What lesson does a cafe owner take from his unsuccessful cafe business? 50

It takes a lot of courage revisiting and reflecting on a place of disappointment. As someone who wants to run a cafe, this content is really appreciated.

''I can tell from looking at a coffee shop (or photos of it) if their coffee is good'' ... so I made my place look quite terrible because I couldn't afford better. Great plan.

That didnt look like a coffee shop, it looked like a basement set up

You started a coffee shop business in a village and opened at 8am. Did you do any research regarding demand? Did you produce a business plan? Did you have any business training prior to starting? A good business plan forces you to look at your expected income and expenditure realistically. Most businesses make a loss in the first year, break even in the second year and only reach profit in the third year. 80% of small businesses fail in the first year (in the UK). Sometimes a good business plan will show you that this business is not viable and save you from future debt, bankruptcy and regret. Too many people start businesses based on personal feelings and not facts.

I’m not sure if it would have made a difference, but the local cafe where I live opens at 5:30 AM. I believe you said yours opened at 8 AM. A lot of people are already at work or on their way to work by then.

I like how you are a coffee autist who tried to sell coffee to other coffee autists in a village of 100 houses which probably had 1 other coffee autist living there at most. I am fascinated by your courage and trust in this business idea. I think in a hip area of a city it would have worked out

I get it that you always want to serve 100% quality all the time. Like dialing in your recipe 3x a day due to temp changes and humidity. But always remember that sustainability is the key to success business. I think 90-95% is good enough for a sustainable business

Unfortunately, it seems like the cafe was too much about coffee and not enough about hospitality, hence no culture/third space element to offer the community. That said, most people leaving rude comments have never tried to launch anything themselves. There has to be another path for you with your marketing experience and expertise in coffee.

I know a country town like yours. There's a bog ordinary "cafe" (which is also a chippy/burger joint) which does more trade than any other food business in town.

At the end of the day, people want an okay coffee, for an okay price, in a friendly place. They don't give a [censored] if it's single origin and artisan roasted. They don't want or need "classes". They want a warm building, efficient service, and a decent price.

You basically pitched a city concept (badly), to an entirely different crowd. I also think the brother in law roaster made it a vanity project.

The comments are very insightful. Anyone considering opening a coffee shop should read the content and then read it again while reading the comments.

This is a brutal read. I totally understand why your experience was difficult to talk about, but if it's any consolation, your cautionary tale was a fascinating read. I'm sure it's no consolation at all.

the thing is though, the general public are not coffee snobs, they just want a half decent coffee and a nice place to sit and chat. They overcomplicated a very simple concept and it didn't work out.

I've owned and operated high street retail cafes, food service and catering businesses for close on 40 years. It's a brutal business that chews up and spits out even experienced operators, so don't be too disheartened about your first venture not working. In that village, with such a low population, not even the most experienced operator in the world could have made it work. No matter the countless other issues. Thanks for sharing a well made and informative content. It's very brave to show your mistakes for all to see.

i choose the cafe because of it looks most of the time, I'm not a coffee snob and I just want to have a nice place to take my friends/girlfriend with me. Your cafe from photos looked soulless, kinda like a corporate meeting room

I think the most underestimated aspect of business is pure presentation or design. The smallest detail matters, including perhaps paying the additional $0.10 per paper cup to get modern cups versus unsightly patterned cups. Great products are great, but humans naturally devalue even a functional product if it’s not accompanied by good aesthetics.

That looks like the saddest coffee shop...

I mean, did you even read a book about how Starbucks became successful before you started? People aren't paying for the coffee, they're paying to lease a table and wifi for 30 minutes. And if they don't sit around and use your space, that's just a freebie. "We don't have money for a fancy space," there's your problem. The space matters more than the coffee.

There are lots of people that will happily tell you about getting rich quick schemes but there's hardly any that tell the real story that business is hard and expensive and needs a whole lot of luck.
Replace coffee with magic tricks, juggling equipment and kites and my experience is exactly the same as yours.
I'm glad I found this content. Tremendous content. Best of luck with your future endeavours.

thx for sharing. sounds like a vanity project more than a business. If "the town" wanted a coffee shop, then maybe the townhall could have given you a nice space where you could have at least 2 tables and 4 seats. The space you operated in looked terrible. There's no mention of foot traffic analysis. Starbucks doesn't open locations randomly. I like the coffee tasting classes idea a lot, but i'm not even sure how you could fit the people in that space, must have been very awkward. And you folded almost immediately after opening up. And if you needed a space heater to keep your hands warm, i suspect the space was welcoming like a strain station platform.
I'm sorry it failed, but that feels pretty unsurprising. I assume you didnt lose too much though, because you guys were the employees, the gear can be resold, the rent was cheap, and you had almost zero fitout.

They say success has a hundred mothers and fathers, whereas failure is always an orphan. So many people bragging about how great they are, very few did what you did.

