By James Rincon

Pflag Reporter

A local landmark will soon pass a milestone that will pay off big for a lucky customer.

Dazzle Coffee Shop has occupied its tiny spot on Pecan Street for less than four years, but within the next month, 250,000 customers will have tasted its hallowed grounds. To commemorate its quarter-millionth customer, Dazzle will award that java junky with a $1,000 gift certificate.

“It’s continued recognition of the fact that we’ve become a pretty essential part of Pflugerville,” Dazzle co-owner Michael Scheschuk said. “We’ve been running now for about four years – next month will be our anniversary – and it’s nice that the anniversary happens at the same time we hit this milestone. There aren’t many small businesses that can say they’ve done a quarter-million customers in four years.”

Before coming to caffeinate Pflugerville with co-owner Cory Wertenberger, Scheschuk left work in New York’s financial sector to get his MBA from Stanford University. Like Scheschuk knows business, Wertenberger know coffee beans.

After college, Wertenberger worked as a manager for Starbucks. His career ambitions drew him away from the Seattle coffee goliath, but his love and knowledge of the industry stuck. He joined up with Scheschuk to start their own coffee spot and saw Pflugerville as the land of opportunity.

“I used to work with Starbucks and really enjoyed coffee and really enjoyed working with Starbucks, but ended up getting to the point where I was wanting a little bit more career-wise than I was able to get through that company. I talked with Mike about opening up a coffee shop of our own and decided to take a couple years off and develop this, and we ended up finding some property in Pflugerville that fit the parameters we wanted,” Wertenberger said. “It was a small community, so we were actually able to get into the community and the environment and be able to make that personal connection with the local government and the chamber of commerce and downtown business association and just be able to get to know everybody a little better.”

Community involvement drives Dazzle, as Wertenberger said 95 percent of daily volume are regulars.

“We know them and their children or know their drink by heart, or are at least familiar with them,” Wertenberger said. “They know that when they come through they’re usually going to be taunted by the staff. They participate a lot on the Facebook, which I didn’t think was going to be as effective as it has been at indicating our internal environment once we close the windows, and it’s usually to my detriment, but it’s a lot of fun.”

As it continues to fuel the local students, teachers and workforce, a natural symbiosis has formed between Dazzle and its patrons.

“The big thing is we’re driving a lot of customers to the central business district, which is really important to us as we’ve worked with the Pflugerville downtown association for quite a while,” Scheschuk said. “We’re one of the ones that we feel like we’re here to stay given all of the economic issues that have gone on lately, I think it’s just a testament to the city and also to the products we serve.”

Having weathered the storm of recent recession, Scheschuk said Dazzle’s brightest days may be yet ahead.

“We’d absolutely love to (expand). I think 2009 was a pretty tough year for everyone around the country. Just getting through 2009 in a healthy way, we’ve already started to see (recovery) in 2010. We’ve added a lot of things like milkshakes and smoothies with cream and Italian sodas, and those have had a great response here this year, so we’d love to say there’s going to be a lot of them. The joke that we have is that everybody wants one right next to their house. That’s a good statement on behalf of the customer base that folks are looking for us to expand, and if we keep driving satisfied customers like we have so far, then I can certainly see that in the future.”

Scheschuk said with the way the totals are tallying, Dazzle should see its 250,000 customer in the next 3 weeks. Whoever it is that wins the $1,000 worth of Dazzle coffee, they’ll be getting more than just average Joe.

jrincon@pflugervillepflag.com