Guest column: Over-regulation is a bad blend that threatens our coffee business

Editor's note: This opinion piece was submitted May 16. It was held due to space limitations.

MARFA — My family settled in West Texas in the 1880s with eyes on the future. They were the pioneers and cattlemen that propelled our region forward and built the tight-knit culture in this corner of the state that I call home.

I love our Texas heritage, and spent many years following my family’s ranching and cattle tradition. That same commitment to the region and focus on the future inspired me 15 years ago when I discovered a new passion: coffee.

In 2008, I purchased a struggling local coffee roaster in Marfa and started the hard work of revitalizing the business and hiring up. Together my employees and I have built the business, and it’s paying off.

One of our strongest growth engines has been e-commerce; distant customers now represent more than 25% of our revenue. But recently, I’ve started worrying about new regulations of online platforms coming from Austin and Washington, DC, that could impact how these platforms power small business growth and success - including ours.

My West Texas neighbors love our coffee, but after buying the company, I quickly learned there is only so much coffee we can sell in our remote slice of the country. Fortunately, the internet opens the door to a huge global audience of coffee drinkers. With some good branding and smart advertising, we’ve had success finding new customers who love buying West Texas coffee online.

Now we deliver roasted beans to doorsteps everywhere. Google Ads connect us with people at the precise moment they are searching for coffee, and our strong reviews help us convert people from browsers to customers. On Instagram, we share photos of the incredible West Texas landscape, and we demonstrate how coffee beans get from the farm to your mug at home. Many of our followers come for the photos and stories and then eventually place orders.

With the local jobs we support, I hope that elected officials in Austin and Washington can support our business model, including our online business, which is driven by technology companies. I’m not blind to the risks posed by giant corporations and online media, but I know for sure what’s good for small businesses in West Texas. And I look to our lawmakers to be probusiness and pro-technology.

One proposal in Austin would require the smallest online companies to prove that children are not visiting our website. This is not only irrelevant to my business, it’s also a problem that I’d have to devote effort and energy to solve. That is a waste of time that needs to be spent running our business. The trend among most legislatures is to respect consumer privacy by collecting less information. These conflicting messages cause uncertainty that chills investment and growth. Our elected officials need to understand that overregulating digital platforms makes it harder and more expensive for companies like ours to grow beyond our small-town borders.

In 15 years, we’ve learned a lot. Our goal is to continue growing our brand and online sales and hire more people here in Marfa. But if new regulations make it difficult to grow online, I wonder how much more coffee we will sell and how much more we will grow.

Online advertising and sales are the affordable and best ways for small-town businesses like ours to compete against global coffee conglomerates, so we really need our policymakers to help us by supporting our partners. That’s how we can stay optimistic and keep moving forward in our business, just as our parents and grandparents did with their ranching businesses for decades before us.

Joe Williams is the owner of Big Bend Coffee Roasters in Marfa.