[mellow jazz music] I'm Gisele Littrell, owner of the Tipsy Bean Cafe.

The idea of opening my own coffee shop began about 20 years ago, and I was an avid coffee shop goer.

There was a local one out in Fairview that I just absolutely loved hanging out in and working in.

And the owner there said "You've got the right personality for this.

You really should look into doing this someday."

And that someday finally came about five years ago when I was able to purchase this building here in downtown Erie to bring something different to the city that they hadn't had before.

When I looked into beginning this coffee shop I wanted to be set apart from the other ones.

I want us all to have our own unique vibe, our own feel.

We all focus on something a little bit different based on where we're at.

So for me, I wanted to join the Hill District.

And it's a eclectic, fun, funky kind of a neighborhood and I wanted this shop to reflect that feeling.

[mellow jazz music continues] Our best sellers in Erie are typically anything with blueberries.

So we really sell a lot of scones and our blueberry crumble bars are on the top of the list.

Those are made with oats, flour, brown sugar, butter.

Mix all of that up into a delicious crumble.

And then we layer right in between there, a cream cheese blueberry base, pile more blueberries on top of that, add some more of that delicious crumble before we bake it up and serve it up to our customers.

[mellow jazz music continues] Another really best selling item that we have here is soups.

There's not a ton of places in this town to go for really delicious soups, so that's something that we saw an opportunity for.

Our soups are made homemade every day.

We utilize as much from our garden as possible, from the herbs and vegetables that we can grow out there.

And what we can't do ourselves we source from local restaurants and grocery marts.

Something that's pretty uniquely Tipsy Bean are our micro powdered tea lattes.

These are more than just green matchas.

These are butterfly pea flour, ube, maca, rose, all kinds of fun and unique micro powder teas.

You might see some of these in a bubble tea shop, but not many coffee shops offer these.

So we saw that this was a really great area of something new and unique that Erie could experience.

So we'll take those micro powdered teas, shake them up in some milk and whatever flavor syrups you love.

Probably our best selling is gonna be the vanilla butterfly pea flour.

So we'll take that, shake it all together, pour that up, and you'll see this beautiful blue delicious liquid that is so unique it's hard to explain and describe.

So you just have to come in and try one.

Our goal to incorporate Erie's culture is to showcase some cultures that aren't necessarily represented in a lot of the traditional businesses around here.

So as our goal is building up inclusivity and diversity.

We wanted to use our food and beverage to showcase that diversity that actually exists in Erie.

While we might not offer everything, we do try to stretch people's palettes just a little bit further than they might be used to.

So our culture is to build upon some of the culture that's here, but also to create something new that's gonna help Erie grow and develop.

[mellow jazz music continues]