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This reminds me of a similar article I once read: "I opened a charming neighborhood coffee shop. Then it destroyed my life." https://slate.com/human-interest/2

by drewrv 6y ago

This reminds me of a similar article I once read: "I opened a charming neighborhood coffee shop. Then it destroyed my life." https://slate.com/human-interest/2005/12/my-coffeehouse-nightmare.html https://slate.com/human-interest/2005/12/my-coffeehouse-nigh...

duxup 6y ago
Those stories always get me. Anyone who has worked in food service in any way knows that it's brutal. Liking a thing, coffee, coffee shops, or anything ... very much does not mean you'd like making it / running something making that thing. Personally I like video games ... I code web boring apps... for reasons.
- RoyTyrell 6y ago
  Those stories seem to be about half of the restaurants on Gordon Ramsey's show. I know there's a lot of embellishment and added drama on the American version, but the crux of half the restaurants are "we thought it would be a good investment" or "we always dreamed of owning a restaurant" and almost none of them have experience.
  - avery42 6y ago
    Also worth noting that most of the restaurants on the show closed [0]: > More than 60% of restaurants featured on the show "Kitchen Nightmares" are now closed, according to Grub Street New York, which did the math. Approximately 30% of those kitchens closed within one year of their episode's air date. [0] https://www.businessinsider.com/many-restaurants-on-kitchen-nightmares-have-closed-2014-6 https://www.businessinsider.com/many-restaurants-on-kitchen-...
    - duxup 6y ago
      Yeah if the fundamentals as far as experience and such are bad to start .... you've got little chance to survive in the world of food service where the difference between success / fail is already razor thin.
- Steltek 6y ago
  I've heard the same about craft brewing. Personal microbrewing is fun: you can use whatever small scale apparatus you've hacked up and recipes are whatever whimsy strikes you. Actually trying to scale up and sell to people means legit industrial tools, annoying consistency and reproducibility, and spending 90%+ of your day cleaning everything like a maniac.
- Kwantuum 6y ago
  Same. Video game development is some of the hardest, most thankless, woefully unstable software job there is. It's not worth it.
- stef25 6y ago
  > I code web boring apps. Form validation though, after 20 years ... urgh
- logosmonkey 6y ago
  Yup, I love tabletop gaming so I wrote a tabletop game. It ruined tabletop for me for a good couple of years.
- HeyLaughingBoy 6y ago
  The grass is always greener on the other side. And sometimes you get to see both sides and you can tell that they're both brown and dry! I live in a big house out in the country on top of a hill. Pretty much everyone who walks in the front door for the first time and looks out the living room window exclaims about the view. What they don't see that we're so exposed that the wind can come howling out of the North so loudly that you can't sleep. My wife is a horse trainer. People, women mostly, are envious of the lifestyle: being out in Nature, working with horses in the fresh air. No one asks about her broken bones and the titanium pins holding her ankles and wrists together. Doesn't occur to them that whether it's 100F and humid as hell or -25F and the wind's been screaming nonstop for days that you still have to trudge out there and feed and water them. It used to bug me. Now I barely notice. I just smile and say, "yeah, we like living out here."
Someone 6y ago
Similar: “What happened when I bought a hotel by mistake” https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/i-bought-a-hotel-by-mistake/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/i-bought-a-hotel-by-m... Take away quote: “But the high summer honeymoon soon give way to an autumnal realization that the list of skills required to really make the business work was topped by secretarial and bookkeeping efficiency, home improvement handiness and a nose for where to source the cheapest toilet paper.“
stef25 6y ago
Hmm, I've spent the past few weeks considering starting a coffee truck thing. Better bookmark this.
- azernik 6y ago
  I think that would be less bad than trying to start a normal cafe. Part of the business case for food trucks is that the capital expenses are so much lower than buying and configuring a fixed space - the trucks themselves are more or less mass-produced, and servicing/cleaning can be taken care of by an specialist contractor. Now wouldn't be the time to do it, though, most of the coffee business is commuters and office workers on break, which... yeah. (I write operations software for food-service businesses, so I'm fairly familiar with the market dynamics.)
  - stef25 6y ago
    Yeah, it seems like the people in that article didn't even do the most basic napkin calculations. My estimate is: you could start a towed coffee trailer for 10-12K, about 8K of that on the trailer, the rest on some basic equipment and decoration. Rent the espresso machine & grinder for 150 / month (including maintenance & repair) instead of buying for 8K. Food & drinks wholesale: croissants are 0.2, donuts 0.5, fancy Italian water 0.6 and they sell for at least 3x as much As the article says, even the most deluxe coffee is cheap. I calculated a cost of 1.09EUR for a latte, including 10g of coffee, 300ml of fair trade milk, a bio degradable cup + lid + sleeve and takes 3 min to prepare. The hard part is learning to operate a professional espresso machine and dealing with the local laws about food trucks. But yeah, best not during a pandemic.
    - azernik 6y ago
      I would argue that you're underestimating labor costs - your baristas still need to be paid even in between customers, when there's no latte-making to do. At my work, labor costing is something we don't even try to model, because it's much more complicated than food costing. Food cost at 30-35% of sale price, as it sounds like your latte cost indicates, is pretty much in the sweet spot for food service; it's also nice in that most of the ingredients for coffee keep well enough to minimize food waste. Pastries are more of a challenge to do efficiently.
msluyter 6y ago
I had the same thought -- I wonder if there's a name for this genre?
anarbadalov 6y ago
I love the Bourdain quote at the end: “The most dangerous species of owner … is the one who gets into the business for love.” Interesting piece, too, and not at all surprising. Even before Covid, i always questioned how any independent coffee shop could survive.

by drewrv 6y ago

duxup 6y ago

Those stories always get me. Anyone who has worked in food service in any way knows that it's brutal. Liking a thing, coffee, coffee shops, or anything ... very much does not mean you'd like making it / running something making that thing. Personally I like video games ... I code web boring apps... for reasons.

