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June/July 2006
COMMENTARY
The Ugly Truth Behind My Adorable Neighborhood Coffeeshop
BY CYN KITCHEN
My hometown of Galesburg
is a quaint little town near the center of Illinois with roots
dating back to a group of abolitionist settlers who came from New
York. Galesburg grew out of the prairie and left its mark in
American history as the birthplace of the poet Carl Sandburg and the
Ferris wheel. The town has endured decades of economic turmoil, but
remains a close-knit community of 35,000 with low crime, good
schools and beautiful architecture.
For years I dreamed of
owning a cozy roastery tucked away in historic downtown, near Knox,
a liberal arts college founded with the town. I would stock weird
sodas and delicate pastries. I imagined hosting art shows, poetry
slams and jazz performances.
Once I convinced my
husband Ted that my passion was real, that opening a neighborhood
coffeeshop was the ticket to our future, we began scouting for the
perfect location. It took two years, but patience paid off in the
form of an idyllic niche near the library. It had been a beauty
parlor for nearly four decades, but we could imagine the
possibilities beyond pink parasol wallpaper and green shampoo sinks.
 Our
kitchen became a mini-roastery where we spent untold hours learning
about the origins of beans. We learned what temperature to roast
each to best emphasize its individual profile and strongest
characteristics. We researched coffee brokers throughout the nation
and drove 600 miles to St. Paul to place our first half-ton order.
For more than a year, we spent every spare moment renovating the
store space. By the time we finished, we’d taken out a second
mortgage on the house, and I’d quit my secure job as a magazine
editor. Ah, the exhilaration of risk!
We opened for business
as the crisp winds of fall whipped through town. I started each day
at 4:30 a.m. We knew it was ambitious to stay open every night until
10 o’clock, but that’s what college kids wanted. Most nights I
closed. Our first month in business, I worked over 500 hours.
During the day, I
cleaned, stocked, ordered inventory, squeezed in bookkeeping, waited
on customers and roasted coffee. It was difficult to keep up, so I
hired a couple of college kids, but I still couldn’t leave without
worrying. My children’s schoolwork began to slip, so we did homework
between customers. I continued this pace six days a week for several
months while Ted worked full time elsewhere to pay the bills. We
understood sacrifice. We understood commitment.
Our only competition was
a well-established coffeeshop several blocks away. With years of
experience in a corporate setting, the owners possessed a shrewd
business sense. My husband and I were among many, however, who
thought their overpriced products were substandard in quality. Sure,
they knew how to package and market, but their coffee tasted burnt.
Their roasting philosophy emulated Starbucks, which has done an
excellent job convincing the public that burned coffee is best. We
saw through the tactics of mega-business. They’re marketing a myth.
They sell consumers the idea that dark is best because they know
coffee roasted to a lower temperature doesn’t hold its flavor as
long, can’t sit on the shelf as long and will ultimately generate
more waste. And what you’ve heard about dark coffee packing more
caffeine? Lies. All lies.
We came at our mission
with less business savvy than aesthetic flare, setting out to
provide customers with what they didn‘t know they wanted. Over and
over again, customers told us our product was excellent. We
undersold the competition. We offered free Wi-Fi for people who
wanted to hang out while our competitor shooed away customers who
sat too long.
Several months into the
endeavor, our accountant told us that the pastries we bought from a
local bakery were killing us. Customers loved that they were made
with all natural ingredients, but the shelf life of a pastry was two
days at best. I would pay $1.99 for a Danish that I could sell for
$2.29. If I didn’t sell everything I ordered each day, I lost money.
Sure, I could buy cheaper pastries, but then my customers would
notice I was selling them a marginal product. I decided that as long
as I broke even, I could keep selling them and rely solely on
profits from beverage and coffee sales. My accountant called the
idea ludicrous and insisted I mark my pastries up 50 percent, but I
knew no one would buy them when they could walk down the street to
the bakery where they were made.
Around the holidays the
college students went away for six weeks. Without them, business
came to a standstill. I thought it would be our busiest time when,
in fact, it nearly sunk us. In January, when the students returned,
business recovered to an extent, but the bitter winds of winter
discouraged pedestrian traffic, which we relied on, as there was
little parking space near our front door, and we had no drive-thru,
like our competitors.
As I grew more
physically exhausted, I grew less patient. I put up with picky old
women and crotchety old men. I was abused by hoity-toity academics
from places like Bakersfield and Wichita who spoke in throaty
accents as if they’d come from the bowels of Europe. I’d tolerated
noisy teenagers, unruly toddlers and tightwad college students. I
became withdrawn, suspicious, anxiety-ridden. My children grew
frightened of me. My husband wore a look of chronic pain.
The moment I felt I
could take a breather, the mailman would drop off a stack of bills
with staggering totals that we added to a growing pile. We kept
thinking business would turn a corner, and we prayed we could hang
until it did.
Then one day in
February, a business acquaintance, who owned a bar-and-grill and
antique shop across the street, stopped by. He decided he was going
to convert some of his building space into a roastery, right across
the street. He’d been approved a large credit line at the bank and
was eager to get started. He told me he realized coffee was big
business, and he wanted a piece of the action. He’d never had a cup
of coffee in his life; he was in it for the money. He invited me to
come aboard, he’d be happy to have me. "I know what this means for
you," he said, "but that’s the way business works."
In Galesburg, there are
no restrictions on who can open a business. There are no ordinances
to protect fledging start-ups. For instance, it would have helped if
the city limited how many coffeeshops could open within a certain
length of time and within specific proximity to one another.
Protection of that nature might have given us time to get our
bearings.
We had gut-wrenching
flashes of the financial struggle that lay ahead. With competition
so close and the college students leaving for three months in the
summer, we lived in fear. Late one night as we lay in bed staring at
the ceiling, we realized our best option was to close the doors. We
were exhausted, our marriage was suffering and so were our children.
We’d worked so hard and dreamed so big that letting it go felt like
a death.
It didn’t matter that we
had the best coffee in town. It didn’t matter that we had a great
location and that our sense of style appealed to a broad audience.
It didn’t matter that we were friendly, approachable, accommodating
and affordable. In the end it came down to business savvy, the thing
we knew we lacked most in the beginning but fancied didn’t matter as
much as our great product.
 We
were able to sell most of our equipment and inventory to the same
bakery that supplied our pastries. They reopened under a new name. I
hear business is so-so. Two other coffeeshops have popped up since.
Everyone wants to get on the bandwagon, and I wonder if they’ve
figured out what we could not, or if they too are ragged with worry
and fatigue.
For sanity’s sake, we
hang onto the positives — that we had a dream and went after it. We
console ourselves with platitudes: "Nothing ventured, nothing
gained." "No guts, no glory." And we kick around Samuel Beckett’s
quote, "Try again. Fail again. Fail better." I can’t imagine trying
again, but I understand what he means. And even if it didn’t turned
out like we’d hoped, we learned something from it. That sometimes
life puts us through experiences disguised as exercises in futility
to impart a deeper lesson. Once I figure out what that lesson was,
I’ll let you know.
Cyn Kitchen’s work has appeared in Salon,
Carve, Literary Mama and sfwp.org. She and her husband haven't
purchased coffee from a retailer since closing their shop. They set
up their big roaster at home and fire it up often, just for the
aroma. Cyn philosophizes that at least the experience gave her
something to write about.
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