it during COVID during lockdown, how does someone start a small business during a pandemic?

I feel like everything was signed, sealed, delivered at the end of March. So we actually found the space before we signed the lease and then construction, the space was not. Gorgeous. So beautiful. How did you do all of that during a pandemic? I feel like I could conquer the world with a little bit of YouTube and a little bit of Pinterest.

You know,

it was a convenience store before. I don't think it's been renovated for, I don't know, 30, 40 years, but you know, we started uncovering

floors. A really nice surprise. We'll start. We used a lot of the things that were hanging out in this big, like the radiators became our benches, those jail bars and front of the convenience store windows. Those became plant hangers from the CLA oh, I saw those. Yeah. Beautiful. Yeah. And I. No, no, I'm just, yeah, the floor is great.

Did you design those elements yourself? I mean, I want to take full credit for it, but we want it to break up the space a little bit. So if you notice this design element on the floor, The replace side and then the coffee side does not have that design element. We'll try to resolve on the floor at the front of the replace doors.

So the side door, if you look on the ground, I love this part waiting for it to take off. It says one small step, because that's all we're looking for people to do is just take one small step towards. So friendly journey with just one small change. That's all it takes. If a billion of us made one small staff, I think it's really great that you were able to repurpose a lot of the stuff that was in there really goes back to your company.

Ethos. Can you tell us about some of the advantages and challenges of running the two businesses together? Some of the advantages. Still trying to figure them out. I guess we're using that customer flow for coffee into the replay. So I think that's an advantage. I think it's not every customer. I mean, I'm sure customers are aware, but when they come in, we have thousands of people coming in.

And so when we do an email campaigns, there's just like small moments. Hey, how about the replace? Don't forget about the replace. Here's what we're doing in the coffee shop. Let's not forget about the replays and the bigger vision. And what I think is going to give you an advantage here is that eventually

I would love it. If we could have workshops, you know, how to make your own soap and how to make your own beeswax wraps right around. Big harvest stable on the coffee side. So again, using the coffee community to introduce eco-friendly living and build more community. So I think right now, what is your most successful success can be defined in a lot of different ways, but the monetary success is that coming more from the coffee or from the replace?

Or we were have a really good mix. And at the beginning, very, very beginning. It was strictly just poor coffee. I guess there was the lineups outside the store and it was all coffee, but now we're starting to see a good split. I would say 60% replace 40% for coffee. Want to talk about, yeah. I want to talk about your online business, which would you say is a bigger component?

It sounds like coffee is a really big draw. So what's your online? Like it's not huge right now. It's just, we'd like to see it get bigger. It's not a major component of our sales. We are set up with Shopify and we thought that curbside was going to be huge in order, and then just come around and we'll bring it out.

But going back to those examiners versus disadvantages of having the two businesses, one of the biggest advantages is that because of poured coffee, because it is mainly food, we can have the replace open, so customers can come in, get their. Ruse around and pick up whatever they need, but there hasn't been full stuff on the replay side.

So that is definitely an opportunity for us to grow. We're going to be on the hunt potentially for an ad agency of some sort. Yeah. I was wondering whether you have a PR person, you had the CBC it's just so happens that somebody has CBC. Their kid is in the same class as my kiddos. So there was a connection there.

Another advantage of having the port coffee replaced is, you know, Blasio was really interested and they came in, did the article and then named us one of the top three shops in the greater Toronto area for 2020. It's huge how big it was a little boost from. You definitely see a bump in business right afterwards.

Yeah, absolutely. It's so awesome. And I love those little intros, a school just reached out to us to see if we would be a guest speaker during earth week to talk about sustainability during earth week. And I'm like, that's how I got inspired speaker. I'm just like, there's so many metaphors there with closing the loop.

Do you employ, do you have employees at this point? Yes. I just said, well, I was wondering if you didn't have employees. I was going to say, okay, who are you? And are you a Marvel, a Marvel superhero. You have a number of employees got about 10 and we're hiring. Everyone is within walking distance to the store.

We just locked out. We put the signs up in the window and there's so many people interested in sustainability and eco-friendly living. I'm learning from them as well. And people in retail that I'm learning from, I I'm so blessed to have the people. And funny enough, my lead barista was actually somebody that I met at a coffee shop when he was a barista.

And I used to go there and work out of the coffee shop and I met URI and he's a well-known entity on the east end, runs the Eastland farmer's market. So like, he's just so well integrated into the community. So it was pretty much everybody that works. And it's so great. What about your landlord? Relate?

How is your landlord relationship? You, you rent the landlord relationship I find is so important. It's integral to the health of your business, because if you don't have the landlord, that's like, all right, next. Oh, it looks like there's going to be a little bit of a pop in business. So we're going to raise your rent 50% because we that's what we think we can get.

How has your relationship with your landlord? A lot of times we ask this question and you say, how is. Changed, but you're starting in the pandemic. That's the relationship? What is it like? The guy has been absolutely fantastic. Two brothers. They own a few properties around the greater Toronto area. He's a business owner.

