Location, location, location is the key to success, people say. For husband-and-wife team Seth and Adrienne Steward, this is true in multiple ways.

The owners of Linda’s Bee Farm outside Warren, Ohio, had been selling things like artisanal honey soap and moisturizers at craft shows across the Midwest when high-end open-air center Crocker Park offered them a spot. They were ecstatic, but the commute to the property, in the western suburbs of Cleveland, was an hour each way. The Stewards made an unconventional decision: They rented an apartment in the mixed-use Crocker Park so Adrienne Steward could be available at any time.

Seth Steward spoke with ICSC Small Business Center contributing editor Rebecca Meiser about how he learned about bees — he also still works as a postal worker — why it’s so important to be located at a popular marketplace and his hopes for the future.

How did Linda’s Bee Farm get started?

I joined the local Trumbull County beekeeping club, and I was assigned a mentor: Blake Baldwin. I worked on his bee farm during the summer a couple of days a week. My task was simple, but it wasn’t easy. It was to catch the bees as they were swarming. He told me, as many swarms as I could catch, I could keep.

I had an entrepreneurial spirit since I was a child, but with Linda’s Bee Farm, my intention at first was not to start a business. My intention was to develop a relationship with nature and learn about the inner workings and the sociology of the bees. I named my first jar of honey after my mother. When she was alive, I mentioned that I was interested in raising bees, and she was excited about that. She asked me, “Does that mean we’re going to have our own honey?” and I said yes. That was the start of everything.

What did your wife think at first? And how did she come to be a co-owner of Linda’s Bee Farm?

She had a fear of bees. I would tell her: “Honey, you could do so much. I’m accumulating all these raw materials:  beeswax and honeycomb.” She wasn’t buying it. So I decided to take her to a beekeeping conference with me, but I didn’t tell her where we were going. I told her: “We’ll get a room at the Fairfield Marriott and go out to dinner and go shopping. She loved that because one of her favorite pastimes is shopping. I drove down to Wooster, [Ohio], for the conference.  Friday night was vendor night. We walked in. She was like: “What’s going on in here?” To her credit, she walked around the tables and found quite a few items there that night: soaps and candles that she liked. And without her knowing, I signed her up for workshops on making soaps, candles, lip balms and honey wine.

Less than a month later, my wife was rear-ended and had to stay home from work. At the time, she was in the home health care field. While she was home, she was able to keep herself occupied by making products that she had learned how to make at the conference. One of her friends invited her to have a table at a craft show. While we were at the show, other vendors invited her to another show. The craft show circuit there is almost like a religion. You go from one show to another, and they’re every weekend. Things just snowballed from there. We got insurance, a tax ID number and a vendor’s license. That’s when Linda’s Bee Farm LLC started.

How did you get connected with Crocker Park?

I was contacted by a young lady who was running the Cleveland holiday pop-up at Crocker Park. I didn’t know anything about Crocker Park. I traveled [to] the area, and I was blown away. Warren and Crocker Park are like two separate states. Warren is a quasi-rural town, whereas Crocker Park is like a little city within a city. It’s urban, yet modern, really classy. It was like nothing I’d ever seen. It was an amazing experience. We surpassed our sales goals and were able to collect lots of customer information. We began to create new customers that we still have today.

The Crocker Park leasing department then invited you to occupy a cart for summer 2021. What made you agree?

The opportunity to be associated with Crocker Park, to grow our brand and be part of the Crocker Park family of merchants. We couldn’t pass it up. The fee for the summer was somewhere in the neighborhood of $3,000 for the season. We thought that was really reasonable.

What went into running the cart?

The hours were 10 or 11 in the morning to 8 o’clock at night, seven days a week. I was still working full-time at the post office. We thought: “How are going to make this work?” We decided that Adrienne was going to have to live there. The [cart] opening date was around May 27, so we applied [for a year lease] for an apartment and had a move-in date in June. It was an undertaking, but that’s how serious we were about this opportunity and making sure that it was a success. It’s really important to be close by. You’re interacting with the community and your customer base, and they’re looking for consistency. And if something happens with one of your employees, if they get sick or if there’s an issue with the internet or the register, you want to be there within a matter of minutes.

How did you transition from a summer cart to a permanent kiosk in the center?

For the first year, we didn’t know how our sales were going to be and we didn’t know how the customers were going to receive us, so we just wanted to wait to see how things went. We did very well [and kept coming back with the cart for the summer months]. In 2023, Crocker Park emailed us and asked if we wanted to come and look at a vacant spot. If we liked it and were interested in it, they said we could meet with the leasing agent and go over the lease [for a permanent kiosk].

Do you have the same product selection at the store, now called Linda’s Bee Farm: Honey Gift Shop, that you had at your kiosk?

We expanded some of the products that we manufacture that we were not able to sell at the outdoor cart like our honey butter. It requires refrigeration. We’ve also begun to incorporate specialty tea. We also manufacture honey butter popcorn that Adrienne makes. That’s a crowd pleaser. Our health-and-wellness products — natural honey soap bars, beeswax lip balm, bee propolis extract — do well.

How does having a physical location impact your business operations and customer service?

It’s nice to have a place that you can say: “Just come here.” Our customers are able to pick up online orders at our gift shop. Some of our customers come from Pittsburgh … to meet face to face. The objective is not for us to host the shop daily. We want to train sales associates and staff members to be able to run the operations. We want to eventually scale. We don’t want to remain a mom and pop shop for the duration of our experience.

Where do you want to be in five and 10 years?

I currently have 32 years in the U.S. Postal Service. I have a tentative retirement date of Aug. 2, 2028. That’s when I’m able to retire with full benefits and really concentrate on scaling. In five years, I would like to have a retail location in various parts of Ohio, Columbus, Cincinnati and also Pittsburgh. In 10 years, I would like to have retail stores in tourist areas, such as Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and Orlando, Florida. We also would like to travel to some of the high-end shows around the country, introducing our brand.

What advice would you give to others thinking of starting a small business?

You’ve got to get that first transaction done. You need to prove to yourself that [your concept] is marketable, that you have customers willing to pay for your product. If they don’t want it, they won’t buy it, no matter how great you think your product is.