So what’s up with the rebrand?

We had a big 4-YEARS OF TETHERBALL party this morning, I took a nap, now I’m drinking a lacroix. I’m taking in the silence before a team dinner. As of today we’ve officially and totally got the new menu and brand rolling. It took about 10 months of planning followed by 5 months of serious work;

The whole timeline goes 1 year of work to open up Tetherball with a very minimal menu, 1 year later we added some more to it with empanadas and fun drinks. Then three years later we revamped the whole brand with lots of color and permanent furniture, figured out a full food menu, and embraced total seasonal chaos with a rotating brewery-style board. Not to mention a fledgling multi-roaster / merch shelf and pop up cart build out.

It was a big physical emotional and financial investment on top of our usual workload, but the shop looks brand new after four years of what now feels like groundwork. We’re once again hearing the “did this place just open?” alongside the stunned observers and longtime patrons overwhelmed by the changes.

but who cares, it was working, why change the brand?

I remember listening to an old episode of the cat&cloud podcast, a show that a lot of coffee professionals ages 30 and up remember as one of the few coffee shows on the internet in the mid 2010’s, and they talked about having to get their (I think 3) shops together, and update their mission/vision/values after (I think) 4 or 5 years in 2020. At the time since they were one of few authorities, it simply blew my mind that they would need to do any introspection. How could a shop with 3 locations not have a firm grasp on their culture and what their goals were? How could they be so honest that things just weren’t working and should change?

Well I can tell you as a shop with only one location that things are changing every day, and part of your responsibility as a business is to evolve with the culture. For us that was embracing the increasingly colorful and eclectic look we were tacking on to the very pastel and washed out colors we had planned to own. That’s the menu, the look, the events, the crazy volume, the plants the furniture, everything. We couldn’t just ignore it or continue piling up on ourselves.

I was obviously nervous about embracing change, because in the beginning your goal is just to take a gamble, then hold on for dear life with the plans you laid out. If that’s working, changing it is another risk. That said I was also frustrated because I wanted to be the best we could be and I knew we weren’t living up to our potential somehow. I saw other shops doing bigger numbers with less, or finding more recognition online, and even if we’re out in the suburbs and didn’t roast coffee to sell anywhere else we were still doing something special in my mind that was deserving of wider acknowledgement. Maybe that was a killer menu, fundraiser, community event, whatever! It only works if people know about it. The goal wasn’t necessarily to make an impact globally but at least to let the locals know their neighborhood shop was something to be proud of, and we weren’t even really reaching all of our own city.

Most importantly though I was on a time limit to act! The end of this year (2026) is when our lease is up at the cafe and potentially with a new property owner who wouldn’t want us back. It’s also when many of our initial giant start up loans get paid off. Worst case scenario they kick us out and we’ve got no savings because of the tight budget. Best case, we look legit and we’ve saved some money if we need to pivot. So we had to make a choice. Be happy with what we have and hope for the best, or double down and make a kick butt brand that also makes some money before the end of the year.

The first step was travel and a conversation.

Last year I got married, Dakota and I (Elias) who own the cafe were talking about our future and this time limit way back in January 2025. For our honeymoon in October 2025, we went on a cross country road trip to look around the country and decide what we valued in a place to spend our lives. We also used that time to visit 50 or so of the best coffee shops we knew of in the country. I took a lot away from that trip and understood what a “good shop” felt and looked like because in every new city it was a scramble to find a couple I’d never heard of. Then we’d talk about what was working and why. It was a lot of fun!

I think I hoped to find a place we could model our look and menu after, but we had just finished most of the “girlypop bar book” zine and I only had a vague sense of “pink meets produce” for our vibe. So places like digit in vegas and matryoshka in nashville stood out as girlypop, but they weren’t us. Menus like cutbow in Albuquerque used regional produce and lamplighter in Richmond had a great menu for the space, but both menus still matches a vibe that was uniquely them. I saw these places succeeding objectively, but wasn’t able to take anything away directly. Or talk to anyone there meaningfully. It probably didn’t help that we were permanently haggard from the daily 8+ hour drives.

The best conversation may have been with Bear who works at Onyx in Arkansas. I actually woke up from a nap as Dakota drove us in the opposite direction along route 66, to an email that read something like “turn around, I’ll buy you breakfast.” I was still sick from Vegas and we were both ready to head home, but somehow decided it’d be worth the talk and free food.

