(upbeat music) - Hey out there, Akronites.

Welcome once again to "Around Akron with Blue Green."

And wow, do we have an amazing show ahead of us today.

We're gonna visit a building in Cuyahoga Falls.

We're gonna learn all about Ethiopian culture and cuisine.

And we're gonna learn about coral reefs and marine fish.

Now, to kick this show off today, I'm headed over to Cuyahoga Falls to learn all about the Jenks Building.

Let's go see what the Jenks Building is all about.

(upbeat music) - My first entrepreneur endeavor was probably a grade school bake sale, and I was in fifth grade and I ran for student council 'cause I thought it could be done better.

I thought it could be done more inclusively, and that was my first way to look at something and say, "How can I leave this better?

"What can I do?

"What can I do, just one person?

And it was a good feeling 'cause it helped others and it helped me.

And I remember my school principal telling my mother that "she's a leader, not a follower," and so that's kind of always became my thing.

And since I was...

I had jobs on the path to working to myself.

But at 24 I became self-employed and have continued along that vein.

(upbeat music) The Jenks Building was built by a man with a last name, Jenks, who lived in the Jenks Mansion on Broad Boulevard.

And he built it as a business for himself and named it the Jenks Building.

It's stamped into the building.

It was built in 1929.

And so for 90 plus years it's been some form of an auto parts shop, machine shop.

He was a machinist.

And that's kind of the history of the Jenks building until we came along.

When we bought it, it was Mason's Auto Parts, and that had been purchased from Shriber Auto Parts, which had been purchased from Wolf Brothers Auto Parts, and so forth and so on.

But it's always been an industrial machinist auto parts vein until we came along.

(upbeat music) We actually bought the building, We had signed, penned the deal in October, and they stayed, the machine shop stayed, through the following December, which there was no hurry for them to move, but, I mean, auto grindings on the floor, I mean it, it was much like it is now without music.

And after they stayed through and I said to my husband, "We have to do something.

"We're not going to have any tenants."

And then we realized that musicians weren't able to play out because it wasn't safe.

We were still coming out of COVID restrictions and you didn't know which mistake to make.

So we started playing.

People come with their mask and they would sit.

We'd have 25 seats, $25, and you had to parcel yourself out and sit with who you came with.

And Austin Walkin' Cane was our first act, and he's up there crying 'cause he's been playing in a Dairy Queen parking lot just to be able to play live music because that's his love.

And we had a space where people could stay far enough away from each other.

And it started out as just helping them.

Marc Lee Shannon.

So I take that back.

I think Marc Lee Shannon was actually first, but Austin right on top of them.

We're talking about within a week, right?

And he called somebody else and he said, "Hey.

Jodie and Michael Owen are doing this crazy thing.

"We gotta be involved in this."

And they started coming.

Our people perform here and they get paid what they're paid in tips for the love of doing what they do.

And people and their families sitting in these little groups with their little coolers of beverages and their coats and their masks, 'cause there was barely any heat on, right.

It was cold!

And just being together, they were so much more generous and so much more so... Somebody asked Marc Lee Shannon one time, "What do you get paid for playing at The Jenks?"

And he said, "You get played what you're worth!"

(laughs) Right?!

I mean, I don't know, but we'll love on you, right?

We'll love on you.

First round's on the house.

I mean, I dunno, what do you say?

'Cause we have nothing else to give but infrastructure.

We have the luxury of being across the street from The Sheraton in Cuyahoga Falls, where a lot of tour bands park and a lot of bands stay when they play Blossom or downtown or wherever.

And we open up a garage door and we're playing live music.

These bands are going back to where they started.

And like everything in the Jenks, they're having an emotional experience and a connectivity with a building.

Korn was because of Yada Yada Coffee.

They wanted a coffee shop close.

And that was incredible.

I wasn't even in town, but I got to see it.

I got to see it.

And that was amazing!

Pink Floyd was because my husband was walking down the street, we had eaten breakfast at Flury's on our way here, and Nick Mason saw that he had the Welsh Dragon on the back of his shirt and followed us in and said, "You play live music here?

I gotta call the guys!"

(upbeat music) It's been a blessing to serve this community.

And we knew we didn't wanna compete with any other business.

We want everybody to do well.

So we didn't want to... Michael and I, before we decided to open anything, walked up and down the street and saw what everybody was selling and knew that we didn't wanna be in competition with that.

We wanted to do something different.

And so when we opened at least the shop part of it, we opened it just like we did with the live music, gold standard, right?

