Story and Graphic by Haley Boyce / Inform Muncie
Editor's Note: This story was originally published in November 2022
Tiara Hicks was on the hunt for a barista. She didn’t know she’d find him at her local Kohl’s.
Conner Davis was the Kohl’s employee who helped Hicks with a return. She had heard of Davis before — her daughter also worked at Kohl’s with him, and his dad was a long time regular at her shop.
Davis was kind and helpful. He had all the qualities she looks for when hiring someone: leadership skills, a servant mentality, and most importantly, exceptional customer service skills.
So, Tiara offered him an interview. Now, a year into the job, Davis is the manager of Rosebud Coffee House and has fully become immersed and valued within the Muncie community.
Davis grew up in Muncie. He attended Royerton Elementary School, Delta Middle School, Delta High School and finally, Ball State University.
He describes his childhood with ease and an appreciative nostalgic attitude. His parents would take him and his siblings to Disney World every now and then. He was signed up and made an eagle scout.
“[They] made life very fun for us,” he says with a smile. “[They] took a lot of the worry of life in the early 2000s away from us.”
His dad is Tom Davis, a financial advisor in Muncie. He serves on boards within different organizations in Muncie and has been working in town since the 80s. Davis looks up to his father for the way he immersed himself in the community.
“He just knows everyone,” Davis says. “Even though he’s not from Muncie, he got connected with the community really well.”
Davis and his family are from the Northside of Muncie. He describes it as an area of vast farmland for miles, with little neighborhoods scattered around.
His ‘farmland for miles’ idea of home is much different from where he works at Rosebud, which is located in the Southside of Muncie. Growing up in the North part of Muncie, Davis had heard troubling stories about the Southside.
“The idea of the Southside growing up was that it was a dangerous place,” he says. “There were a lot of shootings and there was a lot of drug activity there. [It was] just not a place you wanted to go, especially with kids.”
Davis believes the stigma surrounding the Southside is something the neighborhood has faced since the “car factories left Muncie.”
Muncie had a Chevrolet Plant open in 1935. The plant was expanding and booming until the late 1970s and 1980s. It was around that time period when plant workers began to face unemployment as facilities closed due to leadership struggles and global competition. The factory officially closed in 2006.
Neighborhood Scout, an online U.S database that specializes in analyzing neighborhoods, ranks the Southside of Muncie as one of the more dangerous neighborhoods in the Muncie area.
But the idea that the Southside is dangerous and crime-ridden is one that Davis does not stand by.
“It’s a statement I’ve found to be pretty false,” he says. “It’s just the opposite of what I was told growing up.”
Davis says that one of the reasons why Hicks picked the Southside to house her coffee shop was to put an end to the stigma. Davis has reevaluated the way he once thought about the Southside. It’s no longer a place to be afraid of or avoid.
If anything, it’s a place that’s shown him the possibility of connection in a community.
“[Working at Rosebud] just really encouraged me to see the community coming to the Southside of town,” he says. “This place is able to show that as long as people have places to come together, it’s going to be great.”
And great it has been.
Davis has been able to make friendships with not only his coworkers, but also his customers.
Ball State University Honors College Professor Jason Powell is one of the customers Davis has befriended.
“Conner is pretty much a badass,” Powell says with a laugh. “All of us have bad days but Conner never has one at work. He is really cool. And [he] makes a mean cup of coffee.”
Rosebud regularly sees groups come in such as Campus Life and the 8Twelve Coalition. One customer who’s gotten to see Davis in action is Darbi Strahle, a coordinator at the 8Twelve Coalition.
Strahle describes Davis as someone who is kind, friendly and full of integrity.
“[He] was easy and fun to talk to,” she shares. “He seemed like he wanted to get to know the customers at Rosebud.”
Davis has one group of customers who always puts a smile on his face. Every Friday, a group of “older men” come in and get a coffee. The staff crafted them a nickname: The Coffee Guys.
It’s little connections like these that made Davis fall in love with his job.
“I just fell in love with [this] job once it started. It doesn’t feel like going to work,” he explains. “I’m not exhausted when I get home like other positions I’ve had. Overall, the little bits and pieces of Rosebud that are unique to it really drew me in.”
Davis specifically loves the meeting room where members of the community can schedule a meeting and stay for hours on end. According to Davis, this is something that no other coffee shop in town offers.
