We are Coffee Geeks, who Never Stop Learning, Creating Remarkable Care for each other and for our customers.
I started Stone Creek in 1993 with the belief that for-profit companies have an obligation to their neighbors, their communities, and to their planet. In early 2022, we completed our certification as a B Corporation. Under this certification we aim to create value for our employees, our customers, our suppliers, and our environment. We aspire to create beautiful things, spaces, and experiences that impact people's lives. These founding values will continue to guide us on our learning journey.
Eric Resch, Founder & Co-Owner | Melissa Perez, Co-Owner
Our Employee Owners
WE ARE A B CORP
While a typical business operates only with the obligation to create value for its immediate shareholders, the driving purpose of Stone Creek Coffee is to create value for ALL of its stakeholders, including its Community, Customers, Employees, and Environment. We have committed to working as a force for good and to partnering with those who share our corporate values. In line with this mission, we became a Benefit Corporation in 2020 and were fully certified as a B Corp with B Labs in early 2022.
OUR CORE COMMITMENTS
Keep Your Commitments
Every good commitment has a due date, a clearly defined deliverable, and one person responsible. A good commitment maker will not over-commit and will deliver as committed or will notify their team well in advance if unable to do so.
Think Hard
While working hard is important, it doesn’t create change in and of itself. We must be people who do the thinking necessary to improve our work and our environments. “Better” doesn’t come by doing more of the same things. “Better” comes through invention of new concepts based on wise interpretation of facts.
Clean the Corners
Literally, we clean the corners. Details matter. The same attention to detail and care we bring to our coffee is reflected in all of our work. When we are great in the details the big picture will be something extraordinary.
Create Remarkable Care
The notion of “quality” is nice, but it doesn’t provide a tangible benchmark for us to measure ourselves against. “Remarkable Care” is different. It is a measurable deliverable. Every day when we come to work at Stone Creek Coffee our goal should be to create unexpected human connections together, with our partners, and with our guests.
Take Care of Your Coworkers
All of us need help at times. Our company will be best when we go out of our way to take care of each other and ensure a productive, safe, and healthy work environment.
Be Here Physically & Mentally
Customers, fellow employees, and the company at large rely on each individual who works here to come to work on time, prepared mentally and physically to execute. When you’re on, you’re all in. If we fail here, our company will be soft and incapable of accomplishing its goals.
Prepare for Your Work
We work with care and thoughtfulness to put ourselves in the best situation to bring success. As much as possible, we anticipate barriers to success and work to tear them down.
Speak Up
Every individual brings a unique perspective to the table. We rely on those perspectives to keep our company as sharp as it needs to be. If employees are unwilling to speak up about problems they see in a constructive manner or be bold about ideas they have, then we will be unable to get better and grow.
Speak to the Future
We drop the ball on occasion. Everyone messes up. Everyone fails. The important thing in these situations is the response. When we fail we, will speak to what will be done differently in the future. We will not merely recap and make excuses for what happened. We will not make a mistake twice.
Be a Hero, Find a Hero
We don’t want to be merely “ok” or “better than the next company.” We want to be extraordinary, and we want to celebrate people doing extraordinary things. We go the extra mile, even when nobody is watching, and we take time to recognize when we see the hero in others.
Take Risks
Nothing truly amazing has ever been done without some degree of risk. With risk-taking comes learning. We will constantly try new things in an effort to get better; if those don’t work, then we’ll try something else.
Be Urgent to the Customer
Without the customer there is no company, no coffee, and no jobs. Therefore, we will drop whatever we are doing to ensure the customer experiences remarkable care and comes back tomorrow.
Never Stop Learning
If you’re not growing, then you’re dying. If we stop learning, then we will stagnate while the rest of the coffee world passes us by. Learning is very important for the development of each person in our company, and the collective learning is what will bring great value and the development of remarkable care.
On We Go...
PAYING LIVING WAGES
Over the last four years, we’ve been tracking our wages related to MIT’s Living Wage Calculator. We’ve been using their benchmarks for the Milwaukee metro area as an unbiased tool when assessing our wage levels. At the end of 2022, 91% of our full-time employees were paid a living wage according to this calculator. At the end of 2023, the Living Wage figure was $16.10 for an individual, and we had improved the percentage of employees above this mark to 96%.
Even as we do this work, we’re learning along with the B Corporation community, that there are many factors that play into a “Living Wage.”
B Labs, the organization that sets standards for B Corporations and conducts the certifications, is moving toward a system that includes an analysis of the individual employee’s needs and the benefit programs offered by each company. We are currently conducting an audit of our wages, benefits, employee needs, and local factors to create a better understanding of what our wage targets need to be on a go-forward basis.
Even as we take annual steps to evolve our starting and average pay rates, we know cost of living continues to escalate at a dramatic pace, thus all Living Wage benchmarks are going up quickly as well. This means that we have our work cut out for us. While the economic tides push against us, we will continue to devote our economic progress toward our goal of sustaining Living Wages for all of our employees.
BREWING CHANGE: OUR IMPACT REPORT
As a B Corporation, we produce an annual Impact Report to prove out the work we're doing to improve as a company, employer, and community member. In this annual report we share both corporate efforts as well as employee-driven initiatives to enact change. Click the button below to see what we've been up to.
OUR 2023 IMPACT REPORT
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