So that's why we chose Pendleton, and made in the same mill since the 1860s.

That's why we chose Stanley.

Made in the same place since 1913.

That's why we chose Opinel.

Made in the same village in Savoie, France, since the 1800s.

All with a lifetime guarantee.

We think things should last a lifetime.

This building should last a lifetime.

If we didn't buy it, somebody might have torn it down.

And then where...

I mean, not that that is a bad choice.

It's a different choice.

But it's beautiful!

Is it the cleanest?

No.

Is it new?

Absolutely not.

Is this dirt that's been here on the floor some of it since the 1920s?

Sure.

Will that furnace give out someday?

Eventually.

But hopefully it'll be here for generations.

We're just stewards of it for now.

(upbeat music) - Now that we've learned a little bit about the Jenks Building, let's learn about all the businesses that are actually inside of the Jenks Building.

Let's go see what they're all about.

(gentle music) - In this building, well, it's the Jenks 1929, it's all the Jenks building, but within it there is the Jenks Mercantile where we do retail.

We sell Pendleton Blankets, Opinel knives, Stanley products.

But the base products are anything with a lifetime guarantee.

We also sell a lot of local pottery and art because we do believe in supporting local.

We sell everything related to the national parks because here we are in the Cuyahoga River in the middle of the ninth most visited national park.

It's incredible that we even get to be here.

So all of our products support sustainability there.

We also have a beer and wine shop in there run by Kyle, who you will meet upstairs.

Kyle is our beer curator, and we have a wine steward as well.

Kris Burns from Kirbie's runs our grocery.

We have a live music venue in the back in the machine shop that is a lot of local and now increasingly national, if not international bands.

Music and art were always a part of our lives and in other projects, and so that's kind of how we lifted this.

And through that we attracted Falls Outdoor Company as a tenant.

They are in there and they sell kayaks, Jackson Kayak, the boat brand, Liquidlogic also.

And they're an entity of themselves.

(upbeat music) Tommy at Yada Yada was our coffee vendor.

And Tommy roasted the coffee at his house and sold it in bags off an ironing board in the Mercantile.

But he wanted to have a shop more than anything.

And we love Tommy and we love his coffee, so Yada Yada was born.

We close down every year for the month of January and then we reinvent ourselves, deciding, we all have a camp meeting, who's growing, who's not growing, what do you need, how can I help, what can we do differently?

And then we reopen Valentine's Day weekend, this coming year it'll be February 11, with all of the new ideas.

(upbeat music) Trust Books is upstairs, that's our second location.

We have one down in the north side building.

So we're now a chain, I suppose.

And that's a farm market model.

You pay and make your own change.

My husband deeply believes that readers don't steal and thieves don't read.

And if the thieves do read, what are you gonna do, run by and think you beat us for $10?

Your heart will eventually bring you back, I think, to the Jenks Building because it's got such a draw.

It's a draw of its own.

We have an art gallery here in the cellar, which is amazing.

Brett Heinz, very dear friend, curates the art for us, and it's incredible.

An outside of the box thought gallery.

(smooth music) Our wine cellar, even though it's part of the Jenks Building, it's a $50 pool.

We test your wine knowledge.

You have to leave your cellphone, your Apple Watch upstairs, and you have to give me $50, and I give you the key and you choose.

And you may choose well and you may not choose well.

And if you choose well, you could get a $200 bottle of wine for $50.

If you choose poorly, you could get a $14 bottle of wine for $50, and I tell those people.

And then it's an education point.

And I only know that because of our sommelier, Daryl Spansky, who's cutting edge, and he does an incredible job for us all the time.

Clayborn's is upstairs.

Clayborn is a graphic designer.

He is not here today 'cause he's on tour with Dominic Fike designing his wardrobe and all the wardrobe for his national tour, which is incredible.

But he works with Nike and Dominic Fike, not to name drop, but these are people, I mean, other than Nike, but that are in a much younger generation that we wouldn't necessarily, I wouldn't necessarily be able to cross.

But Clayborn surrounds himself with vintage men's clothing.

Things that he loves.

And this is what has drawn him to these artists that have been drawn to him, I suppose, to make their clothing and for their tours and design.

And again, based on upcycled clothing that he gets to repurpose.

But he's got an eye like no other.

We have different artists based upstairs.

We have a gallery.

My real estate office is here.

The National Association of the Remodeling Industry is here.

I, in addition to all of this, am the executive director of that association.

