Sweetwaters turns 30, celebrating a legacy of community and coffee

In April 1993, a brand new tea and coffee business called Sweetwaters Coffee and Tea opened in a 100-year-old building at the corner of South Ashley and West Washington streets. The business was founded by Lisa Bee and Wei Bee, both then-recent University of Michigan graduates and children of Chinese immigrants who had spent their childhoods working in restaurants to support their family. 

The original cafe is still a hotspot for coffee lovers as it celebrates its 30th birthday in 2023, though Sweetwaters has since expanded to 38 different locations across the U.S. — seven of which are in Ann Arbor.

In an interview with The Michigan Daily, Lisa Bee said entering the tea and coffee business after graduation seemed like both a natural next step and a leap of faith for her at the time. She said the idea was inspired by the emerging coffee scene in Ann Arbor in the early ’90s and her and her husbands’ shared love of coffee as college students.

“My husband and I both love food and drink businesses,” Lisa Bee said. “You meet a lot of people and there is always something new. But being in our early 20s, a full-scale restaurant would be very expensive. We went to the coffee houses that were starting to pop up at that time, and we thought, ‘Wow! This is kind of like doing a restaurant, but not as intense,’ and we thought it would be a lot of fun for us to do.”

For Lisa Bee, Sweetwaters has always been a source of pride. Three decades later, college students and townies alike have come to recognize the iconic red Sweetwaters logo at a glance, which features two ancient Chinese ancient characters meaning “sweet” and “water.”

Though the menu has changed over time and hundreds of baristas have come and gone, Sweetwaters’ staff, owners and customers can all attest to the sense of community the cafe has continuously facilitated since the day it was founded 30 years ago.

A local business inspired by global flavors

Austin Green, a barista who works the morning shift at Sweetwaters and serves as a firefighter in Livingston County, told The Daily he first encountered Sweetwaters when he visited the cafe in the Michigan Union at the University of Michigan and ordered a mocha. He said when he first applied for a job as a Sweetwaters barista, he was unsure about the variety of products sold at the business. Instead, he said it shattered his expectations with the wide selection of beverages and working there broadened his knowledge about international coffee and tea culture.

“There’s a very big learning curve here,” Green said. “I first thought (the drinks were) mainly Chinese or Japanese, but I learned that we even have teas that originated in Greece, because a lot of (instructions on packages and jars) just tell you where it’s from and where it originated. It is also pretty cool to see the story behind them.”

Lisa Bee said when she first started the business, both she and her husband were most familiar with Chinese tea beverages. As the couple traveled and immersed themselves in different cultures, however, Lisa Bee said they wanted Sweetwaters’ tea and coffee menu to reflect the refreshments being enjoyed in cafes all around the world. 

“When we first started, we had the idea that we could bring in a lot of products that we personally and culturally know about,” Lisa Bee said. “Today, you see French Vietnamese coffee, milk tea and things that are not at a typical Italian-based coffee house. Many other cultures have tea and coffee, and we adapt operationally to bring them to our guests.”

Brian Kung, the manager of the Sweetwaters located on Plymouth and Green roads, told The Daily his life has had a similar life trajectory as that of the Bee family. Kung, who is a second generation Taiwanese immigrant, said he was involved with the Taiwanese business community in Metro Detroit for several years before starting at Sweetwaters. Through the Taiwanese community, Kung said he started following the Michigan Lion Dance team, a group of middle and high school students in the Metro Detroit area who perform the traditional Asian dance in a custom lion costume. The team performed at Sweetwaters’ annual Lunar New Year celebration, with Kung being the one to initially connect the dance team with the cafe — and the rest was history.

Kung told The Daily that he has continued to lean on his cultural community as he has navigated the challenges of managing a business.

“We fight a lot of battles as business owners, like just keeping the lights on,” Kung said. “Sometimes it feels like you are against the world. But if you have friends and family or just people who have been through what you’re going through, you know that you aren’t doing it alone. It’s good to have that support.”

A sweet space for community

When Lisa Bee and Wei Bee first founded Sweetwaters, they said they didn’t initially envision it as a place to get “sweet” beverages. As a matter of fact, many traditional Chinese teas, like dragon pearl jasmine, are naturally floral-tasting and can potentially be bitter.

For community members like City Councilmember Linh Song, D-Ward 2, the brand name has always suggested that Sweetwaters provides a ‘sweet’ escape from the hustle and bustle of downtown Ann Arbor. Song, who was born in a Vietnamese refugee family, told The Daily she first befriended Lisa Bee in the late ’90s when Song was working for one of her relatives at a since-closed Asian bakery called Eastern Accents. Song said she became closer with Lisa Bee when Song founded Mam Non, a nonprofit helping adopted Asian children build community and connect with their cultural roots through a mentorship program. Song said Sweetwaters provided the children and their mentors an inviting and intimate space to connect with one another. 

“At Sweetwaters, girls would meet with their mentors for tea and cookies,” Song said. “(Sweetwaters) has been really essential because it is important for the adoption community to have a space other than public spaces like libraries, where (Lisa Bee), the owner, would always come out to welcome our groups who felt they were kind of on the edge of the community.”

Song said she has also visited a number of Sweetwaters locations in Metro Detroit, an area in which the Asian community has been growing Asian over the past several years. Whenever she visits any of the locations she said she can taste Lisa Bee’s commitment to her family and her culture in every sip of her tea.

“It is a family operation,” Song said. “It is so hard to have a multi-generational family business like that which is also dedicated to our community. They are good examples of what community leaders could be like.” 

In the meantime, back at the original location on the corner of South Ashley and West Washington streets, another community has been taking shape. A board game club, founded by Ann Arbor resident Victor Volkman in 2018, brings together community members from all over southeast Michigan to socialize and play board games at Sweetwaters every other Friday evening. In an email to The Daily, Volkman said the group is appreciative that Sweetwaters is willing to host them week after week.

“We started Ann Arbor board game nights in 2018 after the Friday club we used to attend at Livonia closed down,” Volkman wrote. “The (Sweetwaters) management was extremely receptive to our approach and permitted us to use their nicely-sized sideroom … the only condition they ever imposed was that each person buy a drink, which is extremely reasonable because they do rent the space for catered events at fairly high rates.”

Volkman wrote that the group aimed to provide a low-stress social atmosphere for people in the area from all different walks of life. 

“Because of the transient nature of Ann Arbor’s population, I predicted it would be a rough start,” Volkman wrote. “But I was wrong, as people were starving for community and good gaming fun. … We have members on fixed disability income, equally important are the many international people that are looking for something other than hanging out in a bar with loud music and actually interacting with people.”

Moving past 30

Unlike 30 years ago, Sweetwaters is now a national brand spanning 12 states from North Dakota to New Jersey. It has even released a line of Sweetwaters-branded merchandise, including mugs and T-shirts.

With every new cafe, Lisa Bee said she continues to learn new lessons about her business and the world around her. At some southern locations, Lisa Bee said they have started selling Sweetwaters’ take on traditional southern sweet-tea.

“It is really interesting to get that perspective from people from down South,” Lisa Bee said. “It is really interesting to see the perspectives around the country, and they definitely have an influence on our brand.”

Daily Staff Reporter Chen Lyu can be reached at lyuch@umich.edu.