Opening a retail coffee house - part 7

The first few months of having the business went by really fast. We opened in September and before we knew it, Thanksgiving was just around the corner. We closed on Thanksgiving Day and the day after. It felt great to have two whole days off of work. But the problem with having your own business is that when you're closed you don't get paid. There's no vacation pay you can use or holiday pay, you just get NO pay. The first few months were hard because business didn't boom like we had thought. We were naive...perhaps we watched that baseball movie too much and really believed that "if you build it, they will come." Well, it doesn't really work that way, there's something called marketing that you had to do. So, we started making flyers and putting it on people's cars. But did you know that you need a permit from the city to do that? Well, we didn't know...oops! The flyers didn't really work anyways. We didn't seem to get any new business from it. What helped us was that we were open next to a dry cleaners. I don't use dry cleaners very often, but alot of other people sure do and this dry cleaners was open early at 7am for their customers to pick up before work. We made sure we would open our front doors and let the great smell of coffee flow out in the mornings. We also started advertising in those coupon books that get mailed to homes. Those coupon books actually did quite well especially when we were offering buy one get one free.

Opening a retail coffee house - part 6

When we first opened we decided we would be open 7 days a week. We were young, didn't have kids and full of energy, so we didn't mind all the work. Oh, but did I mention that we didn't hire anyone either. We didn't want to borrow any money to start the business, so we just used our savings and a lot of sweat equity. Our hours were Monday - Friday 6:00am to 7:00pm and Saturdays and Sundays 8:00am - 5:00pm. It was alot of hours and soon all the days became a blur. When you're working every single day, it becomes hard to distinguish between the days since there is no looking forward to a weekend...or a day off. Sundays were our slowest days in sales. In the beginning, we would sometimes only do sales of $50 that day. After a couple of months we decided that we would at least close at noon on Sundays, so that we could have 1/2 a day off. It was very exciting looking forward to those Sunday afternoons. Looking back, we should have planned to be closed on Sundays or at least 1/2 day. Opening a business is very exciting and rewarding, but everyone needs a break to rest and relax and rejuvenate. It's hard to be creative and think of marketing ideas for your business, when you are exhausted.

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.