Jo was excited to hear that. “Oh, my goodness, thank you. I’ve hardly had time to check emails. Why don’t you come over tonight? I can make jambalaya with the peppers, and we can hash out the merchandise extras. I’ll ask Maileah and Rocky, too.”
Junie’s face shimmered with excitement. “I love projects like this. It’s so much fun seeing your ideas come to life.”
“I couldn’t do this without you,” Jo said, hugging her friend.
“Sure you could. It would take longer, though, and be a lot less fun. Besides, I’m eager to collect my compensation in smoothies and burgers.”
“Anytime,” Jo said, smiling. “At the diner or here.”
She counted herself fortunate to have such a good friend across the street.
A moment later, footsteps sounded behind her. Hugo came from his room, yawning and stretching. “Who was at the door this early?”
“Junie. Her garden is enormous, and she and Knox’s parents care for it. Whatever they can’t use, she gives some to me for the diner, and the rest goes to the food bank.”
“That’s pretty cool,” he said, heading toward the kitchen. “Anything to eat here?”
Jo held up the paper bag and laughed. “Plenty of sweet peppers. But seriously, I haven’t had time to shop. Come by the diner for breakfast.”
“Okay, thanks,” he said. “I’m taking the noon ferry for San Diego. I have a project to finish by tomorrow afternoon because Grandma wants me to go to a concert with her that evening. Anything you want me to do before I leave?”
“Glad you asked. Would you replace the bulb in the light fixture above the front door? I’ve been meaning to do that, and it shouldn’t take long. You know where the bulbs are.”
She often made a list of things for him to do when he was here. While she could do them, she didn’t have time for everything.
Hugo took a handful of small yellow and orange peppers from the bag. “No worries, I’ll do that now.”
Jo picked up the bag, put it in her bike basket, and started for the diner.
One of the servers had called in sick, so Jo was shorthanded. She thought about her founder’s story while she made coffee, cleaned the counter, and waited tables.
She had practically memorized it.
After she got home later, she began writing the crowdfunding pitch. The house was quiet except for the hum of the refrigerator and the faint crash of waves.
She sat at the kitchen table with her laptop and a legal pad full of notes and crossed-out sentences. In reading what she’d written earlier, she saw what Maileah didn’t like.
It sounded too much like an ad. Bright, punchy, and fake. That wasn’t her.
She started over.
Cuppa Jo’s was built on great coffee.
Too simple. She tried again.
Ten years ago, I bought a rundown diner on Crown Island with a loan and a prayer.
Too personal. She crossed it out.
Women grow seventy percent of the world’s coffee but own almost none of the business.
This was honest. Still, it needed to be personal, as Maileah had instructed.
Jo looked in her research folder for more ideas. She’d been reading about women in coffee for months, ever since she’d visited a cooperative in Colombia. That trip was a highlight of her life that surfaced from her research. It was organized and underwritten by a grant for a women’s business group in the States.
All she’d needed was her passport and money for incidentals.
She turned a page. Here was another article she’d printed out that had stuck with her. Melitta Bentz was a German housewife who hated the gritty sediment in her morning coffee. Jo could hardly blame her, but Melitta did something about it. In 1908, she punched holes in a brass pot and lined it with blotting paper from her son’s school notebook.
