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Permalink Reply by Mike Sabol on June 3, 2010 at 10:52pm

Regular customers who are proud to recomend you to their friends, low turnover with employees who want their friends to work there too, and are making a profit.

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Permalink Reply by Marshall Fuss on June 4, 2010 at 1:33pm

You can meet your payroll, pay your bills, feed your family, not stay awake half the night staring at the ceiling in fear -- and feel proud of your shop.

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Permalink Reply by The Coffee Bus on June 4, 2010 at 6:15pm

Ah ha! And you make it sound so simple!

Marshall Fuss said:

You can meet your payroll, pay your bills, feed your family, not stay awake half the night staring at the ceiling in fear -- and feel proud of your shop.

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Permalink Reply by Bryan Wray on June 4, 2010 at 9:26pm

Making a profit without abandoning your morals or core. Happy employees, happy customers and happy coffee. It's going to be different for everyone. I'll bet Howard Schultz doesn't feel like a failure, but if I walked that far away from my idea of what coffee should be I would feel like dirt. If he saw monthly grosses like the ones we have he would probably feel like dirt, but I think we kick ass (occasionally taking names as well). This is like asking what the best coffee is... opinions are going to vary if you want any specifics at all, and no one is going to be wrong, and no one is going to be right.

-bry

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Permalink Reply by Mike McGinness on June 5, 2010 at 12:03am

Customers are constantly asking "how's business", and as a struggling owner it can be annoying, not that they really want a truthful answer or that it's any of their business. But it's really one of those "how you doing" type of questions, more a greeting than a real question. My pat answer for many many months in today's ongoing recession is "the doors are still open".

Many are not. We just last Friday closed buying a shop for a song, now our third coffeehouse, that was simply going to close it's doors. Grossed $325k last year down from $450k three years ago when they bought it and lost thousands the past year and are thousands behind in vendor payments because of inexperienced mismanagement. You don't keep your doors open with cost of goods 46% and payroll 40% to name just two glaring reasons for their failure!

So one measure of success is your doors are still open.
Another is your doors are still open 5 years later.
Another is your doors are still open 10 years later. Statistically only 5% of new business are still open after 10 years!

And I whole heartedly agree, the doors are still open and without compromising your core values.

But in reality for me success isn't a destination, it's a journey. Reach it and stagnate.

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