The Ozarks and Onyx HQ were gorgeous. Over breakfast we joked about ideas from a drive through to a beach hut, and Bear took them very seriously. He said that no matter what we decided to do, we could really truly do whatever we wanted. If we wanted to open a drive through that did not have headsets we could do that, and that onyx tried it already. Funnily enough we saw one in Nashville not long after. We talked about how much Bentonville AK had exploded in ten years, how America is changing, how if you build something excellent then eventually it will be worth it, and if you build the small town you want to see then it will be rewarding in time. In some ways that was the theme of the trip, the grass is always greener on the other side. You can create where you are, try really hard and find value in improving your community; Rather than moving somewhere because it’s already better in some specific way. Essentially I gained the confidence to begin work where I was with what I had and what I’d learned, and realized that no one was going to give me the answer.

Assembling a new brand.

In my opinion you should start creating with a brand guide. I think putting some boundaries around what you’re trying to do and what it looks or feels like is helpful. We were in this position of knowing what we felt like but not what it should look like. Over the summer I found a handful of creators who I reached out to in fall, one was @WubzGrubz who was giving a wild girlypop maximalist online energy to the northeast FL food scene, and the other was @thingImak who was doing sketches of colorful animal themed brand guides on her website. I knew we needed to post more and be louder, more colorful and more authentic. I knew I wanted an animal mascot and some more saturated, confident colors and fonts. So I reached out and we went back and forth over a couple of months!

Our package with Mak included two revisions, so we tried to be thorough in exactly what we felt was working and what wasn’t. We compared ourselves to other brands at every stage and what was a positive or negative association, what felt too derivative and why. What reminded us of certain feelings or demographics and what we were hoping to evoke. Thankfully she had a good balance of personal style and willingness to look at others and do her own research until we had something great. Then we had to pay for it and sit on it for like 3-5 months before we really rolled it out.

With Wubz we first reached out as she was beginning to blow up and think about doing brand deals. She probably doubled or tripled her online presence in our time working together. So we actually got to talk a few times in person about our goals and her goals long term. I think it was really helpful for both of us. Then for the shoots we reshot over a couple of months at different times of day as the space and menu was changing under our feet which was an interesting challenge. It was like “hey I’m going to get the wall repainted for this shot tonight if you can come in at sunrise tomorrow,” “This doesn’t look like it fits the new rebrand, I think we need to change the direction of this idea,“ all sorts of timeline shenanigans. Then when it came time to launch I think the biggest thing I took away again was just confidence in posting. here’s what the look should be, be confident have fun and post something. That said, the three videos we did shoot performed very well and have or will have been worth it.

Census

While working with brand designers we took a census from everyone we could on social media and in person, and gathered over hundred responses. We asked about what type of people visited and from where, what they liked and didn’t like about the space, and what they would like to see more of. What we quickly learned was they were all super fans so we didn’t get a lot of controversial feedback; Which was actually good as we were trying to understand our existing brand better and lean in to what was working.

In summary the responses were mostly young and old from our neighborhood and then an even swathe from around the city, maybe with a little bias towards San Marco area. People loved the weird fun bright colorful stuff like we were hoping, and really wanted more food snacks and gluten free options. More seating, more couches.

A lot of people said they wanted us better staffed in the morning, which felt weird because we never picked up until 8am when we had two people on. So we went, maybe there’s a reason for that, and adjusted hours from one person on 6:30-8am, to a 7am open with two people until close. That’s been really successful, all our 6:30 people just came in at 7 and then our 8am-10am rush became a steady 7-noon. I think the next move would be a day that goes from 7-4 as we get a random 2-ish pm rush, but without adding more staff or me working a whole lot it’s not realistic which is a whole other rabbit hole.

Assembling a new menu.

With confidence around our look and some census feedback, we knew which aspects of our menu to dial in on.

For drinks we wanted more seasonality and fun stuff, but often times we couldn’t plan around produce because if it ran a month late then we missed our window and had to settle for something more shelf stable or inauthentic to our area. The other thing about using real stuff is it runs out. We’re a busy shop and a small shop. It gets to the point where even if you want to store a months worth of produce and you can buy it, you can’t store it. Maybe the season ends early but someone hasn’t tried that bomb drink yet. Too bad, that’s just how it is. So we had to create a culture around things running out. I really liked the idea of taking things away physically, and I love the fun of seeing that new drawing on a brewery board every time.

We either had to dehydrate stuff or freeze it to try and stretch what we did buy, so we went with a dehydrator which was more space efficient and time efficient for just a pull and use. We did build a literal brewery board on to our menu with magnets and our local sign makers at Signarama who pretty much nailed it.

