Still going through some lease negotiations.
In the meantime I thought I'd post some insider dealings when starting up a new store.

There's a lot of things to take into consideration when creating a new coffee establishment. Probably the most haunting thing is if the store concept will work. Most of the statistical data generalizes coffeeshops under the restaurant umbrella. When that data gets refined to just coffee, you still have it describing multiple models.

What helped me a lot was reading actual stories of success and failures to make more sense of the numbers.

Here are some stories that I can relate to. Learning from other peoples mistakes might help the rest of the coffee community.

Coffeehouse nightmare

coffee owner stories

Coffee Industry people

Officially passed! 22 exams and a lot of coffee tasting. I will used what I learned to make even better coffee in the new store.

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There's no store yet, not even a location picked out, but I've been working very hard every day.

So while there's no official news I figured I'd post any progress for the curious and it might be helpful for anyone who wanted to open up their own store one day. Ideally looking for a place on the Westside that's about 1,000sqft and under 3.00sqft with plumbing and parking spaces. Maybe something that used to be a coffeeshop, frozen yogurt or boba tea business. It could cost up to $90,000 and a year of construction and inspections before a store is ready. Other rules like available parking must be considered. For a retail shop that does "incidental food service" there must be 1 parking spots for every 200sqft. Also, only 1/3 of the store footage and 20 seats max are allowed for customer section. Makes a lot of sense to find an old business and renovate than to start up new.

Even way before Cafe Balcony's, I've worked with a business broker and gone through many lists and honed down on some potential locations.
The first one was on Ocean Park blvd and 31st street. Nice area, across from the business park and easy to measure potential customer flow by nearby coffee related businesses, which makes it easier to figure out a breakeven point. But during the 3rd round of lease negotiations, the building owners superseded the brokers and found their own tenant.
Found another location on Westwood blvd, that used to be a Quiznos, but there was already a Starbucks in the stripmall and they had a non-compete clause in their lease contract.
Same deal with a closed Red Mango shop on Venice, where the Coffeebean had non-compete in the lease.
Then there was a coffeeshop/boba in the Sawtelle Place, that later became a failed Tofu restaurant. It's available but next door is Beard Papa who renewed their lease with a non-compete clause, so even though they do creampuffs and they existed with a coffeeshop before, they worked it in their lease not to allow coffee businesses there anymore.

Let's see what else... some locations popped up but were too close to other indie coffeeshops. If it were next door to a Starbucks I would love to take that.

I'm currently checking out a former frozen yogurt shop on Wilshire and Euclid. It's huge, but built out. 1,400 sqft is big compared to the little 592 sqft Cafe Balcony. Also the rent is 5 times more than the old location so I figured I need 120 people a day to break-even.

Well that's it for now. Thanks again for your continued support!

Ray

The short story:

Café Balcony will be opening a new store in the city of Santa Monica and closing the original West LA location by the end of February. The reason is our lease can’t be renewed. We will be relocation to Santa Monica and be open for business in the next couple of months.

It has been a sincere pleasure serving and growing with the West LA community for the last 12 years. We will open our new Santa Monica store in a couple months so in the mean time please visit our good friends at Café Bolivar and Funnel Mill.


The full story:
In April 1997, the original owner “Cookie” opened Café Balcony to serve specialty coffee to West Los Angeles. (FYI, specialty coffee beans are graded at level 1 and 2, level 3 is what starbucks buys and level 4 and lower is supermarket and tourist brands) It was a haven for coffee affectionatos. Years after establishing the store as a place for exceptional coffee he continued on to pursue other dreams and left the store to sister-in-law Joanne. Her run was equally impressive. When she left, business became quiet and “Cookie’s” brother was looking for another replacement. I have been a customer since 1997 and joined the team in this fairly long-running family business in 2004.
It took about a year, but finally as a business, we were ready to expand. So for the last 3 years I’ve been searching hard for the perfect location for a second store. Many deals fell through because of physical short comings such as lack of parking, ceiling height, floor size etc… The goal was to operate two stores near each other in order to share resources and maintain management style. Once again we are close to signing a lease, but we’re still doing our due diligence.

More recently, our building was sold and despite a year and a half of lease negotiations to the new owner, we lost our lease. I fought to keep Café Balcony as long as possible and I hoped to squeeze out another extension in the form of a short-term lease, but that fell through last Saturday. Apparently these kinds of things happen often in business and so there was always a chance of keeping this location, but now that window slid shut.

So now the second store project has become our relocation. I was hoping to make this a smooth transition, but now it looks like we will be down for a couple months before the new store will be ready. Like many of you I will miss this little place which became more of a home than my home. “It is what it is” and Café Balcony is walls with paint and people inside. For me it is a place that attracts people of a certain intellectual prowess on a variety of topics; I learned about preparing proper soup stock, picking a bike lock with a Bic pen, and the organic nature of the economy one cup of siphon coffee at a time. I’m sure you have similar stories, because Café Balcony is definitely conducive to the exchange of ideas through friendship. So thank you all! I hope to capture this character and community spirit and level of friendship in the new store.


Sincerely,
Ray

If you like to be informed of our Grand Opening please send an email to:
with the subject line:
New Café Balcony

http://kushami.com/