He understands, we have such a great connection. I mean, for the time being we're four months in, or almost a year in. I actually started renting the place off of him. We had to do quite a bit of negotiations upfront to make sure that, Hey, if business isn't great work totally heading into this unknown time, how do we make sure that we're protecting ourselves from crazy?

If you think about how much time and sorry, I was saying that if you think of how much time, how much energy, how much money we've also put into fixing up the place. That was also one of the cards that we had to play in a mutually beneficial agreement, the place when we got there and we really had to fix it up.

So that's a lot of our money invested in there. So we have to protect ourselves. Right. Do you think that their relationship to you, do you think they were a little bit more beholden to you? Because if you leave, it's going to be very hard to, I would think to fill that space, do you feel like there was any indication that you were in the.

Seed or was it still the landlord runs the show. It was not, the landlord runs the show. I think it was really a 50 50. I know. That's like that easy answer to say, but we just knew that we think, you know what, forget it. I don't want the space, like good luck finding somebody in the middle of him, but she also knew that we love our space or it's a corner space.

That's a good spot. 12 minute walk from my house, like bonus. Right? So it was mutually beneficial for everybody to feel good about signing the deal. And I believe in that truly in that reciprocity, if I felt like I was being strong, armed into something, I don't think that I would have come through. So it's really important to feel good about who it is that you're assigning the deal with.

And honestly, I only met with one of the landlords I've never met with the other guy who I think is more of the strong arm, you know, and he stayed behind the scenes. And so we dealt with a nice guy and, um, the nice gal in this out of my teams.

He knows it too, you know? So this mutually beneficial for everybody, but how is your family opening a business? What kind of support or non-support what happened there? My family. So I opened up the business with my brother-in-law, but he does more of the backend stuff and my husband helps out with the finance.

And love, obviously, having mom worked at the coffee shop and all these ideas for the coffee shop and it's really cute. So I feel like they're invest. And the fact that they could say my mom's doing something to save the planet, I'll save it. But you know, to have an impact on the planet, that intrinsically feels really good.

My parents, who we grew up in Egypt and most. Become doctors, lawyers, my sister, who my sister-in-law's a pharmacist and engineering for me to open up a shop, just like, what are you nuts? So you're going to be a shopkeeper. I think it's great. I love customer service. I worked at McDonald's for four years. I loved it.

Best job I've ever had. I love the customer service, the rush to speed until they saw it come to fruition. They were unsure of the whole thing. And they're still unsure if the whole thing. And how does that make you feel? Just makes me want to do it even more. That's not how you deal with.

Oh, gosh, it's great to break the mold of something that you were expected to be on. You're like, no, I'm going to find success in something else. And I'm going to teach my kids that it's okay to take risks. Take smart risks, take calculated risks, but it's okay to follow your, if you feel strongly about something, follow that passion.

Definitely mirrored, going back to your point of, uh, loving customer service. What do you think about the notion that the customer is always right?

It's a loaded question. It really is. In this premiere season of what's this place, I'm writing my own ads for stuff. I love this. One's for water. I use it every day and most of Canada, we have a lot of clean water, so it's easy to take it for granted. I know I do. Small steps can help save for your tomorrow.

Like fixing leaks, taking fewer showers. You can't be that dirty and letting it mellow. If it's yellow, you'll know when to flush it down. Water cherish it like a Netflix binge. If you want to advertise on what's this place, get in touch now. So I'll tell you like the first day that we opened up, somebody came in and this guy, he left an impression coffee shop without, without coffee cups.

And so the customer is not always right. Like we have some customer complaints about, you know, coffee was too hot or too cold. Like I'm ha I will make you a new cup of coffee. But you can't go out on social media or whatever it is, and then bad mouth, the whole experience there without giving the full story.

So it's interesting. The customer voice of the customer right now is so strong and I feel so good. And again, so blessed that we have this community that we opened up shop here in this neighborhood. They're just fantastic really. And not just cause I live a 12 minute walk, but they've been so support. So I'm so glad that the customer in this tastes and the customer is always right.

It diminishes the ability for the customer to learn from the store owner. I don't think it benefits the customer, like you said in Miranda. Specialty areas. The customer is barely right. And we'd like to reclaim that saying Europe customers, never you. Yeah. This is where my business partner and I, when I hear all the music was too loud or some Google reviews that are expressing something of that nature where the music was wrong or something like that.

Are you kidding me? Hey, you know, if you don't like the music, don't leave us a bad word. It's one song. Yeah. And maybe you were standing underneath the speaker or there's just a lot of people in the store at the time and everything might've seemed loud that it's just, that's not right to leave a review like that or lash out in that way.

Have you ever heard the term, the retail apocalypse? Just me as a consumer. I like when you say. Retail POS, are we talking also like mall shopping or are we talking about like, cause I feel the trend is, is going to small local mom and pop, you know, and I feel like that's an advantage that I have right now.

So I think from that perspective, it's good, but I could be. I'm so new. I'm a baby here with the most optimistic outlook. I opened up in the middle of a pandemic and this could only go right down in spring and over right on the right track. The, the customer is definitely gearing more towards independent retailers.

