Founded in 1919, Community Coffee has succeeded under five generations of family ownership. The company employs about 1,000 individuals across 26 states and is enjoyed around the world. But what makes this multigenerational family business different? How does it keep ticking after all this time?

We recently sat down with Donna Saurage, manager of the holding company for Community Coffee, wife of third-generation family member and former chairman the late Norman Saurage, and matriarch of the family business, to answer these questions. During our conversation, we spoke about the importance of family values, her nontraditional journey to family business leadership as a nonblood relative, and her work to nurture the next generation.

Tell us about your family’s business.

Community Coffee is a great coffee business. We do what all coffee businesses do. We import the beans, we roast them, and we sell them.

But what makes us different? There’s a reason that at 106 years old, we’re the largest family-owned retail coffee brand in the United States: the people. It all started with Henry Norman “Cap” Saurage, who founded the company and named it Community after the people who helped him succeed. That value has carried forward – our people make our company what it is.

Everything we do has to be as good as our coffee. If you put that mentality into everything – from relationships to business planning – you're going to be superior.

When you married your late husband, Norman Saurage, what were your initial impressions of the role that the family business would play in your life?

When I married Norman, I had no idea that the business and the family would be so entwined. I knew he had a family business called Community Coffee, but I was so in love, I didn’t think much about it.

During those early years, I was busy raising five babies! But of course, that changed as I started learning more about how important the business was to Norman and the family.

How did your involvement grow during those early years?

Norman would come home and talk about what was going on at work, and I realized that he was using me as a sounding board. The more he talked, the more I learned, and the more I became very interested in the business.

Is that when you became formally involved in the business?

I didn't really have a formal role in the business, but as Norman came home with his challenges, I would help him where I could. I started doing the back-end planning for things like sales meetings and company dinners.

I didn't have an idea of the impact I was having until later, when the employees started telling me how important it was that I was there with Norman and how much they appreciated my assistance.

When did you realize just how big of a role the business would play in your family going forward?

I didn’t really realize how much of a role Community Coffee would play in my life until the 1980s, when whole bean coffee shops started showing up in California. Norman and I went out to see what was going on in this new wave of coffee shops, because we had noticed that young people were drinking coffee differently than previous generations.

That visit made us realize we could take our premium stores, where people traded in coupons for various items, and transition those into coffee shops, where we would sell whole bean coffee and everything that went along with it, from appliances to snacks. We converted our five premium stores into Community Coffee storefronts, and they became a destination gift shop store for young people.

That experience opened my eyes to the fact that the business could grow in different ways, and I could be a part of it.

Take us through the transition from working in the background to taking on an official leadership role.

I became more involved when I was asked to chair our board’s Citizenship Committee, which deals with giving back to communities to help them thrive.

That was 25 years ago, and I’m still the chair of that committee. It’s been a great joy to help develop that and to know that we are doing the right things in the communities where we serve.

Did you and Norman discuss how to best set up the business for succession?

Norman was really the patriarch of the company after his father died. All the ownership was in our branch of the family; it was owned by Norman, me, and our five children.

He wanted to develop our children into leaders, rather than me. But when he became ill with ALS, he knew that his time was finite and that there would be a middle time where I would need to take over the leadership and ownership of the company. It would ultimately be my job to help develop our children into those leadership roles.

We planned for all of this, so when Norman passed away, there was not a hiccup in the company.

Many business owners struggle to pass on a company to the next generation because it is part of their identity. But Norman did it early, which is pretty amazing. He knew that he was going to need to pass the torch, but he wanted to make sure his children developed and matured in the business before handing over the reins.

How did you feel when he asked you to take on the responsibility of developing the next generation into well-heeled owners?

I welcomed it. I have always wanted to see my children be way more than I could ever be, and it’s been such a joy to see that happen over the past 10 years.

I can see myself phasing out without a worry in the world. I get so excited when we are sitting in a meeting, and I hear them ask management the questions that Norman or I would have asked.

Was there anything that happened earlier during your relationship with the family that set you up to be so involved in these later years?

One key thing happened. All of the shareholders are Saurage blood relatives, except for me – I am not a blood relative. The reason I have even been able to be in this position and do all that is because Norman’s grandfather gave me some Community Coffee stock a few years after I married Norman. If he had not done that, I would never have been able to inherit more stock because I'm not in the bloodline.

His grandfather believed in me and knew I was here for the long haul. He saw a marriage that was going to last and prosper.

Were there any hurdles when assuming leadership?

I felt very confident when I first assumed the role of manager of Community Coffee’s holding company. I had been active in the nonprofit world and had served on about 50 boards. And I knew the company well.

The challenge I saw was how to get future generations involved – how to get my grandchildren involved and how to grow the involvement of my two sons. One was Chairman of Community Coffee, and one was on the board but had not really been involved in the company.

Over the past 10 years, my two sons have become very involved and stepped up to the task. My biggest worry was whether they’d really love the company and become the interested shareholders that we wanted them to be. And they did.

Did you have to do anything to cultivate that interest?

My two sons and I get along very well. There's no conflict. We come from different directions, but we have always come to consensus on everything.

When my husband was ill, it was amazing to watch my sons communicate with him. There came this real listening and understanding. We have continued that in our family.

Hank, Matt, and I realized that we needed to really work on developing the future shareholders and that we needed to be on the same page when it came to working with management. We started meeting once a week for an hour and a half, and we continue to do this. We talk through all of the issues, and it helps us avoid conflict.

When you took on the role of leadership, was there anything you did to ensure you left the legacy you desired for future generations of the family?

When I took on this role and we started looking at how to develop the family to be interested shareholders, one of the first things that Matt, Hank, and I did was list out our values. When all was said and done, they turned out to be the same as those that we had already documented for Community Coffee. Once we had that solidified, we had a base to start working on teaching the grandchildren.

Norman used to say, “You can't run the family through the business, and you can't run the business through the family.” The Saurage family name and Community Coffee are very connected in people’s minds, but we were not going to run the business for the family, where every child just gets a job here. And we weren't going to let the family feel that the business was the only thing that they had, because we wanted them to develop as individuals.

We made it clear that we would love for qualified family members to come to work for Community Coffee, but it would never be demanded. They would never be criticized if they did not. They can still add value as shareholders, but they don’t have to work for the business to succeed.

Some families wonder if it is still a family business if the family isn’t leading the business in the top executive roles. How does your family think about it?

Our family believes that the business can be well run by the smartest person we can find to run it. If that happens to be a family member, fine. It has happened several times during our history.

However, we’ve more often had an outsider running the company. We have family members on the board, but we have outside directors who outnumber them.

We're proof that a family business can grow with outsiders in management.

With respect to philanthropy, giving back is important at Community Coffee. Talk about your activity and mission with your giving.

When Cap started the business, he always believed the community was so good to him. He wanted to give back, so we have always offered coupons and other giving opportunities to those who drink Community Coffee.

Giving back is at the core of our family – we give through the company, and we all give personally.

You are active in a women’s investment club and have seen great success. Tell us about that. What do you think makes that group function so well?

I became a member of this women’s investment club long after it had been started, and we just have so much fun investing together. I was just looking at the notes from my latest meeting, and we were up 57% the past year – vs. 42% for the market.

Many of us have been involved in the nonprofit community, and we've served on boards and investment committees, which is where a lot of us learned about investing. The more you're exposed to investing, the more you understand it, and the more you understand taking risks and being careful about what you do.

Interview conducted by Ben Persofsky, and article written by Kaitlin Barbour.