2025 Update from Lucky's!

🧡 Long post alert! 🧡

(theme: prices, margins, improvements, and goals in 2025)

Hi everyone,

It's been a long while since I've made a post like this, so kudos to you if you make it through. I wanted to give you all a quick update about how Lucky's is doing, and what our goals are for 2025. Amazingly, Lucky's is in our 8th year of business (seriously WHAT?!?), we've grown, expanded our menu, expended our crew, expanded our locations. We have so many moving parts on a daily basis across 3 departments (c0ffee, kitchen & bakery) in 2 physical locations. We've gone from a crew of 6 in our first few months to a solid 20 of us. It's wild.

Reflecting on the things that we do well, and the things that we'd like to improve on is a constant. Our leadership team meets weekly, we analyze data, trends and numbers together. We talk about culture, ways to improve our communication, our outreach, our efficiences. We're an open books business, this means that all of our crew understands the financial health of Lucky's and everyone has the opportunity to affect our bottom line in a meaningful way. We follow our passions, we change things occassionally to keep things fresh for both our crew and our community. We operate within a set of margins (if you know anything about resturants you know that margins in this industry are very, very slim), and we're subject to price changes almost constantly. We set our margins to be market appropriate so that we can weather the changes thrown at us by outside factors (examples - bird flu affecting egg prices, climate change affecting coffee crops, not to mention the possibility of Colombian green coffee bean prices affecting our roasters). We keep our prices stable as things around us go up and down. We serve agricultural products, that is just a fact, many skilled hands touch each and every thing that we serve all the way through the supply chain, including inside Lucky's.

Lucky's as a whole has a very low turnover, this means that we tend to retain people who work here for longer than average. We believe that a career in the service industry is a noble pursuit, not just a gap filler, everyone deserves to make enough to live on, no matter their job title. As people stay, wages increase (as they should), benefits increase (401k contributions, PTO accrual), our largest expenditure at Lucky's is our labor. I'm not at all saying this to complain, our labor margin is about 15% higher than industry standard. I'm proud to say that this year, Lucky's is on track to have a payroll of $1 million. That's $1 million dollars going into the local economy, supporting other local small businesses. Bonkers, isn't it?

The time has come for us to re-evaluate our prices, and bring our other margins into acceptable parameters to maintain a level of profitability in order to maintain our benefit growth for employees, to increase wages and make improvements to our spaces. This year we REALLY need to install a new floor a the garage, as equipment ages things need replacing, our infrastructure has gotten pretty worn (tables/chairs/paint). You all deserve to spend time in a space that's comfortable and pretty! (Hands up if you've almost tripped on the worn spots on our floor! haha) There's a soft spot right in front of our espresso machine where people love to stand and chat with our baristas. (We love this too!)

Anyway, I just wanted to give you a heads up that you'll be seeing some prices increase to align with national industry standards, and that align with our goals. It won't happen all at once, we're committed to keeping the impact as small as possible. Additionally, we are going to lock in certain prices for the long haul making certain items affordable and accessible: drip coffee, a bagel with cream cheese, and our classic pumpkin muffin will all be prices at a lower margin than the other items. I wanted you all to know our thoughts and reasoning in an effort to be transparent.

Omg, did you read this far?

If so, here's a little surprise: we're also announcing the return of the Pesto BLT for a little while! It will be offered on the classic Red Hen multigrain bread, or on a baguette! This sandwich is a community favorite made with peppered bacon, lettuce, tomato, cheddar cheese, and (nut-free) pesto mayo.

Thanks for making us great ya'll, you are what makes our world go 'round. For real. Big love to all of you, it's gonna be a weird few years so hold each other tight!

xo, Deb