Emily & Therese

Therese came to entrepreneurship after a long career spanning occupational therapy, real estate, and more than a decade teaching at the university level in Florida. She had looked at franchise concepts for years, nearly pulled the trigger on a donut franchise at one point, and had always been drawn to the idea of building something of her own. When changes at the university made it time to leave Florida, she came back to Colorado and started looking for what was next.

Emily had been on a parallel path. She spent 15 years in nonprofit fundraising, starting at the ticketing desk of the Seattle Art Museum and working her way into database management, membership programming, and development. After COVID left her feeling worn down, like a lot of us, she made a pivot into corporate recruiting at a telehealth company. Then a layoff, and a growing exhaustion with difficult bosses, pushed her toward something different. She and her mom had talked for years about owning a business together and had looked at everything from sandwich shops to bed and breakfasts. One afternoon, Emily Googled charcuterie businesses, found Graze Craze, and called Therese immediately.

When Emily found Graze Craze, John Fleming from the brand reached out and took the time to walk them through the concept, the opportunity, and what ownership would really look like. The more they learned, the more they believed Graze Craze was the right fit. There were no other locations in Northern Colorado at the time and saw a wide-open market opportunity to bring Graze Craze to their community.

The original plan was for Emily to run the business and for Therese to play a supporting role. That plan lasted about as long as most opening-week plans do.

Therese has become a full partner in the day-to-day. The two have discovered, in the way that only people who work together closely can, that they have very different working styles. But what they have found is that those differences are asset as much as a challenge.

Emily handles the back-end operations: scheduling, payroll, ordering, quotes, and the detailed work that keeps the business running. Therese is the one who walks into a room and starts a conversation. She built her career introducing a university to an entire region of Florida, visiting healthcare facilities from Tampa to Marco Island, and that instinct for outreach translates directly into the work she does to promote Graze Craze locally.

Customers have noticed the mother-daughter dynamic, and the response has been warm. Woman-owned and mother-daughter owned, they are a presence people want to support. That was never the strategy. It is just who they are.

Therese lives 45 minutes up the mountain canyon. Emily lives directly above the store. That geography shapes the rhythm of their week more than almost anything else. Emily handles the early mornings and most of the deliveries. Therese handles the product orders and works with the vendors.

The team right now is the two of them plus two part-time employees, brought in on the busier days. They are actively working toward hiring an assistant manager, someone Emily can trust to open or close without her being there, so she can step back from the floor, and Therese can step back too, eventually.

They opened on September 1st and walked straight into the fourth quarter. Their very first order came in before they were even open, a dairy farmer who called during training week and wanted one board of everything ready by 10am on opening day for a Labor Day party. It set the tone.

There was an evening when Emily and Therese walked into a restaurant near their store. A table full of people immediately recognized them. The president of the chamber was there. A former state congressman. They were waved over, introduced around, and told how glad the community was to have them.

Emily, who spent years working behind a computer managing donor databases, felt the difference immediately. This is a different kind of presence in your community. People know their names. They get industry discounts at the restaurant around the corner. Other businesses want to collaborate. It has changed what it means to live in the town they have both call home.

Therese makes follow-up calls after every order. She does it partly because it is good business and partly because she knows what the response will be. Nobody complains. People tell her the food was beautiful. That positive feedback keeps her going in a way that is hard to quantify.

Emily and Therese have a consistent message for anyone thinking about this opportunity: you have to be willing to put yourself out there. The boards don’t sell themselves. The business grows when the owner gets into the community, goes to the chamber for events, talks to the businesses nearby, and stays visible.

Flexibility is not negotiable. Their day can change in any direction at any moment. An order can come in and require a scramble. A piece of equipment breaks two hours before a delivery. Someone needs whipped cream added to a Mother’s Day board with almost no notice, and the answer is yes, absolutely, no problem.

What they would look for in a future owner is someone who genuinely likes people and genuinely wants to make them happy. Not just as a business philosophy, but as a real instinct. And someone who can handle not knowing what the day is going to look like. The franchise system gives owners the guardrails, the build guides, the product standards, the playbook. What it cannot script is the energy of the person running the room.

What has helped most has been peer connection. The in-person regional meeting made a strong impression. Being in the room with other owners, with people from the brand, and having real conversations was worth more than most of what a digital touchpoint can offer. They are already looking forward to the next one, now that they know what questions to bring.

They also built an unexpected relationship with the Fort Collins location nearby, another mother-daughter team, both with daughters named Emily. When demand spikes, they lean on each other for staffing support and share what they know about the local market. It has made both stores stronger.

One piece of practical advice they offer to anyone starting out: take the time to find the right space. They almost forced a location in Estes Park, a high-traffic destination town, but the real estate options kept presenting problems. When they came down to Loveland and met the right developer, the entire experience was different. They had coffee, got introduced around, and felt immediately like it was going to work. That intuition proved right.

Neither Emily nor Therese is looking too far past year one. The priority right now is growing the existing location, building the right team, and getting ready to make the coming holiday season even stronger than last year.

Beyond that, they are open to wherever the business takes them. They have a long-term lease and a landlord they trust, which gives them both stability and long-term options.