So everybody's got a dream and we think that together we can all do so much more than we could separately.

So it's about being an entrepreneur, but it's also about bringing on young entrepreneurs.

This is a first business venture for Falls Outdoor.

This is the first business venture for Yada Yada Coffee.

This is the first business venture.

These are young entrepreneurs that are gonna be stewards of this or something like this long after I'm gone.

And you've gotta pass it on to be able to keep it.

And I think that's what's at the Jenks Building, more than any business that's here.

That's what's here.

(smooth music) - Next up we're gonna head down to Killian Road in New Franklin and we're gonna meet up with coral reefs and marine fish and learn all about aquaculture.

Let's go see what they're all about.

(ethereal music) - [Joan] Best way to describe it is a underwater garden because there's things that like more lighting, there's things that like low lights, there's animals that like more current.

There's things that you have to keep away from each other a little bit because they're gonna overshadow each other or sting each other.

The colors, the movement, everything.

The aquariums, the fish and the corals, mainly the corals, are just so vibrant, so beautiful.

It's like an underwater garden.

It's really enjoyable.

It's awesome.

(ethereal music) - We actually import from pretty much all over the world.

Some places have shut down over the years.

Hawaii is actually shut down from us.

We're no longer allowed to collect wild caught fish from Hawaii.

We do our best to find aquacultured fish.

So the more aquacultured fish, the longer the longevity of the fish will last.

So like all of our clownfish, and there's so many hybrids, what they do is they'll take the best of the best and they'll breed it with another fish.

And so you'll end up with different types of fish, especially in the clownfish.

Clownfish vary from like just your basic all the way up to very exotic.

But none of 'em are from the ocean.

We actually have a customer that sells to us from Tennessee.

They're probably one of the best in aquaculture.

They breed thousands and thousands of clownfish.

There's more and more people out there that are doing it, experimenting with it, and we buy as many as we can find.

And we take pride in that too.

(somber music) - Two generations, three generations growing up.

We got to see 'em when they come in, starting at 17, 18 year old, old getting married, and them having kids.

And then their kids get into it 'cause their parents was into it.

And from there they teach their children.

We've gotten to know a lot of people, a lot of good people, good friends.

We used to be over on Manchester Road in the old Lockwood School.

We were there for three years.

Before we were here, I think it was a ceramic store.

It was fish and tackle, photography studio.

A long time ago it was a grocery store, the main grocery store in this area when it was a farm area.

(dramatic music) - Probably for the first five years that we were in business it was really hard to find aquaculture.

Now it is pretty simple.

Some of the larger fish and stuff still come from wild caught, But we also specialize in only net-caught fish.

Years ago everybody was like, "Oh, they catch with cyanide," they do this, they do that.

No they don't!

And everything is government regulated.

It is not like they just can't go out and take whatever they want.

It's all regulated by the government.

It's even like when they collected dead coral heads.

People thought that they were killing corals to collect those dead coral heads.

No, it's the government comes in and says, hey, we need this cleared out to promote new growth.

So people would go in and they'd clear it out and then they would sell the dead coral heads.

But then basically it promoted for new growth of new coral.

So it is regulated, but we're really trying to get away from taking from the reefs and stuff like that.

What the people don't realize that like a fishing boat pulling a long line eight miles of net can actually do more damage in one day than what the hobbyist will do in a lifetime.

We enjoy it.

We started as a hobby.

We still treat this as a hobby and it will always stay that.

As long as we still own the company, it will always stay that way.

(dramatic music) - Most people we recommend like clownfish damsels.

Everybody knows "Nemo."

Go from there.

We try to tell you, try to see what kind of fish you like.

If you're more aggressive, you go towards an aggressive tank.

Non-aggressive, reef tank.

A lot of people really, when they see the reef tank, they're just in awe with it.

And that's where they end up going that route.

You can have just coral.

You don't have to have others.

That's why you can have fish and everything too, but you definitely wanna make sure what kind of fish you put in there 'cause you don't wanna turn around and spend 40 bucks for a coral and then that you have a fish that's gonna devour it.

(ethereal music) You're having problems, we help you along the way.

We try to understand what you want.

Even like the kids, the kids, they want certain items and we try to explain to 'em, yes, you can have it.

Or, ah, it's not really a good item for mom and dad's aquarium, or something like that.

We try to help you get along.

If you wanna just get your feet wet, just start out slow, and then you can gradually build up to something better, bigger.

