“Almost everything we do requires electric power.”

Mackenzie YatesOwner, Roost Coffee

Small business owner Mackenzie Yates relies on electric power to operate her coffee shop. Mackenzie’s team makes most of the shop’s offerings in-house and fresh, including syrups, bakery items, sandwiches and, of course, espresso drinks. Losing power means a loss in daily sales, an inability to make espresso drinks, and throwing out perishable  items.

Mackenzie’s coffee shop is backed by a continuous supply of electric power, coursing across an intricate network of generators, wires, transformers, and substations. This network is the electric power grid. The devices we make at SEL are embedded in this network, protecting the flow of power so Mackenzie can grow her local business.

We do our part so she can do hers, and together we power the future.

“I love working for myself. It’s challenging, but it would be hard for me to do anything else.”

—Mackenzie Yates, Owner, Roost Coffee

Mackenzie Yates has owned and managed a coffee shop, Roost, since 2014. There are countless things demanding her attention on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. She needs to track sales, orders, hours, wages, and more. However, one major thing she doesn’t need to worry about is reliable electric power. Because she can count on having power every day, she can focus her energy on making her small business the best it can be.

They make as much as possible in-house.

Roost has three pastry chefs that come in every morning to make all of the baked goods and food fresh for the day. They get their coffee roasted locally. They make their own syrups.

If the coffee shop doesn’t have electricity, it’s not a critical situation, but it does create a logistical problem and a potential loss of sales. Without power, they aren’t able to make any espresso drinks. They have to move all the food and milk to portable coolers if the outage goes on too long.

A big part of their identity is the espresso machine.

Mackenzie wants her business to maintain a particular image, and a huge part of that image is the way she and her employees make espresso drinks. If the power is out, they can’t make any of those drinks, and there is a certain loss to the atmosphere because of that. Reliable electric power allows her business to grow and present the image she wants.

From the generation source, high-voltage electricity travels great distances along transmission lines through a series of substations until it reaches communities, where it is distributed to homes, schools, businesses, and more. SEL devices play a critical role in protecting the power at each stage.