When Don and Linda Eckles opened the first Scooter’s Coffee location in Omaha in 1998, there was no guarantee the concept would work.
Specialty coffee was still relatively new to many consumers, drive-thru coffee shops were uncommon, and the couple spent much of their early years simply educating customers about what they were trying to build.
“The first several years were hard,” Don Eckles said on the Building Nebraska podcast. “It’s a loyalty business. People were buying coffee from somebody the day before you opened, and you’ve got to win that business over a long period of time.”
Nearly three decades later, Scooter’s Coffee has grown into one of the nation’s fastest-growing coffee franchises, with more than 900 locations across 32 states.
Eckles said one of the company’s earliest strategic decisions was focusing on the drive-thru experience.
“When we started Scooter’s in 1998, Starbucks wasn’t doing drive-thrus,” he said. “We said if we’re going to compete, we have to do something different. We’re going to have better drinks, we’re going to do it faster than anybody, and we’re going to focus on that customer experience through the drive-thru.”
The founders credit much of the company’s success to continuously refining the business model and surrounding themselves with talented people as the organization expanded.
“We realized we had an opportunity for this to be a really significant business,” Eckles said. “That meant we had to understand the business better, and we had to bring in people who know more about various pieces of it than we did.”
While Scooter’s Coffee now spans much of the Midwest and Southeast, the Eckleses believe Nebraska played a critical role in the company’s success.
“There’s no place like Nebraska,” Eckles said. “The work ethic here, the quality of life here, the type of people that live here — this is just a great place to build a business and an enterprise.”
Looking back, the founders say their biggest lesson for aspiring entrepreneurs is understanding exactly why customers would choose their business over the competition.
“The biggest thing people do wrong is they don’t understand the very first question,” Eckles said. “Why would anybody come to you in the first place? If you don’t know the answer to that, you better figure it out before you start investing a bunch of money.”
Today, Scooter’s Coffee continues to grow, but Don and Linda remain grateful for the journey that began with a single Nebraska coffee shop and a commitment to serving customers one cup at a time.
Listen or watch Part 1 and Part 2 of the Building Nebraska Podcast to hear the full conversation.
Part 2:
Part 1 with Scooter’s Coffee: