Trio of cafés carrying on family tradition of entrepreneurship

Marc Tallman is the founder of Empty Cup Collective, but his life is nothing if not full.

In the past 12 months — despite a COVID-19 pandemic that’s wreaked havoc on businesses, especially ones in the hospitality sector — Tallman has burst onto Winnipeg’s independent coffee scene, opening a trio of modern and striking, yet accessible and friendly, cafés in the city.

And by the way — he’s only 26 years old.

In a wide-ranging hour-plus chat at the Panet Road location over hot drinks on a recent mid-week morning, Tallman — an ambitious but amiable fellow — spoke about his rapidly growing concept, philosophy in business, and big plans for the future.

Tallman grew up in Tuxedo and attended St. John’s-Ravenscourt school, before attending the University of Winnipeg to get a bachelor of business administration degree.

When he graduated in 2017, he wasn’t passionate about coffee at all.

“I liked coffee like a lot of people, just drinking it to get through the day, but I never liked it enough to care what I was drinking,” he said, making a comparison to beer to illustrate his point.

“I was more of a ‘Bud Light’ person, not a ‘craft beer’ person.”

While backpacking across the world on a year off, he drank a lot of canned cold brew coffee to beat the heat of locales such as Australia, the South Pacific and Thailand. He got to thinking that starting his own line of cold brews when he returned to Winnipeg might be a good and profitable idea.

You see, business is in Tallman’s blood like caffeine — he comes from an extremely entrepreneurial family.

His grandfather, Harvey Tallman, bought Princess Auto Wrecking in 1942 with the money he made from selling the truck he used while working in Alaska. Harvey, who was turned down by the Canadian Armed Forces twice because of his psoriasis, transformed a little shack on Princess Street into a war surplus supplier, and later, into a tools and equipment mecca.

Harvey’s son, and Marc’s father, Bob Tallman expanded Princess Auto Ltd. into the national company it is today, with 48 locations across all 10 Canadian provinces. Harvey is still around and is nearing 100.

Bob is in his mid-60s and is “90 per cent retired now,” Marc said. Bob left Marc — and Marc’s older brother, Matt Tallman — to manage Princess Auto in 2018.

But Bob also wanted his sons to have businesses of their own. Matt, 30 years old, is the president and founder of popular Kenaston Avenue taproom and brewery Trans Canada Brewing, which opened in October, 2017.

Marc opened Empty Cup at a similar age, as his idea for a line of canned cold brew quickly blossomed into ideas of a full-blown cafe.

“It was like, ‘Well, we’re going to roast the beans, so why not sell the beans?’” Tallman said. “‘We have a space, so why not have a café?’”

But Tallman and his business-partner-slash-close-friend, COO Dexter Rempel, had a lot to learn. Neither had worked in a coffee shop before.

“We literally had no idea… We’ve learned everything the past two years,” Tallman said. They hired consultants, travelled to Colombia to study coffee beans and the growing process, and went to Italy for a barista course — learning how to properly steam milk, pull shots of espresso and the like.

They got their training done just in the nick of time. They left Italy just as the first wave of COVID-19 occurred there in early 2020.

Tallman moved with confidence as he jumped behind the line to make us drinks when I arrived. (He needlessly apologized for the lack of art on my hazelnut oat latte.)

Opening on Panet Road first was logical. Tallman owned the building already, as it used to be a Princess Auto (there is still a Princess Auto directly south of the shop.)

However, the space needed a lot of work. Tallman planned to open in 2020, but unsurprisingly hit several roadblocks — including a brutal second COVID wave and construction delays — along the way. It at least gave him more time to practise. The shop finally opened on April 1, 2021.

Tallman and Rempel opened the second Empty Cup location, in Sage Creek, in late September 2021, and followed that up by opening a location on Academy Road in a former Starbucks location in February. He said a lot of people in North River Heights have told him how badly their neighbourhood needed a coffee shop since Starbucks departed, and he’s more than happy to fill the void.

The Empty Cup locations — the name, by the way, is a play on the phonetic pronunciation of Marc Tallman’s initials, “M.T.,” — have a slick vibe, with a sharp monochromatic colour scheme, sleek counters, and lit-up marquees on the ceilings that read “EMPTY.” (The marquee was a last-minute addition to the Panet location but has now become a signature in all three shops.)

Despite the look, Empty Cup is not a “third wave” shop, Tallman said. “Third wave” craft coffee appeals to hardcore coffee fans, and Tallman said it can be quite bitter and acidic. Empty Cup strives to be a bit more accessible with a variety of blends.

“We’re really not trying to just appeal to coffee lovers,” Tallman said. “We’re trying to appeal to anyone who wants to drink coffee or tea… we’re trying to get people who are a tad out of their comfort zone to come in for a coffee and learn that we’re not the coffee they’re scared of,” he said.

It’s important to Tallman that Empty Cup is welcoming to all. “I want customers to… not be afraid to ask what a different coffee is. I want people to be able to learn about coffee, have a great experience, and be in what I think is a cool place.”

Unlike the Panet Road location, which is not in a particularly walkable location on the edge of an industrial park, the Academy location attracts plenty of walk-up traffic and more who sit in. Panet is doing well, and about 50 per cent of the customers there are regulars, but Academy is doing gangbusters.

