Drive through downtown Sturgis anytime other than 2 weeks in August, and it’s easy to come away thinking that nothing much happens here except during the motorcycle rally.

But that’s just 10 days each year.

The rest of the time, it’s a community with the same struggles and challenges of any small town. As we pulled in early Sunday afternoon in late August, we were hard pressed to find anything open and the sidewalks were empty. “It might look this way on a Wednesday too,” said Mike Kahler of the Pony Express-O, a gourmet coffee shop in town and home of The Sturgis Coffee Company. “It’s great when the bikers come to town. But we need to create a sustainable business the rest of the year too.”

There is a drive in Sturgis to get businesses to think beyond the Rally and a large part of the drive is coming from young business people such as Mike and Anna Kahler. They recently moved into a larger, revamped former auto body shop to fill their need for on-the-spot roasting of coffee beans. “It’s hard to believe they were pounding out dents in here just a year and a half ago,” Kahler added.

Kahler served 5 years in the military and had a 3 year tour in Italy where he developed a taste for good coffee. Leaving military life behind, his family headed ‘home’ to the Black Hills and opened a drive through espresso spot. After it became successful, he sold it and opened another location as The Pony Express-O. When he outgrew that location, they moved across the street to their current location where he bought a roaster and all the specialized equipment to handle the high volume that he’s helping to create.

“A lot of my customers have been with me for 9 or 10 years. We’ve got 30 or so regulars that come in every morning for sure. And, if they don’t, they’re in jail or dead or very sick or out of town,” Kahler laughed.

They roast their beans fresh on site and do mail order all over the world. “We take all of our orders, roast it, bag it and ship it out priority mail the same day. So when it gets to that customer, it’s good and fresh,” Kahler said. “To be in a small business anymore, you don’t have to be the cheapest on the block, but you have to have a good product.”

Rumor is he roasted 2 TONS of beans for the Sturgis motorcycle rally and did exceptionally well. But he knows that you can’t run a business on that.

“If you base your business on that two weeks out of the year, you’re making a pretty big mistake. The Rally needs to be looked at more as a ‘Yea bonus, Merry Christmas’ versus ‘this is what we’re going to do for two weeks out of the year and then we’re gonna close it down,’” Kahler suggested. “If we could get more people on board thinking like that, we could probably do a little bit better.”

And what better to toast that success than a fresh roasted cup of coffee.

 

 Mike Kahler of the Sturgis Coffee Co. [12:53m]: Play Now | Play in Popup

Tags: Anna Kahler, Black Hills, Mike Kahler, Pony Express-O, Sturgis, Sturgis motorcycle rally, The Sturgis Coffee Company