Hi Square Sellers! For this seller feature we spoke with Dalida Bollig, the owner of Fika in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. She talks about opening the first Swedish cafe in the state, her adaptations to the new landscape, and seller-powered delivery.
JOURNEY INTO OWNERSHIP
I had been working for the Swedish government for about 15 years, most recently remotely as I’m married to an American. I’ve always been so passionate about food and culture and I owned a café a long time ago.
We moved to Hattiesburg for my husband’s job and through a local connection, the owner of a 100 year old building downtown reached out with the opportunity. It had been the biggest bakery in town a long time ago. It’s a historic and beautiful space so after a lot of consideration I decided to open Fika.
There has never been a Swedish café or cuisine in the entire state of Mississippi. In fact it seems no one had done any Scandinavian food concepts. I’m now the first and only Swedish café.
What I miss most about Sweden is our Fika culture. Americans are amazing in their productivity, but rarely do you see them create the moment to take a break publicly throughout the day. You see that a lot in Scandinavia. We first opened up our doors a little over a year ago and we’ve received so much love from Hattiesburg and the general area.
SEASONALITY / LOCAL GROWERS
We try to do things seasonally, when blueberries are in season, or figs we’ll run a lot of delicious menu items with them. From a cuisine perspective in Sweden, we live very close to nature, farm to table style. Mississippi is an agricultural state so there’s a lot of really great local products. We have specialised vendors now that grow microgreens for us as well as our fresh herbs like, mint and dill.
When we first opened, local farmers were not used to the items we wanted for our menu. Southern food is the pervasive approach here. I am very happy that we stood by the concept. The team and I keep working to find amazing locally grown items. Patrons often connect me to local producers. The community here has grown with Fika. Our customers are from all walks of life and different backgrounds.
COVID-19 ADAPTATIONS
Safety has been the top priority for the business. Early in March, we decided to shut down, well before any guidelines were issued to ensure our staff and customers would be safe. We didn’t know enough about the virus at that time to confidently operate. We were closed for 2 months. We then did a 3rd party very thorough sanitation of the space and reopened in mid-May.
Everything is now in to-go containers. We are all wearing gloves and masks, we operate 50% seating indoors and we ask patrons to wear masks. We are happy to have our doors open again but we miss the time before the pandemic. We tightened our hours up a little and the use of the space is now different with seating so spread out and most items being to go and for curbside pick-up. It’s functioning smoothly, but it’s not the original concept of the café as a space to take a break.
SQUARE ONLINE STORE
We now have a Square online store and people can pre-order. It’s been working really well. Our favourite part is when our customers leave nice notes that really help inspire the team.
We’ve added so many new items to our offering. We now have family meals. They can either be baked here and picked up warm or we they can be held cold and ready to heat at home. This gives our customers the flexibility they need right now.
We also offer virtual cookie parties with kits delivered in advance. We sell salads by the pound online now and some of our customers have set up recurring orders off these items as part of their weekly staples. We bundle care packages with our baked goods and the floral shop adjacent to our space who is a good friend. We’ve seen strong demand for these. It’s been a great way to help support each other’s businesses in a creative way.
SELLER-POWERED DELIVERY
We do our own delivery within city limits at no cost to the customer. We then charge a fee for any deliveries outside of city limits. We have a rotating schedule for our team. We will deliver twice a day, typically we do one run right before lunch and then one more in the afternoon using the company car. We had a third party service in the past but things went wrong too often and we need that in-person service and feedback. It’s too important to make sure everything goes perfectly and if something needs correcting, we can quickly fix it since it’s our own team.
Getting delivery right is vital now that virtually all our customers eat offsite, away from the cafe. When they leave feedback on Square or post a story on social media, it means so much to us because that’s our new mechanism for staying connected to our patrons.
It’s all about meeting customers wherever they are. You don’t want to lose sales just because some of your customers may not be able to come by the store or perhaps they don’t feel safe in regards to exposure. It’s a new world we’re living in now and we knew we needed to step up to the moment.
FEATURE REQUEST
I would love it if the product photos on the online store could be more interactive when you click or hover over them, the way live photos do on an iPhone. The more interactive the better now that customer are making their purchasing decisions based completely off these photos. If you could upload a short panning shot or a hot dish was able to have a short loop showing the food still sizzling, that would be much more enticing than a static photo.
FINAL THOUGHTS
I’m very happy with my family’s choice to move to Hattiesburg. We were able to settle in and start the café. A lot of people here had not experienced Scandinavian cuisines. I’ve been so pleasantly surprised by how open minded and curious all my customers have been with our unique food offering. I am very thankful.
