My Coffeehouse Nightmare: How Opening A Coffeeshop Ruined My Life

Every couple of months I'll treat myself to some $4 cup of coffee at a coffee house. Mostly I'll enjoy the experience but later I'll self loathe because I'll think to myself 'you self indulgent precious meep.' The rest of the year I alternate between home coffee, DD and Quickie mart gas station variety.

I drink coffee from the nipples of my coffee squirrel.

Only have coffee out with a breakfast meal & I Only Brew at home on the Weekends or if I have a long Morning Commute. Otherwise I've tried to raise the bar at work with what we have there. Currently I'm firmly addicted to 'Black Silk' from Folgers. I've also received no less than 6 bags of whole beans this year from people who know I really like my coffee (mostly regifts I assume). Unfortunately I don't have a grinder and any friends I know who have them use them for Pot.

there was a resident at the complex where i worked who was a total meep. lived with her two high school age kids in a two bedroom and would complain that the people upstairs watched TV past 10PM because she slept in the living room, as though somehow we could tell people not to use their apartments reasonably.

i looked through her paperwork one time and saw that she used to own a cafe in town. i pieced together the story from observations. seems that she had a husband who made ok money, they probably mortgaged their house and she opened her dream cafe, she was the type of dumb meep who saw herself as a romanticized cafe owner in paris or something. a combination of high rent, bad location, and no business probably put her under, she declared bankruptcy, her husband probably got sick of her being a money wasting meep, and she moved into an apartment and worked two jobs to support her spoiled children (who apparently couldn't share a bedroom).

but she was such a meep i couldn't really feel sorry for her.

Eh. I don't think this person knows what they're talking about.

^ I kind of registered this line of thought as well.

i would imagine opening any business in nyc might be a bad idea for the inexperienced.

I'm addicted to KONA..any hawaiian will do in a pinch but 100% kONA IS SUBLIME

Sublime doesn't mean what you think it means.

The first mistake these peoples made was assuming that Italian coffee wasn't already perfect and needed milk.

They were destined to fail from that point forward.

Plus, another quaint coffee shop in NYC? Any nipplehead could have told them that that was 99% doomed from day one.

Before you start a business,if you don<code>t have the pleasure of owning the building,then you should have at least 12 to 18 months of your rent sitting in an account/safe somewhere.(it will help,but won</code>t guarantee ya meep if your selling wolf-tickets)

FIRST AND LAST PRO-TIP FROM A NOBODY

kyourwelcome

i think he describes their problem pretty well, and it's a problem that effects most small business owners, which is why most small businesses fail. they don't get into it from the business perspective. they think, 'i like X, i'm good at X, i bet i can make X pay and have a lot of fun in the meantime.' in reality, they don't know what their margins should be, they don't find good help, they don't square away issues with distribution, etc. running a business is like any job: if it was fun and effortless, they wouldn't pay you to be there.

and running a coffee shop is a good idea, in theory. i've heard that the best way to start a business your first time is to basically copy someone successful in a different market. they just didn't have their meep together, and with high rent and a lot of competition, they couldn't last long enough to figure it out.

yeah, it seriously sounded like they had the shop open for a week and were starting to worry a little bit and asked someone out margins and whatnot.

sublime=noble; exalted; majestic...inspiring awe or admiration through grandeur, beauty etc....I exalt the awesome taste....meant exactly what I thought