{"id":224287,"date":"2026-06-21T09:29:21","date_gmt":"2026-06-21T09:29:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/224287\/"},"modified":"2026-06-21T09:29:21","modified_gmt":"2026-06-21T09:29:21","slug":"from-engineer-to-coffee-shop-owner-in-erie-pennsylvania","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/224287\/","title":{"rendered":"From engineer to coffee shop owner in Erie, Pennsylvania"},"content":{"rendered":"

President Trump pledged sweeping political and economic changes during the campaign. We have no idea if Trump can deliver on those promises, but we can explore what it\u2019s going to take for him to try. It\u2019s all in our series\u00a0The Big Promise<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Hannah Kirby is a 30-year-old resident of Erie, Pennsylvania, originally from Waynesburg. She first came to Erie to earn her engineering degree from Gannon University and later got an MBA. She got a job as an engineer at a manufacturing company in town, but eventually realized she wanted something else: to open up a coffee shop. She studied coffee, visited roasters across the country, and now Kirby owns Ember + Forge in downtown Erie, the only coffee shop within the city limits besides Starbucks. The following is an edited transcript of Kirby discussing how the coffee shop came to be and how she hopes it will contribute to Erie\u2019s growth.\u00a0<\/p>\n

So I came to Erie in 2006 to go to Gannon University here in downtown Erie. I really fell in love with the people that were here, really just decided that this is where I want to stay. I bought a house right out of college here inside the city limits. And it\u2019s kind of been my thing to support this city and help it grow and develop. So when I chose it as my home, it just made sense for me to build the business here in Erie.<\/p>\n

So this building was built in 1851 and it originally was a chandlery [a candlemaker]. And so the chandlery idea is where it kind of came up with the \u201cember,\u201d so candles and that kind of flame-fire aspect. And then the \u201cforge\u201d part of it comes from Erie\u2019s history as a manufacturing town. And then when we started looking a little bit deeper, we thought about what an ember was. It\u2019s the remnants of a once blazing fire, and we thought that was just so appropriate for where Erie is. We have lost a lot of jobs and people see it as kind of a declining city, but really, you know, I see it as that heart of a fire that really can be turned into flames so easily.<\/p>\n

You know, a lot of people say Erie has a lot of potential, and it most certainly does, but saying that it has potential [implies] it\u2019s not totally living up to it. And I think that Erie already is doing a lot. Growth is certainly welcomed, but I think that we have a lot to offer. You know, the younger generation, I feel like we don\u2019t expect to have those jobs that an older generation had. They have never existed for us \u2014 so where you come out of high school and work in a manufacturing job, and that is a wage you\u2019re able to raise a family on. We\u2019ve never had that opportunity. So we realize that we have to make those jobs that are family-sustaining, life-sustaining.<\/p>\n

I think that people are starting to realize\u00a0\u2014 the younger generation, specifically \u2014 that we\u2019re not going to be able to turn to our federal government, we\u2019re not going to be able to turn to our state government to build cities and that the cities are going to have to do that themselves. So it\u2019s really becoming more obvious that this is a growing city. I hope that we can just be here for a long time. And what would make this dream absolutely set in stone would be that two people come in and talk about an idea and come up with a plan inside these walls and then execute it outside of them that really helps our city grow. That would be kind of the ultimate dream.<\/p>\n

Ember+Forge in downtown Erie, Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n

Daisy Palacios\/Marketplace<\/p>\n

Correction (Feb. 23, 2018): An earlier version of this story misstated the year the building was built. The text has been corrected.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"President Trump pledged sweeping political and economic changes during the campaign. We have no idea if Trump can…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":224288,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[14583,136,138,137,1881,97406,97407,28],"class_list":["post-224287","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-erie","tag-coffee-shops","tag-erie","tag-erie-headlines","tag-erie-news","tag-manufacturing","tag-millenials","tag-optimism","tag-pennsylvania"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224287","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=224287"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224287\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/224288"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=224287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=224287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=224287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}