Our coffee shop has officially been open for 4 months now. And it’s been probably 5 months since I’ve written a blog post. My apologies…life has been a little crazy lately. I did want to write a short-ish post to give some updates for those of you left wondering.
“You guys are living the dream!! You are so lucky you get to do what you love!!”
This is a very common statement for us to hear. And it is SO true. We are living our dream. The dream that began over 5 years ago for us. The dream that seemed so far off and unattainable. And we are absolutely so lucky we get to wake up and go to a coffee shop that we own, and drink espresso that we roasted. This is truth. HOWEVER, this dream came (and still comes) with a lot of sacrifice. Since opening the shop…and being new parents, we have gotten significantly less sleep than we normally would. “You are young, you can handle it.” We are young, yes, but I feel we are aging much quicker than anticipated because of our lack of sleep. This dream of ours has also cost us our savings account… which we fully expected. Needless to say, we are living simply/cheaply for a long while. This also means that buying a house anytime in our near future has been put into question. Or replacing my car from high school that is falling apart at the seams. But there are worse things.
So yes. We ARE living our dream. But what people don’t see is the sacrifice that it has cost us.
Wisdom words…get ready.
IT IS 100% WORTH IT. Don’t let the potential sacrifice of a dream scare you away from living it.
“You are 4 months in. How is the coffee shop doing?”
Really great. Our location and setup is pretty phenomenal, and apparently it is exactly what Statesboro needed. What’s crazy is, we had NO IDEA how popular it would become. And we had no idea how to run a shop. We had both worked in a coffee shop for a few years, but never managed/owned one. So this is a huge learning curve for us. And as we learn the norms and statistics of the coffee shop business in the US, we are finding that 3 Tree is doing exceptionally well.
What are the every day responsibilities that go into it?
Running this coffee business is both of our full time jobs. We all in. And we are SUPER blessed to have friends that believe in this business enough to be all in as well. Kimberly and Quinn D. are a super lovely couple that moved to Statesboro from the Athens area to be a part of 3Tree. And they are now partial owners….woot!! We all do different things every week. Sometimes Phil takes on one of my roles if needed. Sometimes I take one of Kims’ jobs one week, etc. For the most part, the duties that are somewhat evenly divided between us for the coffee shop are: barista-ing, employee training, book-keeping, employee scheduling, kitchen managing, marketing, and inventory managing/ordering. The tasks for our roasting business are: roasting, inventory managing/ordering, wholesale account managing, internship managing, event planning/coordinating, and farmers market managing. I’m sure I have left out something. I usually do when there are lists involved.
Owning a coffee shop is SO MUCH MORE than making coffee, interacting with customers, and drawing fun things in lattes.
Analyzing coffee shop sales.
“How’s the roasting business?”
It is going very well. Thank you for asking. Since we started roasting back in April 2014, our roasting business has been on the steady incline. It has really picked up some steam since opening our shop in August. Our roaster goes through s o m u c h c o f f e e these days and we are struggling to keep our roasting warehouse stocked with raw and roasted coffee beans. “That’s a good problem to have!” Yes. But it is a problem indeed. Have you ever been to a coffee shop/roaster that ran out of coffee? We have almost reached that point numerous times. Mainly because of underestimation of 3Tree popularity…and inventory slackage on my part. #oops. But never have we been completely out of coffee. Thankfully.
“Wait, don’t you have a child too? How’s that going?”
OMG. Abigail turns ONE YEAR OLD in a few weeks. ONE!!!
My sweet-tempered little blue-eyed ginger baby. She is SO busy these days. Not walking yet, but oh my, her crawl is suuuuper speedy. It matches my running pace. Her favorite spot in our house is on the rug in our bathroom. She just likes to sit on it. She also likes to sit in my dirt piles when I sweep. Her favorite foods are bananas and eggs. Her least favorite food is avocado. She can say ‘mama’ and ‘dada’ with the occasional ‘bye-bye’. She also knows how to roar like a lion, moo like a cow, and meow like a cat. She has 4 teeth and 2 on the way. She loves to read books and explore on her own. She really loves to give open-mouthed kisses on peoples faces. And she loves to roast coffee with her mama!!
Until next time..
-The Klaymans
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