Kim Bartmann’s
Tiny Diner has just been
honored as the country’s top “Small Business Revolution” story by
Deluxe, a business services company based in the Twin Cities’ northern suburbs. The South Minneapolis restaurant was the first stop on Deluxe’s nationwide Small Business Revolution tour, which will profile 100 U.S. companies during the coming months in honor of Deluxe’s 100th anniversary.
Small Business Revolution was initiated in response to what Deluxe sees as the country’s increasingly impersonal, digitized economy; a place where conducting anonymous online transactions is often easier than seeking out independent, brick-and-mortar businesses owned by our friends and neighbors.
“We’re less likely to know who we’re buying from,” according to Deluxe’s Small Business Revolution website. “We’re exchanging data instead of sharing experiences. In too many places, the magic and the meaning [of doing business] have begun to fade.”
According to Deluxe, Small Business Revolution taps “award-winning independent filmmakers and photographers to honor” businesses that “create something more personal, more local, more meaningful for all of us.”
Bartmann’s participation required a couple of phone interviews and a “fairly long day of shooting,” Bartmann says—not a bad deal for national exposure.
“I was thrilled to be approached,” she says. Bartmann owns
Tiny Diner and seven other restaurants across the Twin Cities. “I’m interested in taking part in anything that promotes small business here.” She found her way onto Deluxe’s radar, she says, because she’s a prominent booster for the
Twin Cities Metro Independent Business Alliance, a key small business organization.
Deluxe immediately bought into “the pretty powerful little project we have here,” says Bartmann.
Tiny Diner is “engaging sustainable food production in a real way,” she says, “thinking through how we can close the loop in the traditionally wasteful restaurant industry.”
As a diner that offers food at a moderate price point and caters to a regular, neighborhood-centric crowd, says Bartmann, Tiny Diner has an even greater responsibility to be sustainable than high-end “destination” restaurants.
Case in point: Tiny Diner’s patio-top solar setup is “the largest visible solar array” in the Twin Cities, she said, as all larger arrays are on high roofs or hidden behind greenery. Despite the array’s size, Bartmann offset about 90 percent of its cost through various state and federal rebates.
Bartmann is justifiably proud of Tiny Diner’s food, too. “Our challenge is to think about how we can make typical diner food, like hash browns, better,” she says. “You can go and eat at a lot of restaurants, but you’re not always being fed.”
After Tiny Diner, the Small Business Revolution tour hit
The Shed Fitness and
Bogart’s Donuts, both also in Minneapolis. The tour heads south to Kansas next, though Deluxe is
still accepting nominations for businesses to be featured in the tour’s later stages, regardless of location.