Coffeehouse R.I.P.
N early 3,000 coffee shops have failed since January 2008 according to Ric Rhinehart, executive director of the Specialty Coffee Association of America. He says the one-in-10 shops shuttered in the past 18 months are evenly divided between independents and chain operations. Fortunately daily co ee consumption has remained constant in 2009 according to researchers. Americans may drink more co ee at home and they may have traded down from the most expensive o erings but consumers still see co ee as an integral part of their everyday life, says Robert F. Nelson, president and CEO of the National Co ee Association. The thousands of workers let go during this crisis take little solace in what economists call this segment's fortunate lack of elasticity. Constant demand and fewer shops mean that the death of these businesses boosts revenue available to survivors. More significantly it demonstrates that reputation, resilience, ingenuity and sound financial underpinnings matter. To survive and even thrive in this environment, shop owners will re-learn the lessons of specialty co ee pioneers Alfred Peet and the early Starbucks and put serious e ort into their bean sales, observes SCAA General Counsel Marshall Fuss. One thing seems certain: the American co ee shop landscape will look very di erent in a few years, he says. e stories that follow document Darwinian evolution under the harshest circumstances. In this series, the owners of long-standing shops large and small re ect on what led to their demise. ey relate with courage and candor the painful lessons that caused them to abandon once-successful ventures, seek bankruptcy protection and pursue remedies in court. ese folks aren't failures. ey poured all they had to give, understanding that if you've never failed, you've never really tried. >> August 2009  www.specialty-coffee.com KOINONIA CAFÉ Kingsford, Mich. INSPIRATION As Liz Wheeler and her husband drove into the small town, Kingsford, Mich., which was to become their home, they noted the empty gravel lots where high school students loitered a er dusk, hugging, smoking, playing football. My husband was a youth pastor; our hearts went out to the students with too much time on their hands and not enough supervision, recounts Liz Wheeler. We felt compelled to start im ag e cou rt es y J ame s P au ls , w w w .ey ecr ave pho togr aphy .c o m