RoyTyrell 6y ago
Those stories seem to be about half of the restaurants on Gordon Ramsey's show. I know there's a lot of embellishment and added drama on the American version, but the crux of half the restaurants are "we thought it would be a good investment" or "we always dreamed of owning a restaurant" and almost none of them have experience.
- avery42 6y ago
  Also worth noting that most of the restaurants on the show closed [0]: > More than 60% of restaurants featured on the show "Kitchen Nightmares" are now closed, according to Grub Street New York, which did the math. Approximately 30% of those kitchens closed within one year of their episode's air date. [0] https://www.businessinsider.com/many-restaurants-on-kitchen-nightmares-have-closed-2014-6 https://www.businessinsider.com/many-restaurants-on-kitchen-...
  - duxup 6y ago
    Yeah if the fundamentals as far as experience and such are bad to start .... you've got little chance to survive in the world of food service where the difference between success / fail is already razor thin.
Steltek 6y ago
I've heard the same about craft brewing. Personal microbrewing is fun: you can use whatever small scale apparatus you've hacked up and recipes are whatever whimsy strikes you. Actually trying to scale up and sell to people means legit industrial tools, annoying consistency and reproducibility, and spending 90%+ of your day cleaning everything like a maniac.
Kwantuum 6y ago
Same. Video game development is some of the hardest, most thankless, woefully unstable software job there is. It's not worth it.
stef25 6y ago
> I code web boring apps. Form validation though, after 20 years ... urgh
logosmonkey 6y ago
Yup, I love tabletop gaming so I wrote a tabletop game. It ruined tabletop for me for a good couple of years.
HeyLaughingBoy 6y ago
The grass is always greener on the other side. And sometimes you get to see both sides and you can tell that they're both brown and dry! I live in a big house out in the country on top of a hill. Pretty much everyone who walks in the front door for the first time and looks out the living room window exclaims about the view. What they don't see that we're so exposed that the wind can come howling out of the North so loudly that you can't sleep. My wife is a horse trainer. People, women mostly, are envious of the lifestyle: being out in Nature, working with horses in the fresh air. No one asks about her broken bones and the titanium pins holding her ankles and wrists together. Doesn't occur to them that whether it's 100F and humid as hell or -25F and the wind's been screaming nonstop for days that you still have to trudge out there and feed and water them. It used to bug me. Now I barely notice. I just smile and say, "yeah, we like living out here."

Someone 6y ago

Similar: “What happened when I bought a hotel by mistake” https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/i-bought-a-hotel-by-mistake/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/i-bought-a-hotel-by-m... Take away quote: “But the high summer honeymoon soon give way to an autumnal realization that the list of skills required to really make the business work was topped by secretarial and bookkeeping efficiency, home improvement handiness and a nose for where to source the cheapest toilet paper.“

stef25 6y ago

Hmm, I've spent the past few weeks considering starting a coffee truck thing. Better bookmark this.

azernik 6y ago
I think that would be less bad than trying to start a normal cafe. Part of the business case for food trucks is that the capital expenses are so much lower than buying and configuring a fixed space - the trucks themselves are more or less mass-produced, and servicing/cleaning can be taken care of by an specialist contractor. Now wouldn't be the time to do it, though, most of the coffee business is commuters and office workers on break, which... yeah. (I write operations software for food-service businesses, so I'm fairly familiar with the market dynamics.)
- stef25 6y ago
  Yeah, it seems like the people in that article didn't even do the most basic napkin calculations. My estimate is: you could start a towed coffee trailer for 10-12K, about 8K of that on the trailer, the rest on some basic equipment and decoration. Rent the espresso machine & grinder for 150 / month (including maintenance & repair) instead of buying for 8K. Food & drinks wholesale: croissants are 0.2, donuts 0.5, fancy Italian water 0.6 and they sell for at least 3x as much As the article says, even the most deluxe coffee is cheap. I calculated a cost of 1.09EUR for a latte, including 10g of coffee, 300ml of fair trade milk, a bio degradable cup + lid + sleeve and takes 3 min to prepare. The hard part is learning to operate a professional espresso machine and dealing with the local laws about food trucks. But yeah, best not during a pandemic.
  - azernik 6y ago
    I would argue that you're underestimating labor costs - your baristas still need to be paid even in between customers, when there's no latte-making to do. At my work, labor costing is something we don't even try to model, because it's much more complicated than food costing. Food cost at 30-35% of sale price, as it sounds like your latte cost indicates, is pretty much in the sweet spot for food service; it's also nice in that most of the ingredients for coffee keep well enough to minimize food waste. Pastries are more of a challenge to do efficiently.

msluyter 6y ago

I had the same thought -- I wonder if there's a name for this genre?

anarbadalov 6y ago

I love the Bourdain quote at the end: “The most dangerous species of owner … is the one who gets into the business for love.” Interesting piece, too, and not at all surprising. Even before Covid, i always questioned how any independent coffee shop could survive.