6 Lessons on Leadership From Humble House Cafe Founder Melissa Lutz
Melissa and her team during their grand opening and ribbon cutting ceremony with the Golden Chamber of Commerce (July 2023). They soft launched in June and filled their space right away.
Founded: 2023
The Business: A mission-driven coffee shop that gives back to nonprofits and the community
Location: Golden, CO
Differentiator: Impact is Humble House’s greatest marker of success. In 2023, in addition to opening their store and supporting purpose-driven vendors, they donated $3,200 to local and global causes.
Stories permeate the walls of the cozy downtown Golden Humble House, where friends share croissants and lattes while remote workers lean over laptops and notebooks. Beautiful wood shelves are lined with locally- and globally-made earrings, dish towels, soaps, lotions, dog accessories, and more. Each display is paired with a story.
Humble House’s welcoming Washington Street entrance.
Owner Melissa Lutz brings that storytelling practice over from her days running Generous Coffee, the impact-driven coffee roaster in Golden’s Tributary Food Hall that opened in 2020. Back then, a single sign at the cash register reminded customers that their purchases would support Rosa’s chicken farm in Honduras, or help to fund a health clinic in Haiti.
Today, Melissa’s coffee shop dream sends ripples of impact throughout the Golden community and around the world. A pay-it-forward board up front includes notes from customers looking to buy a coffee for someone else, like ‘a fellow single mom having a hard day’ or ‘someone battling cancer.’ Each Tuesday, Humble House offers free coffee to a group in the community, this week was fire fighters.
“My biggest struggle is that I want to give everything away.”
“I’m working on a shorter elevator pitch about our impact,” she told me over an espresso and iced matcha latte on the shop’s sunny back patio. And no wonder she struggles to keep it short. The downtown Golden cafe and gift shop can list countless ways they give back, from proceeds donated to nonprofits to artisan-made jewelry, clothing, and home goods, to the coffee and food they serve, everything counts.
“My biggest struggle is that I want to give everything away,” she says. “I know I need to think about growing the business, paying my staff, and giving myself a salary so that I can survive. But my instinct is to donate it all.”
We caught up to talk about what it’s like to live your dream every day, how a beginner’s mindset may be the secret to her success, and how she finds balance when there’s always someone else to support. Here are six lessons we can learn from Melissa:
LESSON 1: If you have good intentions and are doing your best, the universe will take care of you.
For me, the financial portion was the scariest. I was in my 20s with not a lot of money to invest, and I was like, “How do I go from the $7 in my bank account to owning a business?” Generous Coffee was a partner up until recently, when I raised enough money to buy them out. Humble House is one hundred percent mine now. It feels good when you put blood, sweat and tears into something and then you get to enjoy the results.
LESSON 2: Use your lack of experience and beginner’s mindset as an advantage.
I’ve never run a coffee shop or even worked at a higher-end one before, and that may be my secret. I don’t come in with conventional ways of doing things. I don't know what I don't know, and that's kind of scary. I just have this looming fear that there's some major blind spot that I'm missing that will come back to bite me.
As a leader, I try to be honest about what I don’t know. If my team asks why we do something a certain way, I ask them if they have a better idea, and then we try it. I’m super malleable because I know I’m not perfect. We’re learning and growing together and bringing them in as part of the process really gives them ownership. When they see an idea come to life in the form of a new drink or menu item, they get to see people enjoy it and they feel a sense of pride. We’re just figuring things out together and having fun along the way.
LESSON 3: The coffee needs to be delicious, and the goods need to be beautiful, giving back is a bonus for most consumers.
If I don't need hand towels, I'm not going to buy them just because I know they do good. But if I buy hand towels and someone mentions that they’re an impactful purchase, that feels good. I'm going to come back and I'm going to tell my friends to come back. Our mission is good for repeat business in that way. We want the space to feel warm and inviting, and for everyone to know that by purchasing here you’re impacting the world around you in a positive way.
NOTE: While Melissa’s initial theory was that people likely wouldn’t go far out of their way to visit an impact-driven coffee shop, recent visitors have proved her wrong. A few road trippers drove through Golden and stopped for breakfast just because they had learned about Humble House on Instagram.
LESSON 4: People want to support each other, sometimes it just helps to show them the many ways to make a difference.
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in spring 2020, Generous Coffee was just getting off the ground. Suddenly, we were getting Venmo payments from all over the country. People wanted to support Generous Coffee and frontline workers.
In this new space, we try to interweave purpose into everything that we do. We've launched a retail shop, and we source from hyper-local artisans to provide jobs in our community and then global artisans in developing countries that currently or are working towards offering jobs in that community. We still serve Generous Coffee, and they donate all of their profits. We are intentional about selecting vendors that also give back; the kombucha company that we work with donates a portion of their profits to a nonprofit that serves kids with autism. We have a make your own jewelry bar and all the charms are handmade by women in the Dominican Republic and they're paid dignified, government-level wages for that work.
LESSON 5: Approach life (and business) with a sense of abundance.
Even if another coffee shop with a mission to give back opened across the street, I would be glad. That’s just more good in the world. I don't care if it's competing and across the street from me.
I would love to consult other businesses in being impactful and purposeful in their missions. I would help them come up with unique ways to integrate impact into their existing systems and then teach them how to tell their stories. Whether we’re a model or inspiration, I'm sure there are a million different ways that people can be impactful.
LESSON 6: Prioritizing the business means prioritizing impact.
I think it's a delicate balance of staying true to our mission and our roots, but also investing in a healthy, thriving business. That's something I want to be honest with our customers about. I’m not in this to get rich; I'm in this to pay my bills and to do good in the world.
At the end of each year, we review our finances and see what we were able to give, what we need to reinvest into this business to continue to grow next year, and what we have left over that we donate. In our very first year in business we were able to donate over $3,000.
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From the staff who greet you at the front register to the open-air kitchen where baristas and cooks hand over bubble teas and smoothies or Leroy’s bagels topped with cream cheese, everyone seems proud of the part they play.
As she looks to the year ahead, Melissa is focused on using the space as much as she can. From a liquor license for evening events or workshops, to expanding their outdoor space to accommodate more people in the warm months, she’s full of ideas. Just this winter she parked a powder blue Shasta trailer behind the cafe and encouraged customers to reserve time in “Odette” for free.
“I want to utilize this space to its fullest and continue to grow our impact and the community that is fostered here,” she says. “We want this space to be warm and inviting and for customers to know that by purchasing here they're impacting the world in a positive way.”
Odette, the Shasta trailer that customers can rent for free by the hour while enjoying Humble House food and drinks.
