Why Harvard Students Study This Cambridge Guy's Coffee Shops

Stephen Darwin’s professional development and the micro-economy he’s created with three coffee and sandwich shops are the stuff that Harvard Business School students study. Darwin — a relative of Charles Darwin, author of the theory of evolution — was 27 when he and his wife Isabel opened the first Darwin’s Ltd. in West Cambridge in 1993. Today, he says he is no longer in the cafe business, but in the leadership development business, breeding what he hopes are generations of small-scale, local proprietors interested in being independent and privately-owned. His commitment to the survival of a species of quality community establishments comes with this advice: “Growth isn't always the best thing. Be grateful for what you have.”

How do you do it?
"I’ll preface with this: I have about 70 twenty-year-olds working for me and they come and go with the seasons, because it's transient work. I woke up one morning and I said, 'If I'm going to survive in this business, I have to be constantly training managers and my managers constantly training employees.' I repackaged. I'm no longer in the sandwich making business. I'm in leadership development. Other people might argue that I might have been better served by hiring a professional from outside to come in and take over aspects of the business. I like to think that our particular business runs the way it does because we do it in this organic fashion and that we're not a corporate environment."

Does it take a certain kind of person to make that mental shift and stay independent as you grow?
"Yeah, somebody that's actually crazy. We had the one store and I couldn't figure out how to keep it all together without burning people out. I used to take personal offense when somebody quit the job. This was during the Clinton years and, like today, the economy was booming. That's when you couldn't find an employee to save your life and I was having health problems that my medical doctor couldn't explain."

What did you do?
"I met a homeopath who said, 'Hey, it's nice to meet you. I love your business. Big fan of the place. But anyhow, I've written down a list of characteristics of people and I want to know if this rings true with you?' I read this list and started to laugh. I found a little of this in about everybody who works for me. All of a sudden I was like, 'Oh, this is me.' He said that as soon as I changed my diet, these things would change and everybody who's working for me was going to leave. 'You're not going to fire anybody. They're just going to leave. They're going to walk away.' ”

Like a friend recently told me: “The vibe attracts the tribe?”
"Exactly, and I thought, 'This guy is out of his mind.' I changed my diet, I was doing yoga and the next thing I knew, somebody quit. Within two weeks, a better qualified more motivated individual came in and then the next employee started reading the writing on the wall and decided to leave, and they started falling like dominos. The more the energy changed, the more the other people that weren't congruent with that energy started peeling away, exponentially. I learned to realize that people come and people go and not to take it personally. Another friend said, 'When are you going to learn that your business isn't about you.' I'm like, 'What do you mean? It's my name on the door.' He goes, 'Dude, you got the place off the ground. That's your job. Your business would probably do better if you got out of the way because it's not about you anymore.'

Now you sit here totally relaxed with three bustling shops. What’s with that?
"Are any of my stores fully staffed right now? No. I think all of my managers wish they had one or two more employees. Are we making due with what we have? Yeah. But there's a huge shortage of food service people because there's so many more businesses in demand of these types of people in Greater Boston."

The coffee bar at Darwin's Ltd. on Mount Auburn Street. Photo by Heidi Legg.

What's the solution?
"I think economics takes care of it one way or the other. And, obviously, as wages go up, more people will be able to afford to live in the city. I had employees say, 'How do you feel about the $ 15 minimum wage?' It's fine with me as long as everybody else abides by it and understands prices will go up."

Why have you chosen to keep Darwin’s independent?
"It’s about how I run this large organization and keep the guidelines broad enough that each location can have its own spirit without it becoming so rigid that it's like corporate America, like Dunkin Donuts. I am trying to hang on to my three businesses in an organic way that allows this dynamic of freedom. How do I keep the boundaries when I'm not intimate in any one place? It is my growing edge right now but I'm figuring it out."

How would you define your commitment to micro-entrepreneurship?
"I don't know any other way. I’m better dreaming up the new idea and starting something new."

Your shops are quite unusual. Even new customers who want an independent vibe are confused?
"We likely attract the people who are also more playful and more creative. There are some people who might come in to one of my stores, not know where they fit in, and feel so uncomfortable that they turn around and walk away. Other people are going to get curious and go, ‘Wow, okay, so this is different. I wonder how I interact here?' "

Is that important to you?
"I just don't know any better or differently. The funny thing is Harvard Business School students do an analysis on the store at Mount Auburn Street all the time and the analysis always ends with: Who the heck would design a store like this? But nobody ever thought to ask why is it this way. The layout is very segmented only because the landlady wouldn’t let us take down the wall in the middle."

Your locations share the same vibe but are in distinct neighborhoods. Do they differ?
"It's a distinctly older crowd that comes into Mount Auburn Street. Cambridge Street is more of your young adults from the design school, young parents from the neighborhood and the high school kids from Cambridge Rindge and Latin school. Down by MIT, everybody in there is working for these startup companies and they’re kids out of college or going to MIT and they're doing really well."

That’s a kind of biodiversity — different but similar species existing in different but similar ecologies — which was studied by Charles Darwin. Are you a descendant of his?
"I'm a direct descendant of one of his cousins."

Any advice you’d offer entrepreneurs?
"Don't bite off more than you can chew. Take it slowly. Growth isn't always the best thing. Be grateful for what you have. Everybody in this culture wants more, which is why I think there's this huge race to the bottom going on in our cultural landscape. I read somewhere that around the $80,000 a year mark, your happiness actually starts to diminish."

What advice do you have for small business owners who are struggling?
"You have to reinvent yourself. I reinvented myself and it changed the way I looked at my business. You have to find something beyond the making of making money that serves you and that gives you purpose."

Stephen Darwin sitting curbside at his Darwin’s Ltd. coffee and sandwich shop on Cambridge Street. Photo by Heidi Legg.

Heidi Legg is founder of TheEditorial.com which publishes interviews on emerging ideas around us.