COVID has really put that into hyperdrive independence, makeup, our neighborhood, and we need that to make our neighborhoods grow and thrive. Yeah, exactly. And That's something that I used to do with my husband, date night...it's walking up and down Danforth or Bloor Street or Leslieville and just like popping in here and there and checking it out, seeing what's up.

That's fun. That was so much fun for us to do. It was never like, "Hey, you want to go sit in a room behind the computer and online shop with me?"

Never entered my mind. So I hope when the pandemic's over, It's going to be like everybody let's head out and lets pop into these shops that need us that they need the CONSUMER needs to feel alive again. And feel empowered or something so unique about going and feeling something, looking at it. I'm just like, you know what, I'm going to buy that and I'm going to take it home versus just online experience.

Yeah. I miss shopping so much. I think there'll be a big pent up. Oh that I don't think that people are going to just be like, oh, well now it's just online all the time though. Yeah. Mira, do you have any competitors in this space, like in this eco-friendly living, what would you say your biggest competitors are?

And what's interesting is, again, me so nice. And so maybe naive. Don't laugh at me. I mean, feel free to laugh at me. I'm pretty as a eco-friendly store, my competitors and I work for the same CEO and that's the planet. So I never feel that I have. And it's so interesting. A lot of the eco-friendly stores are so nice.

They're so open to giving you the information. I'll tell you when we went to unboxing. Oh, they're so amazing. They're west end. They're more like grocery and we don't have, we don't carry any suit here. We're more of if you will and household goods, so that sort of thing, but they were so easy going. They showed us the ropes.

These, you should do this. You should not do that. It was just so fantastic. Dealing with them. Full disclosure. I've already interviewed on box market. It's an upcoming episode. And I wasn't sure about interviewing to zero waste stores in the first season, but they are very different once a grocery, the other, a boutique, but more importantly, this podcast is about finding interesting ways to retail and the pressure to reduce our waste.

When we shop is huge in my group of friends. Mom's parents. Mostly we are sick of throwing out so much unnecessary crap that comes with our necessities. We don't know what to do with it or how to stop it. And recycling is clearly not the. I'm grateful to retailers that have some options while we wait for governments.

If that's what it's going to take to draw a line in the sand and say, it's no longer on the consumer recycling as a sham, the waste needs to stop before it starts. So I am happy to give these pioneers some airtime. The more the merrier, their success is proof that the consumer desire is absolutely. And the other one was the tear shop and they're actually out of Nova Scotia.

We called her out of the blue. She spent 45 minutes to an hour with us on the phone. Just trying to give us some advice to open up. There's this camaraderie of our type of store. We all want to see each other do well. And really the goal is to have one of these on every single. Right. If we really stand behind what we're trying to do, that we're just tapping into the market and it would be so great if we were on every single, but not just the replace, but the unbox markets of the world.

And so on. What is one, maybe one thought or a mantra book or whatever has gotten you through and helped you persevere from a spirituality perspective? I grew up Christian Coptic Orthodox. We go to church every single week and my belief that God will never give me anything that I can handle. That has really empowered me.

I'm not doing this alone. I'm not just doing it. Me and my brother-in-law and my husband. I'm, there's something, I feel a power behind me that really propels me every single day. I will never take credit for everything that I'm doing here. I can't do this by myself. Yeah. Amen. Amen.

It's way better than just a book or sourdough bread. Your faith, I guess there's only one last question. If there's one retail super power that you couldn't live without, what would it be? It sounds like she's got many, my super power, I think. Oh my goodness. But the superpower, just like once I leave the store, it's it does not exist.

Patients, not patient with my husband, not future. It would like to hit those, unfortunately, but you have to be patient starting something like this one week having a fantastic week. And then the next week am I going to go out of business? Because nobody's here. Meanwhile, it's like Monday and obviously it's not a lot of people that come out on Monday.

No wonder shops, closed doors on Monday. I didn't know that

when I opened up shop hours used to be 7:00 AM to 7:00 PM in my mind, people need coffee, first thing in the morning. So I stopped that I watched and then kind of have patience with it. And then you pivot. So. Have a little bit of patience. Don't make decisions right off the cuff and see where the trend is before you can say, no, we have to close up shop because it's COVID or no, we're only gonna allow two customers in the store because that's what everybody's doing.

Sit back, assess, be patient with it and see where. I love the patients got a great energy. I can't wait to visit your store when everything opens you to, for doing what you're doing. That's so awesome of you for reaching out to me. I appreciate it. And you're so welcome so much. We're looking forward to coming by with my ugly mug

on over. Thank you so much to mirror. Family for letting us in on their lives a little bit. If you have an ugly mug you want to donate, or you want to fill some of your empty soap containers, I know you have them just Google the replace on the damn floor. Do you want to let me know about a kick-ass store in your neighborhood?

Let's get to know them. Email me at Miranda theater in 1922. Dot com. Thank you so much for listening. Please share, please shop local whenever you can, uh, see you next week.