Roseau Times-Region - Serving Roseau County for over 100 Years - The Official Roseau County Newspaper

We are writing this letter to invite the community of Roseau to know our story, the status of our company, and the future of the Bear and Bean Coffee Company.

We opened the Bear & Bean Coffee Company on July 06, 2017, with the goal of bringing a warm and inviting space where everyone would be welcome to the City of Roseau. Through pain and tears, we built this company from scratch, with the only guides being from our hearts and our minds. Through sweat and toil, we created the Bear & Bean and brought our dreams to life. When we opened the doors we had no idea what to expect, would we be able to make it work, how did we do all of this without any guides as to what makes a coffee-based company really successful? All we had was our hearts, a driving will to succeed, and each other.

Through trials and tribulations, we slowly worked on sharpening our concepts, business image, and our quality of service. Increasing our offerings on our menu, trying out different ingredients, and launching Roseau’s first, and only delivery service. We began networking with other businesses, trying to draw in business not only to ourselves, but to the other companies that we worked with to increase the customer base overall.

Through our belief that our company is Roseau’s Living Room, and creating a warm and caring environment, we found success. Through greeting customers with a warm and friendly smile, to small bantering or sharing our story about how the two of us ended up calling Roseau home and our drive to bring our dreams to life. Every day you can come in and see Keith talking to a complete stranger like they have know each other for years, and Thomas darting around the store and property doing those small things that happen behind the curtain to maintain the property and business. We believe in a hands-on approach to leadership and business operations, where the owner is always present and available, as well as working the front lines side by side with the employees.

We do admit we have had a lot of growing pains, from having vendor issues to adjusting to the fluctuating environment of Roseau’s business with tourism, vacationing residents, to visiting hockey teams coming to Roseau for tournaments. We have worked through each and every issue we have encountered with an optimistic and realistic determination to succeed. We have also encountered unexpected resistance from certain members of the community in ways we could not have expected. Using social media platforms, they have made small digs to outright indignant and unprofessional comments about not only our business but ourselves as well. As professional business owners and the good people that we are, we took the high road and never retaliated and kept moving on in a professional manner, never lowering our standards of conduct to their level.

Now for the most current status update of the company and our plans for the future. Some people have known for a while, Thomas is a service-connected disabled United States Marine Corps veteran, and has been fighting growing pains, and loss of use of his right arm for almost 19 years. In May 2018, Thomas had to leave his job at Polaris Industries due to the constant pain he suffers from his shoulder injury. Just recently Thomas received a rating of 100 % permanent and total disability through the Veterans Administration for nerve damage and continuing degeneration of the joint as a whole. Due to this diagnosis, and other personal matters, both Keith and Thomas have decided to sell the Bear & Bean Coffee Company. We are currently looking for an enthusiastic and driven family that would like to purchase the Bear and Bean Coffee Company. We have a few people that are interested so far, but nothing has been set in stone as of yet. The business will remain open during the transition of ownership of the business, with the promise that even though we will not be physically here, we will remain here in spirit and will work with the new owners in elevating the Bear & Bean Coffee Company to new and more exciting levels in the years to come. And before we leave we will make sure that all of our outstanding obligations from the business will be completed fully, and all of our accounts are left in good standing.

As far as our plans for the future, we will be traveling for a few years, visiting old friends and making new ones. Eventually finding a nice and quiet place to settle down so Thomas will be able to utilize the services of the Veterans Administration without having to travel 4+ hours each way. We wish to thank the community of Roseau and all of the people who have visited our business and wish you all good luck and good fortune in the years to come. We will be traveling back here often to visit Thomas’s mother Ida Mae, his sister Amanda, and the rest of our family, as well as catch up with our friends here on our adventures, and hear the stories of all of their adventures as well.

We love all of you and wish you all the best in you adventures to come.

With love and Respect

Keith and Thomas Pringle