“Once you commit to a business, that is your life,” Patterson Perk owner Jen Tydings told me as we scarfed down breakfast at the Honeybee Diner in Glen Bernie. Well, let’s be clear: I was scarfing down breakfast. Jen eats like a normal human being and can tell you firsthand that watching me put down food is terrifying.
That’s another story for another day, though. Jen, for those who haven’t met her, is a multi-talented artist/musician who effortlessly commands respect and wields a natural wit that’s acerbic to the point of withering. She’s also one of the most industrious, dedicated people I know.
This year marks a full decade since Jen bought Patterson Perk (aka The Perk), a coffee shop on the Eastern Avenue side of Patterson Park that is consistently praised for their menu and service. One of their specialty drinks, the aptly-named Rocket Fuel, was named Best Coffee Drink in Citypaper’s 2014 Best of Baltimore issue, where it was called “a beast of a drink” that justified “why [Citypaper] got into drinking coffee in the first place.”
For the record, I am not a coffee drinker, but I have tried Rocket Fuel and it lit me up like a pinball machine. Believe what you’ve heard.
Anyway, while Jen’s life is full of music and art, running a tight ship at work is her highest priority. The same could not be said for the Perk’s original owner, an absentee who lived in California and consequently had no real stake in the community. “Totally detached,” is how Jen described her.
So, when the owner made noises about selling the Perk in 2005, Jen decided to buy it herself. As the shop’s manager, she was essentially running the day-to-day business already, and thought she was better suited (by virtue of actually living here) to make the executive decisions that would best serve and reflect the surrounding neighborhood.
“I had a lot of hubris in my youth,” she admitted.
All notions of hubris aside, buying an existing business is a serious undertaking, especially one with as many hidden agonies as a coffee shop. Running one seems idyllic on the surface, to the point where a lot of schools use coffee shops as models for small business ownership. The reality is that, like any other entrepreneurial gambit, it’s often a slog through long hours, constant stress, and the difficult-to-impossible work/life balance that comes with being one’s own boss.
Luckily, Jen is as resourceful as she is smart, and had more than blind optimism to guide her through the initial steps. She buried herself in market research, got a financial advisor, and talked to every small business owner she knew to get the full picture of what was in store for her. She urges anyone with dreams about starting their own business to make a “painstakingly detailed” business plan and get as much advice beforehand as possible.
Other nuggets of Jen’s wisdom include “don’t gamble away all your profits” and “try not to become an alcoholic,” which sound glib until you consider the realities of owning a business in Baltimore.
Many of What Weekly’s readers know that, for all of Baltimore’s promise, it’s hard to keep a business running here. Personal property and real estate taxes are high, support from City Hall wavers depending on who’s in charge (Jen mentioned Sheila Dixon’s efforts to highlight women-and-minority-owned businesses, which have dried up under Stephanie Rawlings-Blake), and while Charm City isn’t as fragmented as it was 20 years ago, a lot of its neighborhoods are still isolated from one another.
Small businesses like coffee shops are highly sensitive to economic changes, too. During the Great Recession, Jen saw more than a few places close down, and had to stop paying herself for two years to keep the Perk open. It’s only recently that her sales have reached pre-Recession levels again.
The key, then, is for small business owners to look around them for support instead of waiting for it to trickle down from above. Because Jen took the time to reach out to other entrepreneurs in the neighborhood—she named the Creative Alliance, Matthew’s Pizza, Fork & Wrench, Hair Off the Dog, and Chesapeake Wine Company specifically—she got a lot of valuable guidance that kept her afloat when she was starting out.
Getting to know the neighborhood itself has been another major factor in the Perk’s longevity. Jen brought up how much Patterson Park has changed in ten years, and feels that “business owners play a big role in community upkeep” by guiding neighborhoods through those demographic transitions when they are active members of the communities they serve.
Clearly, civic participation is important to Jen, and she practices what she preaches. She is a well-respected member of Baltimore’s art scene as a musician and theater artist, and has nothing but praise for her contemporaries. She loves the fact that there are still opportunities for people to establish themselves here, thanks to the city’s pervasive grassroots mindset and the wide array of outlets for people to create, and points to the local abundance of grants and arts funding as proof that “Baltimore artists can deliver.”
The fact that creative people in this town are so willing to invest in each other isn’t lost on Jen, either. In both her professional life and her position as a senior member of the Baltimore Rock Opera Society, she’s seen how encouraging Baltimoreans can be, and how eager they are to help others get new ideas off the ground.
Jen is, in fact, one of those eager Baltimoreans. I first met her in 2011, when she gave me a ride to a BROS event in Washington DC without knowing who the hell I was. I’ve never asked her why she agreed to that, and I can’t say I would have done the same in her position, but writing this article has given me some insight into her character. What I’ve found has inspired me.
When all’s said and done, Jen Tydings is the kind of person who helped a complete stranger become part of something bigger than himself. She is a credit to Baltimore’s business community, and any other community in which she participates.
