ROCKINGHAM — A Pee Dee-area coffee chain was honored this week by Business North Carolina as one of the state’s Small Businesses of the Year.
The Speckled Paw, which has a location in downtown Rockingham, is one of four companies to earn the designation for 2022. The other three are Core Technology Molding in Greensboro, Firsthand Foods in Durham and Seaview Crab in Wilmington.
According to an article from BNC, the winners were chosen from among more than 75 applicants.
BNC publisher Ben Kinney served as one of the judges, along with: Byron Hicks, director of the Small Business and Technology Development Center; and Anna Lynch, CEO of Lynch Mykins Structural Engineers. The latter was one of the Small Business of the Year winners in 2021, according to BNC.
To be eligible, the businesses had to have been operating for at least five years and judges based their decisions on “creativity, community impact, persistence and other factors …,” according to the BNC article.
The awards were presented Wednesday at the Carolina Inn in Chapel Hill.
BNC has published feature stories on all four winners.
Speckled Paw was founded in 2018 by Kyle and Myra Poplin, who opened their first coffee shop in Mount Gilead after moving to Montgomery County.
Since then, they have opened two locations in Anson County — Wadesboro and Polkton — in addition to the one in Richmond County.
Speckled Paw Rock opened in the summer of 2021 in the small business incubator IncSpace, owned by Kenny and Charlie Melvin.
Click here to read about the opening.
The building is also occupied by WAYN radio, Art Wonders Gallery, the Richmond County Partnership for Children, Carolina Scoops and the Richmond Observer.
The Melvins are also owners and publishers of the RO and owners of Carolina Scoops.