Sage Creek had a slower winter but has a large patio that should be bustling come summer, Tallman said.

One of the biggest things Tallman has learned over the past year — other than the ins and outs of running a café — is how to deal with people.

“My dad always told me people are the hardest part of business and I think it’s true,” he said. “Everybody wants something and you want what’s best for the business and you have to try and manage both of those, manage how people get along, and everything else that goes with it.”

One lesson his grandfather and father taught Marc, a lesson he has kept at the forefront of his mind, is to make people the biggest focus — both customers and the approximately 50 staff.

“It’s all about people, whether it’s customer service or our team members, doing the right thing for them…” Tallman said. “We never laid a single person off here through COVID. We’ve had way lower turnover than you would ever think in a quick service café. The team are all friends. They get along. It’s fantastic so far — no complaints.”

Tallman isn’t behind the line too much now, but at the beginning, would jump in as needed and knows how to make the whole menu.

He trusts his experienced staff to represent the business well, and was even able to take a vacation recently without worrying that the shops would fall apart while he was gone.

Collaboration between Matt and Marc has been frequent. Trans Canada’s beer is on tap at all Empty Cup locations, and the pizzas on offer are some of Trans Canada’s most popular and can be baked up in a matter of minutes. The brothers collaborated on a cold brew coffee stout sold at Trans Canada last year, and Tallman gave me one of the two cans he estimated to still be in existence.

Empty Cup is also similar to Trans Canada in the way customers can get a peek behind the scenes. The glass wall behind the counter at the Panet location gives a clear look at the roasting equipment and canning line — Tallman hopes to have the first-ever cans of cold brews ready by the Victoria Day weekend — just like the glass wall at Trans Canada gives a clear look of the vats and brewing activities.

Tallman and Rempel — who arrived about an hour into the interview — gave the reporter a mini tour, and it’s clear they now know their stuff, showing the different types of beans from various countries and explaining the roasting and cold-brew production processes.

While Tallman is young, he’s no rookie thanks to his family background. As a result, no one’s tried to throw cold water on his plans or told him he’s too young to hack it.

However, when he goes to events and expos — he and Rempel travelled to Boston the day after the interview for the Specialty Coffee Expo — and interacts with suppliers, some are surprised that someone in his mid-20s has stores of his own.

“I’ve had that all my life, though, so I don’t really notice it anymore, as much. But they’re definitely surprised,” he said.

As for the advice he’d offer other young entrepreneurs, Tallman is blunt.

“Don’t half-ass it,” he said. “If you’re going to do it, do it, and make sure it’s up to the standard that you want. I think that businesses that fail kind of half-ass it…”

“Just look at this café. It’s very experiential. We have the array full of everything…” he continued, including the food menu of bowls, overnight oats, pizzas, and pastries from La Belle Baguette; beer and cold brew on a nitro tap; merchandise for sale; and a newly established rewards program where customers collect “drips” to redeem for free drinks.

“If we wanted to, we could have just done coffee and had some coffee bags, but we tried to really extend it and make it a full offering, a full experience, rather than kind of stopping halfway.”

“I really wanted this place to kind of operate from morning to night — come here for your first coffee or your last beer.”

Tallman’s plans to offer that experience in more places — to expand — are, unsurprisingly, heady. He’s striving to keep Empty Cup on a firm upward trend.

In addition to rolling out a line of canned cold brews, Empty Cup is opening its fourth location at Pineridge Hollow in Oakbank. The shop will be part of the new “Village at Pineridge Hollow” concept, which will consist of two large buildings with six individual shops each and a large covered farmers’ market.

Tallman and Rempel have also bought a small trailer to use for pop-ups, with plans to take it to events within Winnipeg and to Tall Pines Marina in Kenora this summer.

On top of all that, Tallman eventually wants to have a location with a drive-thru, which have become key for many businesses since the COVID-19 pandemic began, but isn’t sure where he’d want that location to be. He sees the potential for Empty Cup in other cities, but wants to get their processes refined more before he’d make such a move.

“I think we have a solid base, and we can build on that. I think that people love our brand,” Tallman said. “Academy’s proven that — it’s extremely busy; it’s hard to sit down in there. I’m hopeful for the future, and we’ll see where we go.”

Tallman is a big-picture guy but provided a couple of examples of his attention to detail that will also serve Empty Cup well as it expands, whether that’s within Winnipeg or beyond.

“If we only went with cold brew and didn’t design the cans properly, that would be a failure in my eyes,” he said, as an example.

“For us, cups were also big thing,” he continued, gesturing to his black-cupped Americano, adorned with the italicized lower-case ‘e’ logo and “EMPTY” in capital block letters from the bottom to the top.

“A lot of cafés just have white cups. If we did that, that would have not been a full offering to me. I really wanted to create something that looks like a business that’s been around for a while.”

“A lot of people have asked if we’re franchised or a chain, and in my eyes that’s a good thing, because it means we’re doing something right and we’re looking like we’ve done our research and fully built the business that we wanted to build.”

declan.schroeder@winnipegfreepress.com