FEATURED STORY FROM THE BEST OF BG 2019 ISSUE
Flatlands Coffee:
Builds Success On Service, Customer Experience, And Good Coffee
Flatlands Coffee, located at 138 N. Main St., is a popular coffee shop located in downtown Bowling Green that works to create the highest quality coffee offered in an open, inviting environment for all customers.
Flatland’s Owner Ben Vollmar decided to open a coffee shop in Bowling Green because of his love of coffee and the atmosphere a good coffee shop projects.
“I love that coffee shops are a place where all these people within the community can bond over a common beverage,” Vollmar said. “It’s kind of the romance of coffee shops that get a lot of people into it. It was that romance that initially got me interested.”
His love of coffee and desire to eventually open up a coffee shop motivated him to start working as a barista in Perrysburg, Ohio.
“I worked in a coffee shop in Perrysburg and increasingly fell in love with the product. Then during a trip to Chicago, I stumbled into a shop called Intelligentsia, and they are one of the first shops in the country to really pioneer what our genre is called and that’s Third Wave. It’s where you really focus on the quality of coffee so that is when I really figured out what Flatlands was going to be,” Vollmar said.
According to the website Perfect Daily Grind, the genre Third Wave focuses on appreciating coffee and the quality of coffee.
Quality is an essential part of what makes Flatlands what it is and is important to Vollmar and his team.
“Quality is a surprisingly complex flavor, balanced and naturally sweet,” Vollmar said. “And that runs everything we do. It runs our coffee. It runs our bakery. It runs our roastery. It runs everything.”
Although quality is one of the top priorities of Flatlands, Vollmar said that there are several other core values which determine the way Flatlands is run.
“Here, we are adamant about our core values. Here, we live and breathe our core values. Any decision we make, we first look at our core values and then make a decision. For us, the core values are quality, cleanliness and guest services,” he said.
Brian Geyer, freshman public relations major, enjoys going to Flatlands because of its dedication to quality and to customers with specific diets.
“I like it here because they have vegan options and I like the subtle flavors in the coffee,” he said.
Having a wide range of customizable coffees helps Flatlands serve a larger group of people. With service to people being important to Vollmar, being able to make coffee suitable for each person coming into Flatlands is essential.
AN ADDITIONAL FEATURED STORY ABOUT FLATLANDS COFFEE CAN BE FOUND IN THE Best of BG – 2016 ISSUE