Wow, has it been a crazy few months! We started the process of looking for locations a while ago, had found a great location, but what took some time was the due diligence process to make sure we’d actually be allowed to follow our plans through on the space before we sign the lease. Now that pre-lease due diligence has been cleared through, we can finally move forward into the process of drafting and negotiating the lease!...
Read MoreRisk Management Starting a coffee shop or other business definitely has risk involved. Some sources say 50% of small businesses fail in the first three to five years. How do you not become a statistic? There’s no saying for sure, but a good place to start is with strong business planning and risk management. It’s said starting a business isn’t necessarily about taking risks, but managing calculated risks for the...
Read MoreLittle by little, we’ve been choosing and collecting our coffee shop equipment. Our first exciting purchase was our Linea espresso machine, and we’ve slowing been adding smallwares and other coffee brewing methods (like our V60 and Aeropress) to our stash since. Now as we’re approaching the last final months before opening, we’ve been shopping around and purchasing things at a good price. So what kind of...
Read MoreCoffee Shop Design Elements The look of our coffee shop is slowly coming together after collecting ideas and inspiration this past year. Our process of designing a coffee shop has involved various different steps, so check out this last post in conjunction with this one. It’s been a lot of research and learning, observation and note taking, and then compiling all this information over time. I have pages of word documents and...
Read MoreOur “design process” started from day one. Even though we didn’t know what look we were going for, and were truly at an amateur level, we slowly started moving forward to build a vision we were excited about. This is what the process roughly has looked like for us and what we’ve encountered along the way, and though it’s happened in this order, it’s always a combination of going back and forth,...
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