Speckled Paw Coffee Named A Small Business Of The Year By BUSINESS NORTH CAROLINA

AnsonEDP Executive Director John Marek traveled to Chapel Hill yesterday along with management and staff of the Speckled Paw Coffee chain to attend Business North Carolina's 2022 Small Business of the Year awards luncheon. Mt. Gilead's Speckled Paw was one of four small businesses from across the state to be recognized by the publication, the others being Core Technology Molding of Greensboro, Firsthand Foods of Durham, and Seaview Crab of Wilmington. 

Specked Paw was lauded for its unique approach to creating “community through coffee” and the integration of an extensive community newsletter into its business model. Marek writes a weekly column for that publication. 

Although based in Mt. Gilead in Montgomery County, Speckled Paw operates two stores in Anson County and one in Richmond County. The Wadesboro store was an anchor tenant for the REV Uptown coworking space and business incubator operated jointly by AnsonEDP and the Anson County Chamber of Commerce. 

"All the credit for this Small Business of the Year Award goes to Kyle and Myra (Poplin, Speckled paw owners). It was their concept, their investment, and their hard work," Marek commented. "As an organization, AnsonEDP is thrilled to have assisted in some small way to bring their concept to Uptown Wadesboro and collaborate in making them an integral part of our business incubation efforts. Their success is our success!"

It wasn't always a smooth road, though. Less than a year after Speckled Paw opened in REV Uptown, the COVID pandemic shuttered most retail and food service operations. The entire complex, coworking space, incubator, and offices were closed for almost six weeks, but as restrictions eased over the summer of 2020, Speckled Paw came back to life, first as carry-out only for a couple of hours each day, but eventually in-store for limited hours and then back to a normal schedule. As participants in a business incubation program rather than a traditional lease, Speckled Paw was able to reduce its costs to a level commensurate with the business they were doing and that allowed them to stay in the black (or at least within shouting distance) during even the bad times.

These days, you will see a broad cross-section of the community at Speckled Paw on any given day: Pastors working on their sermons, high school and college students plugging away on their laptops, business people making calls or sealing deals over a latte or cappuccino, a freelance graphic artist working on a new project, a craft club doing needlepoint or knitting. Maybe even an award-winning author putting the finishing touches on his latest book. A lot of the regulars know each other's names, and it's not uncommon to see them collaborate; maybe that author needs a cover design from the graphic designer, or one of the college students needs some spiritual guidance.  

And that brings us back to the idea of community. When we opened REV Uptown, our primary goal was to create that "community space" Wadesboro lacked. With help from Speckled Paw, The Chamber of Commerce, Uptown Wadesboro Inc., and the Anson County Tourism Development Authority, we have done exactly that.