Opening a retail coffee house - part 4

After all the logistics of the coffee house was getting in order, I had to start thinking about the menu. I fell in love with coffee while attending U.C. Berkeley and was accustomed to the coffee there. My favorite place was a cafe on Bancroft called Cafe Milano. They made their coffee strong and tasty. My drink of choice was the "wet" cappuccino. Which was basically a cappuccino with not only foam but also steamed milk. So when I started my shop, I knew I would fashion it after the Berkeley style of coffee. My husband and I spent a weekend at the shop just making drink after drink after drink...trying to figure out the best recipe. We were completely WIRED after tasting all the drinks. In the end we decided we would have 4 sizes; small = 8oz, medium = 12oz, large = 16oz and a XL at 20oz. We made brewed our coffee strong using 1/5lb (.20) for each 64oz pot of coffee. And for our lattes and cappuccinos, we used 1 shot of espresso for each size, so that a small had 1 shot, medium had 2 shots, large had 3 shots and XL had 4 shots. If you are a coffee drinker, you know that is alot. I think at Starbucks, their standard is 1 shot of espresso for any size even a XL or as they call it, a grande. That just seems so weak to me. On our menu board, we even had a statement, it said "WARNING OUR COFFEE IS STRONG!"

Opening a retail coffee house - part 3

One of the most frustrating tasks was dealing with the city. This was not only frustrating but very intimidating. I don't know why, but every time I walked into the city planning office, my heart would race and my palms would sweat. I kept telling myself that these are only regular people like myself and yet in the back of my mind I would know that despite them being "regular" people, they could make my life hard. Every city is a little bit different, but in most you would go into the planning department first and fill out an application. You need to include the address of your proposed business and the first step they check is the zoning for that location. You can't just open up a retail coffee location anywhere. It needs to be in an area approved for retail. That was the easy step for me. The part I had a problem with was when they wanted the plans for my shop. I am an organized and detailed person and I would say a "DIY" (a do-it-yourself) type of person. I've seen blueprints before and thought I could draw them myself. Of course, I'm not an architect or an engineer, but I figured I'm not drawing a house or even walls that are load bearing. I was just drawing the layout of my coffee house; the counters, refrigerator placement, tables, sinks, pony wall, etc. I even went to a blueprint business and had my drawing printed on blueprint paper with the funny smell. It looked great, if I say so myself. I took the drawing to the city planning department to have it approved. The planner looked at my blueprints, checked that it had all the necessary information on it, and was just about to stamp approved on it, and then he stopped. He looked at it again and asked where was the architect wet stamp. I smiled and said proudly, "I did it myself." And he said, well I can't approve it without an architect stamp. I asked him what was wrong with the plans, did I do something wrong, was I missing something. And he said no it looks fine, BUT, it needs an architect stamp before it can be approved. So, I said, "you mean I have to pay an architect to draw my plans even though it's done correctly before you will approve them?" And he said yes. I tried to find an architect who would look at my plans and put their stamp on it, but guess what? Architects don't do that...they don't stamp other people's plans. So, I finally found an architect who basically copied the plans that I already drew so that he would stamp them so that the city would approve my plans...and all for the price of $1,000. Hmmm...now do you understand the frustration part?