And sometimes it's not feasible to do a reef tank right off to the bat.

So they start out small and take little baby steps.

(ethereal music) - Now to wrap this show up today I'm gonna go visit Bereka Coffee, where I get to have Ethiopian food and I get to see an Ethiopian coffee ceremony.

Let's go see what Bereka Coffee is all about.

(gentle music) - Coffee was first discovered in Ethiopia in the ninth century.

That was a long time ago.

It was discovered by accident.

It was a goat herder, a shepherd, watching over a bunch of goats.

One day he noticed that the goats were acting frantically and he was like, what's going on?

So he followed them the next day as they were gazing around, and he saw that his goats were eating some type of berries.

And you know coffee beans look like berries while they're on the tree.

So he kept doing that for like a few days and finally he's like, something is different.

So he grabbed a bunch of the berries and he took it to the village where there are monarchies and all that stuff, monarchs also, and he shared it with them and they tasted it, and they kind of felt the energy and the jitteriness and all of that stuff.

We're talking about raw coffee, not roasted, not brewed.

And so I guess they were on caffeine overdose and they thought this was demonic.

So they decided to toss everything in the fire and walk away, and coffee start popping, and the smells start coming out, and they decided maybe this is not a bad idea after all.

Maybe we will roast it and grind it and brew it in instead.

And that's how they came about.

(gentle music) - I didn't grow up drinking coffee.

My parents didn't grow up drinking coffee.

But when I met Nardos, I experienced Ethiopian coffee.

So the first time had to be when right before visiting Ethiopia, where she presented me coffee, Ethiopian style, and it was breathtaking.

I enjoyed every moment of it.

But I think it also gives people the culture and the history behind coffee.

I think is something that really, that people gravitate toward.

That being able to experience, I believe, the original coffee with traditional authentic tools, the way Nardos prepares it, the way Bereka coffee prepares it, I believe that is what I mean people kind of leave from, having that cultural experience, being able to say, "Hey, yeah, I love coffee, "and I've also tasted the original coffee."

(gentle music) - There is traditional tools for each one of these things, how people roast coffee and how they grind it.

They use mortar and pestles to do that.

Till this day, the last time we visited was 2015, people were grinding their coffee the same way.

And so it's, I think growing up, I realized it was actually a form of entertainment for a lot of families in Ethiopia.

Talking about at least almost about 20 years ago.

That's what people do every evening.

Somebody in the neighborhood would have a coffee ceremony and a whole bunch of neighbors would be invited to come over, including kids.

I remember our neighborhood, our neighbor kids, they were more like my brothers and sisters because we got to be in the same environment all the time.

We would help each other with homework when adults were having coffee.

And so it was the biggest part of the entertainment for families.

I would say that they also use it as a form of therapy because people would sit together for a couple hours at a time and they talk about life, and that includes the good, the bad, and the ugly.

And they share information.

And so the communities are closer in some ways.

That's what I experienced (gentle music) In 2012, when we took a trip to Ethiopia, we stayed there for a little bit of time, maybe a couple of months.

Ron was telling me, you know, every house, family members we went to visit, they had to have a coffee ceremony for us and they had to have a meal for us.

And he was like, "Well, we just ate."

I'm like, "You can't say no!

"Just sit down and just do what you can!"

(laughs) But on the way back, he was just sharing with me his experience and how much he loved it and how much he felt welcomed, and what a welcoming hospitality culture it was.

And he was just saying, growing up, that's not what I knew about Africa and Ethiopia, and I wish I could bring my friends to show them it's totally different.

And we said, "Well we can't bring everybody here "but we can bring the culture to the people."

And so we started catering the coffee ceremony and the Ethiopian food, and small groups outta time.

First it started with just friends and families.

We would invite them in our homes and kind of thing.

And then we started catering to their homes and more people started asking for more dates and that kind of thing.

And that's how the business kind of was born in 2012, and we made it official in 2016.

- Probably one of the most exciting parts of this journey that we had with the Bereka Coffee business, being able to share the culture, the Ethiopian culture, it's so amazing.

The food is so great.

The coffee is the original coffee and it's wonderful as well.

And so I enjoy that the best.

That's what I really kind of thought we should focus in on.

And so Nardos and I have kept that as our staple from the beginning.

(gentle music) - Thank you for watching this episode of "Around Akron with Blue Green."

If you have any questions or any comments, you can reach me on social media.

Thank you, and have an amazing day!

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) (Blue Green laughs) (upbeat music continues)