The interior of Rosebud is snappy and vibrant. There are small statues of elephants sprinkled throughout the shop. Davis explains that those are Hicks’ “favorite.” Full of art, florals and windows, the environment is modern and inviting.
But nothing is more inviting than the people inside, like Davis.
“He is genuinely a happy person,” Hicks says. “He goes above and beyond to make sure those around him are also happy. Conner is someone you would call if you needed anything.”
Davis has found that his job at Rosebud has not only allowed him to explore more of the Southside, but also Muncie in general. He’s been able to deliver coffee to different businesses within the community and meet new people along the way.
Some of those people include members of the Muncie Civic Theater.
“I’ve become friends with a lot of them. I [was able] to see their shows,” he says. “Having that connection has been really fun for me.”
On Thursdays, Davis and his friends from the theater will occasionally hit some karaoke. He can’t help but be amazed and envious of his friends, with their extraordinary talent and extravagant costumes.
He claims he can’t sing, but he’ll still dabble in it. His go-to karaoke song? Kickapoo by Tenacious D.
Davis has created other traditions during his time at Rosebud that have become some of his favorite aspects about the job.
One of his favorite traditions is one he’s made with the youth pastor at his church. The pastor will come in and tell Davis: “Make me anything.”
It’s a small, simple tradition, but one that causes Davis to crack a smile when he shares about it.
“I know it’s not a big deal, but it’s cool that I get to create something that people like,” he says. “That’s always really fun for me.”
Creating is something Davis has an interest in. He originally started at Ball State University as a telecommunications major, with hopes of working in filmmaking one day. But after eight months, he decided it was no longer for him.
He switched his major to interpersonal communications and has been discovering his passions ever since.
“I’ve had 14 different jobs,” he says. “I’ve worked as a delivery driver at Pizza King, I clean an office every week, I’ve done construction work in town. I’ve [worked at] Kohl’s. I’ve done a lot of strange jobs.”
He also completed the Disney College Program while attending Ball State. This experience showed him the “good and bad of every job” and prepped him for working with people and managing his energy.
While at Ball State, he also became interested in working at a coffee shop. It’s something he had always wanted to do.
He started working at the Bookmark Café in Bracken Library and later Jamba Juice when it was still on campus in the Atrium.
“I really enjoyed it,” he recalls. “I just wasn’t able to make that into something that could provide for myself.”
So, when the Rosebud position opened up, perhaps it was simply fate Davis was meant to end up there.
As for his future in Muncie and at Rosebud, he doesn’t have a clear picture of what that may look like. He does feel inspired by Rosebud and the work Hicks has put in to make it the space it is.
“I’m living by the motto of just taking each opportunity as they come,” Davis says. “I would love to be able to run my own shop someday. Working here and seeing how [Hicks] runs this place and what she has been able to do has just been really inspiring and I would love to be able to do that myself.”
He doesn’t know if his future shop would find its home in Muncie or a different town in Indiana, but he can appreciate the most important thing Muncie has to offer.
“Muncie; it’s like a lot of Indiana. It’s a whole lot of nothing. But there are some really great gems here,” he says. “If you look around, there are some really great people, which I found to be the main part in making any place good. It doesn’t matter if you have everything in the world for nightlife or entertainment, if there’s not good people around, [your experience] is not going to be good. That’s one thing I’ve never found lacking in Muncie: good people.”
All Inform Muncie articles are written by students in the School of Journalism and Strategic Communication in a classroom environment with a faculty advisor.
Read More
Cultural sensitivity in the community
December 7, 2023In Sra. Kelsey Pavelka’s past classroom, students were greeted with a calendar that featured eye-catching construction paper behind each day of the week. But something was more notable than the colorful decoration behind the numbers: the words December and Diciembre above the days of the week.
Southcentral Muncie’s Zeus Currie: Big as life
December 7, 2023Zeus Currie is, in multiple respects, a larger-than-life character. Firstly, he shares the same first name as a Greek god. Secondly, he is simply a mountainous man. 6 foot 9, with more than enough weight to play as a nose tackle in the NFL, he will be the first to admit that he is an intimidating person when you first see him. Having that size greatly helps him in his work as a security guard.
Mama and Son Soul Food Kitchen: Family matters
December 7, 2023Mama and Son Soul Food Kitchen, formerly named Mama Bond’s Soul Food Kitchen, is located inside Historic Rose Court and marked by its circular image of Dominique Isom, “Son,” and Consuela Nixon, “Mama,” at the storefront.
