Why a coffee shop
When I moved to Vienna, I did not plan to open a coffee shop. I didn’t plan anything at all. At first I was learning the language. Then the time came when I had to decide what to do next. In order to train the algorithm of how it works – to organize, register my own business, I decided to choose some activity and reproduce all the steps in real conditions.
Gastronomy was chosen for the “simulator” quite spontaneously. In fact, this is the choice of 90% of emigrants. But in my case it was an unconscious choice and I will emphasize once again – I was not going to do it, I just wanted to go through the process of organizing and registering a business. For experience and understanding of the bureaucratic system.
So it happened that the idea of this came to our small company: me, my wife and two more of our friends. It was supposed to be a so-called “anti-coffee shop” with hourly billing. The format was unknown in Vienna at that time and we thought it could work well. That is why we all sat down to write a business plan on this topic for its further implementation.
Among other tasks, I had to learn everything about the coffee side of this business. I took it up quite thoroughly. I bought a book by David S. Schomer “Espresso Coffee. A guide for professionals”. I read it and realized that I had never drunk anything like it in my life. That is, it seemed to me that I was drinking delicious coffee, but judging by the description in the book, it was not so.
So I had to understand what it is and how you can make delicious coffee. I started going to all the coffee shops in Vienna, new, old – all of them, and tasting coffee there. Black coffee. Without sugar.
To say that I had to drink solid shit is an understatement. Unfortunately, in most coffee shops not only in Vienna, but all over the world, black coffee without sugar and milk is not possible to drink at all.
After almost six months of such self-mockery, I began to think that what is described in Schomer’s book is a fiction and fantasy and that such coffee does not exist at all. Suddenly I wandered into the CoffeePirates coffee shop, which was across the street from our German courses.
I still remember that fantastic feeling when I took the first sip and realized that it was exactly what I had read about in that book. It was that coffee! Finally!!!!
I was so excited that I went to Pirates almost every day, bought their coffee beans and made it at home. As espresso, as filter, as coffee in a Turk – in all possible ways.
It was the period of the first acquaintance that captured me completely and I fell in love with specialty coffee once and for all.
If you, my dear reader, do not know what specialty coffee is, I will explain very simply. If you compare mass consumption coffee and specialty coffee, it’s like comparing an incredibly beautiful and intelligent woman (perhaps wealthy and without children, heck, even with children) and an old 500-hryvnia prostitute from the outskirts of a big city sleeping area. Both of them are women. But the question is, with which of them you would like to spend the rest of your life, well, at least part of it. If you, my dear reader, are a woman, then replace “woman” with “man”, if you wish, of course.
At the same time, an “ordinary” woman – not a prostitute, and not a beauty from the cover of a magazine, can be more desirable than both of them, but more about that next time.
Well, I fell in love with her. And a thought struck me – if it took me several months in Vienna (!!!) to find such coffee, maybe this is it? Or it (if you read the comparison above).
Thus, after thinking, reasoning, some rough calculations (in fact, there was no thinking, everything was clear from the first sip of the same coffee), I decided that I would try, just like 4 other specialty coffee shops in Vienna, to surprise people with the world of extraordinary coffee.
By the way, nothing happened with that project. Everyone dropped out and went about their business, and only I remained. That experience was 100% useful for me and I fully used it in my further activities.
Oh, it’s already 8:25, I went for the most delicious coffee today ?
P.S. While writing the next issue, I remembered one more detail that incredibly influenced what happened to me next. Once I had a rather long and interesting conversation with Mr. Serhiy Reminny. He is a unique and extremely interesting person. He had a really huge influence not only on what I started to do, but also on how I did it and which way I went. So. The key phrase after which I realized that my coffee shop would become the best in the world was something like this: – “I don’t advise you to do coffee, you will not achieve anything, but only waste your time and money”. After that, I knew that everything would be the opposite. If not for her, everything would be completely different.
And more than that. This is the phrase I say when people ask me for advice on opening coffee shops.
Serhii gave me a lot of attitudes that helped me to achieve my goal. Actually, he often says it. But few people understand it and know how to use it. We will return to this conversation more than once.