If you’ve been around the i.Lab the past week, you’ve probably noticed something different about the energy in the building, mainly in the front lobby. The vibe is a little more dance-y, the faces looking more alive (and a few of them unfamiliar), and the air itself a little richer with the aroma of freshly-ground coffee—all pointing to the return of our beloved onsite coffee shop, which has reopened as Shark, too under Monique Boatwright.
This morning, Monique, who’s an entrepreneur in her own right, made me an amazing cappuccino and filled me in on how she came to be where she is. We talked about her start in the coffee industry, how her life and work have come to blend together, and her experience as a “mom-trepreneur” with not only a business but also four kids to raise.
Shark, too isn’t Monique’s first rodeo. Prior to working in coffee, she’d also had small businesses related to sewing and local farming, and was also involved with natural parenting. When she started in the coffee industry seven years ago, though, she found a line of work she wanted to keep.
“I met the coffee industry and it sucked me in,” she told me, recounting how she’d started at Mudhouse because of her love for coffee and baking. As she worked more, that love deepened and grew, not only for the coffee itself but with the whole industry and the community that’s formed around it in Charlottesville.
“It’s a pretty tight community; we all know each other,” she said of the coffee community here. Because there are so many shops in town, which are well-supported but still quite numerous, she said she wasn’t initially seeking to open a shop, but came to it as the result of a rather convoluted process.
Shark, too, which Monique now runs and owns, came out of Shark Mountain Coffee and still serves the roasts that Johnny Nuckols makes, but the two are sister shops that are independently owned (although Monique also manages the IX park location for Shark Mountain, because she’s superwoman). It was, she said, a “mutually beneficial arrangement” to have the two separate shops, which are both incidentally adjacent to co-working spaces.
She likes the unique location of Shark, too, as well as the opportunity to cultivate community around the coffee she loves. “It’s such a part of people’s everyday ritual,” she explained, “you want it to be a pleasant part.” Over the years, she’s had a hand in shaping that ritual for countless individuals—some strangers, but many who she’s come to know well. She spoke, smiling, of seeing regulars (as well as fellow baristas) walk through various life stages, like falling in love, partnering off and having children.
“People really sort of let you into their lives,” she told me. “If you create that space … you’re welcoming them home.” And while she meant that more generally of the coffee shop experience done right, there may have been in it a hint of the literal: she’s actually lived in community with several people she met in the coffee community, mostly fellow baristas.
“It doesn’t feel like being at work versus going home,” she said of her work-life situation, describing it as a “seamless” way of being. Rather, her work and life flow into each other, as she does what she loves and lives out of that place.
“Most everyone is in it because they love it,” she explained. But that doesn’t mean that balance is a walk in the (IX) park, either—especially when it comes to raising kids, of whom she has four between the ages of 8 and 17. That part, she said, feels a bit like “spinning plates.”
Earlier in her life, when she had the sewing business, she said she’d occasionally be up sewing at three in the morning with a baby on her lap, and that that was hard. Now that the kids are older, having a business while raising them is easier, but she said there’s still “room for improvement.” She hopes to be able to bring some of the older ones into the shop and instruct them on how to help out, giving them job skills that she herself can teach.
Bringing together home and family with the community culture of coffee, the opportunity to get to interact with and care for people, she says she’s found “one of those jobs where I feel pretty spoiled.” She’s also been fortunate, she says, with those who have helped out along the way.
“This has been really smooth because I’ve had an outstanding support group,” she said, pointing to supporters who offered their resources and time, even equipment, to help bring this shop into existence. And we’re all benefitting from their support, as enterprise flows into enterprise and we reach for another cup (which I wholeheartedly suggest everyone at the i.Lab go do sometime: it’s delicious and the people are interesting).