For food we spoke with our two bakers about more gluten free options, savory options, and Monday options where we for a time did only sourdough and then only cruffins from guest bakers. Our empanada lady was up to do some sandwiches in our retail fridge that we tested over a few weeks, and start a Monday delivery. Our baker agreed to double her output with half staples and half rotating gf/veg options. With special weekend items, cortado spoons, and a Monday option that we could keep cold on the side until then. We had to buy a nice new pastry case and strip down our retail fridge but it’s improved our workflow and generally everything sells! It seemed like the need was really there already and we met it.

Construction projects / The slow rollout.

After the holidays slowed down I had a handful of construction projects to get started on. I wasn’t sure if I should wait to change up our social media or post about what was happening and Wubz advised me to just post everything, try to post once a day. So I made it a goal to finish a project pretty much every day and that daily posting was really successful to also get our tiktok off the ground.

A handful of those projects were new oven, pastry case, wall sockets, homemade chocolate whipped cream and almond milk, importing new pour overs / filters. Replacing some tables with a cushioned bench and installing a wall long homemade bench/tables. Installing retail shelves. Figuring out the dehydrator. Commissioning new hot cups (the kiln exploded mid order) and buying new cold cups. Installing new front door vinyl.

Installing new grinders and building bean cup systems and dial sheets around coffee tasting. New menu board, putting up a gallery wall of paintings and painting a new mural over two weeks. Installing curtains over our back bar Shelve. Hanging an air-aquarium of stuffed animals. Installing an under-counter cubby system for employees. Painting-hanging a giant cork board for nice letters we receive. Shooting all of this footage of the work for tiktok and instagram both as little snippets and fully edited commercials. etc etc etc!

Training the team

A month of almost daily changes is crazy, but keeping communicative on all that was a challenge for everyone. I also know that change is hard as a worker because it’s dozens of decisions you not only have to get on board with, but put in effort to apply and improve in. So how did we do all that?

It started with a group meeting where we talked for almost 5 hours about all the things we wanted to get done and why. Then I gave a timeline of about a month and got to work. After that month was up, I laid out what was left and then asked everyone what would be most valuable for them to get done before we launch, and committed to those projects with what time was left. Really a month turned in to three, but many of the projects were just cosmetic. Throughout the changes I had a slack channel that I would post updates in so they could be checked up on at everyone’s leisure but not buried under other info.

Thankfully for most of the menu related changes, we’d been working on little projects bit by bit since fall, We’ve had a couple iterations of almond milk, whipped cream, house made chocolate sauce. When something is better because it’s faster or more comfortable it’s easy to adopt (see almond powder vs the goopy messy almond butter), but when there’s a skill floor you need to hit before it becomes natural, then there’s some push back and forth. (see whipped cream achieving evenly stiffed peaks)

A good example of a more nebulous change was our espresso grinder; On the one hand, with better grinders and coffee came a clearer difference in what would be considered “on dial” for a good shot. However we also now had more finnicky equipment that was a whole new black box. Pulling now nearly three thousand shots on it, we’ve began to intuit it’s warming cycle and how to make adjustment, but at first it’s like “the manual says this should work, it’s not, what do we do? There’s no straight answers.”

Creator / Influencer reach out

During that last month of work, we put out an open invite to creators / influencers / people in food and coffee. I just wanted to give away some gift cards to people who I thought might appreciate the space and get the word out to their circles. I got about 200 inquiries, claimed to give out a couple dozen gift cards, actually gave away about 100, of those maybe half of the people actually came out that month, of those people maybe half actually created a piece of content that reached their circles or gave feedback like we’d asked. So In the end I got the two dozen or so responses I was hoping for haha.

I actually really wanted a lot of people who worked in food or coffee to visit, but no one that I know of reached out on the form, which is a bummer. I think long term we will still have an impact on the /scene/ out here in jax, but the splash we’re making via our jump in to tiktok and the wider foodie network may be more delayed. As far as I know, we’re still the only shop in Florida making our own oat and almond milk, whipping our own cream, freezing our own milk for soft serve, fermenting our own hot sauce, and juicing our own juice. All within our 500 square feet. Will coffee shops have the recognition that a good restaurant has, do they need to? Who knows.

Closing Thoughts

This June we were 20% busier than May, which is a whole lot. We’ve experienced growth every year in a similar pattern but maybe like 7-10%. We started to really stagnant last fall in to winter so it feels like we’ve successfully escaped that pit, but that said I don’t know what the ceiling here is like. We’ve been getting a lot of comments that we need a bigger space and maybe that’s true. This volume has actually made the budget harder in a lot of ways because we need more staff and payroll is outpacing the growth, and we’re under a lot of debt weight until later this year.

If we do survive 2026, then we’ll be in a great place. We’ll have a strong brand, more bandwidth for payroll, and we can begin saving for more stability and what’s next. For now, just gotta keep rockin and rollin. - Elias