Yes, I said “A Latte people” come on, I had to. Anyway, Slate has an article called “Bitter Brew” by Michael Idov and starts out with a passive-aggressive tone stating “The scary part is that you think you can do better.“
Although I feel for the proprietor, it appears that an expectation of instant profitability was the cause of the failure. 6 Months of business operations is pretty much standard fare. It should be assumed that will be a loss, but track your patronage and see if it is increasing. Budget your marketing, just existing may not be enough. Send out feelers to local businesses who might want your cup of joe in their makers, delivered hot each morning. In New York, you’ve got to be even more competitive than the local diner here in Frederick, Maryland because you have a lot more people with a much more aggressive business environment.
You should budget 2 years worth of existance to be sure of success in my estimation. If you can’t do that, you had better have a protected product offering where competition is held far away and your product is lusted after. See iPhone, iPod, and/or monopolistic business practices in general. Every small business succeeds or fails within that two year window. At least… that is how I feel about it. My business idled for 5 years like the coffee shop did. Waiting for word of mouth, limited marketing, me at the helm of every ship at sea. Always, a rocky shore.
Relocating did two things, it showed me how rocky the shores of reality are for my business as I tried to continue operations on the east coast and could not trump up business. It also showed me that new opportunities exist and although I see them, and am preparing for restarting operations… the timing is not right, and my budget isn’t solid enough. Neither was yours.
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