How it all started

Ever since I can remember, I've always wanted to start and own my own business. I don't mean to sound cliche, but I do think the bug started when I had my first lemonade stand when I was around 7 years old in Oakland. We lived in the Lakeshore area with alot of kids in the neighborhood. It was fun picking the lemons from our lemon tree and juicing the fruit. I don't think it tasted very good, but the adults were nice and bought from me anyways. I thought what a great idea; pick fruit, squeeze, add sugar and water and voila you got cash for it. Of course I didn't think it costs anything since I just got everything from my parents' kitchen for FREE. Those summer days always stayed in the back of my mind as I grew older. I always knew I wanted to start something, but didn't know what. When I went to college at U.C. Berkeley, I fell in love with coffee. I guess it was only natural considering all the late nights studying. My dad was a partner in a coffee roasting business in Berkeley and I worked their part time while attending college. It was located only two blocks from the original "Peet's Coffee" but unfortunately was not even 1% as successful. However, it provided me a job and an opportunity to learn about coffee. I graduated with a bachelor's degree in Business and went off to work as an accountant at a big public accounting firm in San Francisco. The love of coffee never left me and as people would tease me I was still in the "bean" business...bean counting, that is. After a year into my accounting career, my dad's partners wanted to sell out of the business. I had just gotten married and my husband was working in the electronics industry in Fremont, and we thought why don't we buy out the partners. We were young then, 23 years old with no kids and lots of energy. So, we jumped into the venture, thinking we could run the business while we both had full time jobs. Let's say we didn't have much of a social life then. We hired employees and I did all the books at night and on the weekends. The honeymoon period didn't last long...no, not my marriage, but with the employees. It became evident that it was not working out being absentee owners in a retail coffee shop. We were just breaking even and knew we couldn't sell the business for much. So, we decided to close down the retail shop, move the coffee roaster to a warehouse in San Leandro and just concentrate on the wholesale side of the business. We figured we could do the roasting and filling orders at night after our day job. Thus, began our journey into the coffee business and the many other shops we started.