Finding a Balance: Morgan McCoy, Adda Coffee & Tea

By Eric Pursh

Morgan McCoy is the General Manager of Growth & Operations at Adda Coffee & Tea. Morgan has the company in high-growth mode, with lots of new initiatives and plans to expand the organization and its offerings. But having always supported the nonprofit community, Adda and their GM are presented with new challenges [and opportunities] post-pandemic. I spoke with Morgan to see how she keeps things in equilibrium.

How did you come to work at Adda? 
My husband was one of the first baristas at Adda Shadyside when it opened five years ago and I briefly worked at the Northside store to help out when they first opened, so we have been friends of the owner Sukanta Nag and his wife Vanessa for some time. I was working at a commercial real estate company and reached out to Sukanta about an open space. That didn't work out, but we ended up reconnecting. He had an opening for a general manager position and I was looking for a change so the timing ended up being perfect.

Can you tell me about your role as General Manager?
On different days I'm CEO, CFO, CIO, or CMO - I take care of a lot!  There's only one other full-time employee. Luckily, we have a great staff and specialty coffee tends to draw in people with diverse experience, so even our part-time employees get involved with other projects like our events and charitable causes.


Speaking of charitable causes, I know that Partnerships play a big part at Adda. Can we talk about how that relates to your marketing?
We're a purpose-driven company. That's truly what guides us, and that mission is in our marketing. Sukanta, our owner, is the most giving person I know. From the start, Adda had programs like a monthly specialty drink and chocolate from a different country, and they'd donate to a nonprofit that operated in or for that country. Sukanta is from Bangladesh, Adda means both a conversation and a place to have it in Bengali. The name and our three main principles have guided us from the inception of Adda: conversation, community, connection.

Not all of the projects happening at Adda were sustainable, so when I got here I created an operational component. We now choose a nonprofit to focus on quarterly instead of monthly and we not only raise money, but we try to help them by promoting their work and having the team volunteer. The whole business is more programmatic and sustainable now.

In a small business, I'm guessing everybody needs to help with those types of initiatives in some way?
Our employees are very talented and not only are the baristas helping with events and projects, but I also have two wonderful marketing coordinators on team who focus on marketing for the online store, and they're working on content creation specifically for TikTok. We also have managers at each location and of course they really lighten the load. Marketing does sometimes take a backseat to operations: I am often lugging gallons of various liquids across Pittsburgh.

There are three locations, correct?
Yep! Shadyside, Northside and Garfield, and we're opening a fourth location downtown in Fall. We also have a special pop-up in the works that we're excited to announce... details coming very soon!  

Sounds like there's always something new and interesting happening - I just read about your partnership with CarbonCroc.
Definitely. We’re small and that has its drawbacks, of course, but it also lets us be super agile. We wanted to expand our sustainability practices and I happened to find CarbonCroc on Reddit when I was browsing r/startups one night. They were looking for an ecommerce business to work with. They created a Shopify app extension so we could tie-in all of our channels to their emission calculators. We ended up including the physical stores as well as ecommerce since that’s where the bulk of our business still exists.

Do initiatives like that play a big part in your marketing?
Our community work is definitely central to our messaging and marketing. But it’s also a big challenge, because sharing what we do sometimes seems ingenuous and we don't want to market that we do so much good when a) certain things should be the standard and b) overselling the value of our efforts, as major as they may be for our small business. For instance, we struggled with how to position the carbon neutral initiative for fear of “greenwashing.” I mean, carbon neutral emissions aren't solving global warming. It's more about creating awareness and getting other businesses on board so we put that foot first. For example, businesses like to tell people that they're getting rid of straws. And that's great, but most current models of strawless lids require the same amount of plastic as a lid and a straw, so if you're using those instead, it solves less of the problem than brands may lead consumers to believe. It’s a constant battle of approaching the same problems that are made by the consumption that brings your business money. I am a super skeptical consumer myself so I try to put myself on that side of the spectrum. 

Our focus has always been on people and community, and not profit. Ultimately our star KPI is whether people are proud to work here. The values we hold and the good we try to do is good for employee morale and retention, and customer loyalty and engagement. We invest a LOT in to these initiatives so it’s a sacrifice, too, but they’re ones worth making.

Contact Adda Coffee & Tea
https://www.addacoffeehouse.com
hello@addacoffeehouse.com

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