Thanks for sticking your neck out to share your experience.

The reason why it failed is the interior design. It looks like a white wall apartment.

You are courageous to talk about your experience. I still can't talk about mine and it was 7 years ago. Wishing you all the best.

I don't get people starting a coffee or a restaurant with a place for basically 4 people in it. How high would the prices have to be for such a small place to pay for the salaries, equipment and everything else? I do realise it seems to be a safer route, with smaller rent, but it's actually more risky in the long run and if you can't afford a bigger place it's probably best to not do this at all. It's not an easy business even if you have a lot of money.

Just my opinion and I am in no way a coffee expert but in my humble experience as a customer - the best coffee shops are the ones that are like home where you can sit down and spend a while there fannying about. The bauhaus/post-modern/IKEA/minimalist design just doesn't work. I'd rather go into a coffee place with books, a wonky table, an old comfy couch and a nice welcoming vibe. A lot of coffee shops focus on the wrong thing - the coffee. It's like a pub, people don't actually like the taste of beer all that much they just like to go there for the atmosphere and experience. Just look at the speciality craft pubs, people don't really like them all that much. They lack character

I really appreciate the hard truths about running a business. I can't speak about what I've heard about entrepreneur culture in the U.K. but I remember a Japanese-American investor telling me about the difference in attitudes between running a business in both countries. In Japan, business culture is that you have to succeed at first try which creates a rise or fail mentality. In the US, investors actively seek people who have failed a previous business because they learn from their mistakes. It was one of those moments where I'm glad to have an American mentality of never giving up and learning from mistakes.

All I can only hear in this content is "it is because of this, it is because of that". I don't see any responsibility here. I saw a good comment. Who would come and buy coffee at 8 when your butts need to be at work at 8. You can open up at 6. Sell some bagel along with a strong but not sure tasting brew to people rushing to work. It is morning. I want something strong. Not excite my delicate tastebuds. In the afternoon, when we have their lunches or in the evening when people just want to relax, then maybe you can switch to a fancier roast.

I still can't talk about my failed coffeehouse/bakery/cafe. I put my whole heart, time, and savings/retirement into it - just heartbreaking. Thanks for sharing your journey...

Mate good job. As someone who had a small business that closed it hurt a bit to hear you had to get a "real" job afterwards — be proud of yourself, you had a real job in your venture!

This is just a tragedy. Build it and they will come. That is the vibe. Its painful, honestly. You mention early in the content that you attempted this in Hilton, Cambridgeshire. The population is approximately 1100 people. And from what you've shown us you had a nearly unmarked, side room in a residential area. With a small budget you could have made a mobile set up, that you would have actually owned. Instead you rented the side room that required your time and money to renovate. Its agonising. With a mobile set up, literally a converted ice cream van, you could have gone to hipster beauty spots around Cambridgeshire and been selling to urbane millennial walkers and gen-Z ramblers who were venturing out of the city. If that had worked it could have been a beach-head for the operation you actually wanted in the longer term. Christ, this is just murder to see.

People don't want good coffee; they just want not bad coffee. Most people are used to drinking Keurig; simple as. If you are simply as good as that, you will be known as the place with delicious coffee.

Fancy coffee is good, but sometimes people misunderstand that a lot of times, average coffee is almost better because it is safe and comforting for most people. The day might suck, you're a thousand miles away from home, nothings going and then you get a cup of coffee that tastes just like the one you drink everyday at home. It's like a warm blanket, a little shelter from the storm.

Hey Charlie, thanks for the content; it was really interesting to hear your reflections on your experience. I'm one of the Hilton residents (I came to one of your cupping sessions, which was brilliant) and I was disappointed when you moved on & then the shop subsequently closed. I really wish it had worked out better for both the shop and you personally! I am grateful, though, because drinking your espresso & learning more about coffee meant that when the shop did shut, I couldn't go back to drinking Nespresso at home & ended up taking the plunge and buying my first espresso machine. Still learning, but every now and then I pull a shot that I'm really pleased with. Will be awaiting the ledger!

No offense but I think you needed a lot more business training. A lot of assumptions were made on your part. You seemed to focus a lot on the product, but not enough on the customer. No customer, no product. People saying they “want a coffee shop” is very vague. That might have meant that they wanted a place to sit down. Did you offer anything else besides coffee? Pastries? What were the ages of the villagers? What was the minimum amount of customers needed to break even? What time do they go to work? The ambiance of your coffee shop also did not give maximum cosiness. There were a lot of things you could have done to up the coziness and high quality feel on the cheap.

10/10 for being brave enough for explaining the issues of how this business failed. Budding entrepreneurs can learn a lot more from what went wrong stories, than success stories.

