I never once suspected I would own a coffee shop or pursue the sort of business model fraught with the most peril. But, looking back, it doesn't seem so out of place.

There was no major at college in 'Being a Pirate' but, ever since college, travel has been a large part of my world. Before getting married I managed to circumnavigate the globe a couple of times and made observations about the world that will stay with me forever, and a few friends that I hope will last just as long. There was even a 'trip to origin' in Indonesia, though it was long before I ever cared about coffee. After marriage things slowed down a little and after kids, well, they stopped. The experiences had cultivated a desire that could no longer be accommodated and there were days I felt pretty hard up for the road. But responsible heads of household can't just leave in search of a rain forest or hike the side of a desert mountain on a whim (unless they want to lug the entire family along, which wasn't for me). And though I was certainly happy I was always looking for something that would reconnect me to the rest of the world. Then, one day over a cup of coffee, my wife said ...

"Let's start a coffee shop!" Admittedly, this was after she had said she wanted to be a Web designer, fashion designer, chef, photographer and lottery winner, but this idea stuck. Not that I had any idea really of getting to travel the world in search of exquisite, rare coffee for my customers (even now I don't think there will be much opportunity for that sort of thing) but it was a step back into the world at large, putting whatever I had learned into some form of practical use. That was as far as it went until long after the shop was up and running ...

Before we had worked up any grand scheme of helping the world through coffee (i.e.: before we had a business model) I decided to take an "Accounting for Dummies" class at the local technical college. We had originally thought of either a quaint coffee shop where we could spend our days in a quiet and not too busy environment - or the other extreme, with a drive-thru and lots of customers. Then someone in my class suggested I call a number he found in the newspaper. It was for a coffee shop that fit neither of our expectations, being located inside Haywood Mall, at one of the entrances to an anchor store, Belk. It had been run into the ground by the previous owner, who was on the verge of getting kicked out. She apparently wanted to be the kind of manager that checks up on the shop by phone and when that didn't work out she let it fall apart under employees that cared nothing about coffee or the coffee shop. But I called anyway, figuring it couldn't hurt to see what she was offering and soon we were in discussions. Not surprisingly, the price was low and though there were several people telling me not to take the shop we settled on a price and by the end of December 2004 we were ready to move in. Well, we thought we were. Opening day was the last Saturday before Christmas - the second busiest shopping day of the year - and we were totally unprepared. We had run out of brewing filters by 1:30, had no utensils, couldn't work the register, made terrible drinks. You name it, we screwed it up. It was a terrible first day and if anyone had offered me a quarter for the shop that night I would have given it to them. But no one did and I was forced to persevere through those first, grueling months of no sales and no help in improving the quality of our coffee (the owner disappeared the day I paid her and has not stopped by a single time since).

Now, almost two years later, where are we and where are we headed? We are still a work in progress, that's for sure. Especially in areas like marketing and branding and business strategy, areas I've never had much exposure to, we'll see a lot of struggling in the next year or so. But on the coffee front, that is finally easy. We are headed towards what I now envision a coffee shop should be, whether it is a drive-thru, office building shop or coffee bar located at the entrance of department store: The absolute best coffee in the Upstate - gustatorily (is that a word?) and ethically. But you can read more about that on our Crema page.