Louisville, Kentucky-based Dogebeans owner Andrew Lutes was all praises for Dogecoin (CRYPTO: DOGE) and the community built around the Shiba Inu-themed cryptocurrency. Benzinga talked with Lutes about cryptocurrency, the coffee business, and his future plans on opening a DOGE-themed establishment.
Community Was The Draw: For Lutes, it was the DOGE Army, which made him fall in love with the Shiba Inu. While he described himself to be “crypto-adjacent” since he had a lot of friends who were into cryptocurrency, he never quite understood it.
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As a DOGE investor, who entered the coin at 7 cents in January, he thought he was a genius when he sold at 12 cents, but Lutes said he had underestimated the DOGE Army — a reference to the coin’s following.
“I started doing lots of research on crypto and just fell in love with the Dogecoin community in particular. This was a community that is built on fun, memes, Doing Only Good Everyday, and was a perfect on-ramp into crypto in general.”
A Fun But Successful Experiment: After COVID-19 shuttered Lutes’ 78 Coffee Shop and roastery in November 2020, he turned his focus to the wholesale business. Turning to Dogecoin, he set up Dogebeans as what he called a “fun experiment for e-commerce and crypto.”
Lutes was taken by surprise by Dogecoin, just like many others, and said that he saw “exponential growth” over the first two months of the businesses’ launch with sales as good and better than 78 Coffee Co.
The experiment had been a success. He explained, “We decided we would lean into this thing completely and see where it goes. We couldn’t be more excited!”
DOGE Says Ka-Ching: Fast forward to today and Dogebeans has 25-30% of its sales in cryptocurrency, which Lutes says to his understanding is high for a business that accepts such payments.
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“I attribute this to our name being so directly attached to the Dogecoin community. People want to hold and then spend their Dogecoin. It’s so much fun! It’s amazing to say you bought something with dog money! Much wow!”
Dogebeans accept DOGE, Ethereum (CRYPTO: ETH), Dai (CRYPTO: DAI), and USD Coin (CRYPTO: USDC).
Although, as per Lutes, “No Bitcoin payments… yet!”
Dealing With Ups and Downs: “The biggest obstacle we’ve faced is how to handle a volatile currency (or asset depending on who you’re talking to) on our balance sheet,” revealed Lutes.
So, Dogebeans has been converting the DOGE to U.S. dollars as much as the business requires to cover costs, overheads, etc but is holding the rest or putting it back into the “ecosystem” by paying other vendors.
Even so, Lutes is optimistic about taking DOGE at the cash register. He said, “I’m excited to see how we approach the challenge of point of sale, because that’s where transaction speed really comes into play and Doge is great in that regard.”
The Future Is DOGE and Coffee: Lutes emphasized the need for small businesses to be at the forefront of DOGE and other cryptocurrencies in the movement for mass adoption.
“We’re really on the verge of something big and unprecedented here as a society.”
Lutes thinks this is a better outcome than big players like Amazon.com, Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN) and Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL) increasing their dominance.
The owner of Dogebeans is ready for the future as he prepares to reopen a cafe that he hoped will make the community proud.
But Lutes is not sitting idle in the meanwhile. He told Benzinga that Dogebeans will do pop-ups in the local area and is working on a coffee and beer collaboration with a local award-winning brewery in a couple of weeks.
As for Dogecoin, he is a firm believer. “We believe a people-powered movement of mass adoption is gonna see this thing continue strong in the future. We believe in that future, and we believe that The Future is Caffeinated!”
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