This is my cautionary tale:

I had a bakery/ coffee shop/ cafe in Dorset that I bought as a going concern, increased turnover to about £220k pa, then sold it 3 years later. The coffee machine cost £3000, the filter cost about £100 and needed replacing every 6 months. Rent was about £32000 pa (prime spot on a square/ High Street position), rates £10500, 2 full time, 5 part-time staff. But it is exhausting, opening 6/7 days a week, constant staff issues, maintenance costs on ovens, display chillers, air-con, dishwasher machine etc., staff stealing from the tills, managers forgetting to lock up properly or leaving ovens on, dealing with the 'sharks' that prey on new and start-up businesses (like firms that claim to reduce your business rates). Also, commercial leases have clauses that continue the liability for rent payments, even if you close the business or sell it on to somebody else who then stops paying the rent (YOU ARE STILL LIABLE FOR THE RENT IN MOST LEASES).

My first question is... where was your business plan? It sounds like there really wasn't one. It was all based on wishful thinking. Ok... off to finish reading it.

Bro, risk is hard but it's the right move. I'm glad you opened this shop and learned a lot. Now you have some good wisdom to pass along! Thanks for making this content!

Thanks for being so candid. Failure can be so hard to talk about but helpful to learn from. Condolences on the loss of your dad - I’m sure he would be proud of you for giving it a go and being strong enough to own up to failure and learn from it. Keep at it! Success is often the product of many failures. Wishing you all the best! ❤

The people I respect the most are not those who have made it ‘big’ but are those individuals who share their knowledge about the journey so that others can be inspired to do something good and wonderful too. Kudos to you for sharing your journey, it’s a pity it didn’t work out but I have no doubt you have the insight to learn and become a richer person for it. That’s the single most important aspect of life. Best of luck in your new adventure, I have signed up.

The first interior shot solidified why you failed. Looks like crap on the inside, would never step foot

Don't kick yourself too hard Charlie - very few businesses kick on from foundation. All of the things you've described I went through with furniture. And still learning. Keep your chin up and as a new subscriber I'll be paying attention to your next chapters!

As a passionate project manager by trade, this is a brutal retrospective to read. The comments have covered it already, but a cozy coffee shop is more about the shop and less about the coffee. I wonder how much you’ve talked to the community about what they want and why they didn’t come? I’d highly encourage you to connect with the audience for your journal as well. It’s so easy to assume we know what people want, but the people often tell a very different story.

Also, by early in the morning I’ve already been working for hours! That was way too late to just be opening.

You’ve had a huge impact on me during my coffee journey. Happy to have you back, and showing that infamous British resilience.

You focused on the art of making coffee. Starbucks focused on the vibes of a coffee shop. Restoring 2nd hand patio furniture and focusing on the garden might have been a cost-effective move. Still, most people never even tried to get their dream. Good luck

Alas reading for 5 mins made my heart sink. Starting on a shoestring is impossible. Location is paramount and cheap rent tells you all you need to know about footfall. A case of perfect is the enemy of good is all too true.90percent of people can't tell good coffe from Nescaf. It was not a caff it was a kiosk

The 1st picture looks like a storage unit for old painting equipment I didn't even realize that that was your actual shop. You even said yourself that just looking at pictures could tell you the quality of the coffee and the place. And opening early in the morning? Most coffee shops here in America open very early BECAUSE PEOPLE HAVE TO BE AT WORK EARLY. This guy reminds me of someone who has a " Family Recipe for spaghetti sauce " And decides to open a restaurant when they never even worked in one. Painful the ignorance.

I'm not sure what to make of this content.
I had sympathy but then quickly it turned to an incredulous rage as I kept reading.
I feel bad for your sister.
No doubt a lifetime of her brother's ideas and more to come.
God bless her.

As someone living in a major coffee city, I can tell you that aesthetically your space was really struggling. I know you put a lot of work into the revamp, but the end result still looked cold, sad, uninviting and a bit like a broom closet with an espresso machine in it. Putting effort into the vibe of a public space is just a big a part of fostering community as is the quality of the product itself—even if they’re just in there for a few minutes each day they still remember how they felt while they were there.

quite weird that the background in this content is way better than your coffee shop pictures

I've always wondered about the economics of cafes. The amount of coffee you have to make, just for rent and energy, before staff wages and input costs, is so much I can't wrap my head around it.

Thank you for sharing the details.

Wishing you all the best for you next endeavour.

Failing at your first attempt is not unusual. People do not realize that a failure will benefit you much more than a success. Failure evokes humility and self examination, "what did I do wrong" The experience leaves you with a sharper eye. Today, you can see what this guy is doing wrong or what innovation this other guy has hit upon. You have developed knowledge about coffee that could applied to another medium. I had a mentor who pulled me out to view the shop from across the street. He said, "what wrong with the appearance of the shop or what's right and how can we make it more interesting. Be self critical and don't be afraid to change or be flexible.