Tumbleweed and Sage began its tenure in the Lubbock, Texas suburb in 2020 by selling coffee, hosting book-themed events, and promoting its holiday treat selection. By 2022, the coffeehouse, which is located directly across the street from a local high school, pivoted towards advancing leftism by partnering with LubbockPRIDE to host “family-friendly” drag queen story hours.

Shortly after the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson decision, Tumbleweed and Sage also partnered with Texas pro-abortion group Jane’s Due Process — whose primary mission is to help minors travel out of state to obtain abortions — to hand out at least 100 kits containing two Plan B pills, two condoms, a pregnancy test, and an “instruction pamphlet.” …

By December of 2022, however, Tumbleweed and Sage’s tune had slightly changed. Faced with increasing boycotts over their recent activism, the coffeehouse turned to local news outlets to complain that they were not getting as much business as they expected.

“I sat back and I thought, is this the reason we’re slow?” the owner wondered before brushing off the slump as a problem facing more businesses than hers.

[This might have worked in Austin and maybe Houston — maybe — but not in West Texas. Consider this a Bud Light moment on a microbrewer scale, as it were. T&S marketed itself to a segment of the population that turned out to be far too small to support their business, and actively antagonized everyone else in the market. As Jordan reports, it’s not as if the market was exactly shy about letting them know why they wouldn’t do business with T&S. I’d say that there are multiple ways to think about the owner’s lament about being “slow.” — Ed]