“Naming any business ‘kind’ begs for the community to find a reason to doubt, to debate the adjective itself,” said the judges for Alabama’s 2024 Gee Emerging Retailer of the Year award. “For Kind Cafe, there simply is no doubt. The company preaches, lives and breathes kindness throughout.”

We are “incredibly impressed with the heart and performance of this community-minded cafe,” the judges said in choosing Fairhope’s Kind Cafe and its owner, Alex Pikul, as Emerging Retailer of the Year.

The Gee Emerging Retailer of the Year Award is given annually in memory of the late Morris “Mickey” Gee, a former Alabama Retail board member and University of Alabama at Birmingham professor. The award goes to innovative and effective Alabama retailers who have been in business for at least two years but less than five. Gee, who owned the Pants Store for more than 30 years, realized that the first five years are tough, but young businesses can have an enormous impact.

Kind Cafe, 108 N. Section St., Fairhope, is one of five businesses in four categories honored as the 2024 Retailers of the Year by the Alabama Retail Association. It is one of two businesses recognized this year as Emerging Retailer of the Year.

“Alex Pikul is a Retailer of the Year every year to the Kind Cafe customers, his 14 employees and the Fairhope and Eastern Shore communities,”  Alabama Retail Association President Rick Brown said.

“We sell coffee, bagels and kindness,” Pikul said in his Emerging Retailer of the Year entry. The community has responded to the mission-driven cafe’s New York-style bagels made fresh every morning and its nitro cold brew and other coffee specialties since its opening Nov. 10, 2021. “Our vision of 'People First, Kindness Always' has guided us from the start, and receiving this award reaffirms our commitment to serving our community with care and excellence.”

Sales were up nearly 28% year over year (2023 over 2022) and appear to be on pace for 17% growth in 2024 as well, the judges noted of the cafe’s past year performance. In his entry, Pikul emphasized another sales metric, “(in 2023) our average check grew to $14.76 from $12.53 in 2022. So far, in 2024, our average check is up to $17.22 … while not increasing our prices.”

Pikul tied that growth to immersing the business in the community and encouraging employees to be kind. Casey Williams, president and CEO of the Eastern Shore Chamber of Commerce, who nominated Pikul for the award, points specifically to the business “living its name every day.”

Kind Cafe “has quarterly service activities with local nonprofits to raise awareness and funds to support the nonprofits,” donating 3% of total sales to local nonprofits in 2023, Williams said. Pikul also “allows his team to have paid days off to volunteer with a nonprofit of their choice and supports other start-up entrepreneurs by carrying their products,” she added. In 2022, the Eastern Shore Chamber of Commerce honored Kind Cafe with its Service Award.

In a letter of support, BILL-E's Brands owner William "Bill E." Stitt, whose Bill E’s Bacon has a named bagel at Kind Cafe, said, “Alex’s work with local charities and nonprofits not only provides much-needed financial support but also raises awareness about important local issues.”

Pikul wrote in his entry, “We’ve found that the more involved we are in the community, such as promoting other local businesses, the more we see growth in sales.”

Training his team also plays a pivotal role. “The team is inspired to take care of the customers, and they know that they have the authority to” go the extra mile, Pikul said relating a story about one of the cafe’s delivery drivers ordering a gluten-free meal from another local restaurant and delivering it to a customer at a local hospital when the hospital visitor mistakenly ordered a breaded product from Kind Cafe.