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The story of the prodigal son is Eric Kuhn’s favorite parable.
In one sense, he feels he is that son, the one who left home with his father’s inheritance and squandered it, then returned to start a new life.
The 2003 Winona Senior High School grad went off to college and has now returned to Winona. Last month, he opened up a coffee shop that will give back to the community.
Solid Grounds Coffee Shop opened at Sarnia and Washington streets in September as a way for Rock Solid Youth Center to sell its branded coffee and raise money for youth programs in Winona.
In this sense, Kuhn, 23, wants to give others like him hope for the future. “There are a ton of prodigals our age,” he said.
Kuhn graduated from the University of Minnesota last spring with a double major in marketing and entrepreneurial leadership. He was among some of the top business hopefuls in the state in the competitive Carlson School of Management.
But when Kuhn began college, he didn’t have a plan, and soon found himself at a dead end. “It was like giving God the finger,” he said of his transition from high school to college.
He enjoyed his new freedom away from home. He didn’t have his parents, members of Pleasant Valley Evangelical Church, nagging him to go to church. He partied too much. His relationships began to break down.
Then his grandfather died at the end of his freshman year. While his friends were celebrating spring break, Kuhn was mulling questions of life and death at his grandfather’s funeral.
“That broke me down,” he said. “I believe there’s a heaven and hell, and I didn’t know where my grandpa’s at,” he said. “So, God turned the question on me. I
wasn’t living like I loved God and other people. It’s a scary thing.”
Kuhn pulled his dusty Bible off his dormitory shelf and began reading. He joined a Bible study. That led to more campus ministry, and by his senior year, he was leading his own Bible study group.
Much like he had to learn a taste for God, Kuhn had to develop the taste for coffee. He never touched the black stuff, not even in college. But he frequented campus ministry sites that doubled as coffeehouses and used those as a model for his senior business plan: a coffee shop/prayer house.
Kuhn had always dreamed of owning a business, but he was never sold on the way big business did its business.
“I never felt like I wanted to be in a big company,” he said. “Business should be less about
competition and more about cooperation.”
He got a chance to put his philosophy into practice when he was offered the job as Solid Grounds’ manager. The job created a new role for the prodigal son: marketplace minister.
This, he said, joins the business world and the ministry world because they have a lot to offer together.
But Kuhn is only seeing the beginning of this vision.
“My heart is with children,” he said. “My heart is to see a generation raised up that is willing to die for a cause they believe in.”
A portion of Rock Solid Coffee sales goes back to the laborers in coffee-producing countries. Kuhn said that some of this money was used to build a school in Nicaragua.
The hard part, as any business entrepreneur struggles with, is surviving the first year. Kuhn’s goal is to see profit so he can begin to support kids’ programs at Rock Solid.
Whenever he has a bad day at work, Kuhn opens his Bible, which he keeps close by, among the coffee grinders and blenders.
Kuhn is also seeking new ways to bring worship into his business by partnering with local ministries, like the Chi Alpha Student Center near Winona State University. He thinks the joint enterprise will catch on.
His taste for coffee is also catching on. His favorite drink? A white chocolate mocha. Or a “chaichino” — a blended chai frap. Or whatever he feels like trying that day.
An entrepreneur is always trying new things.
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