I wrote on Day 41 that we completed our job in Maryland and had some money to invest. So, how did we spend it? First of all, it was about $200, which is not much, but it was $200 more than we had before we left for Maryland for the temp job. The job paid all of our July bills, and gave us $200 left to invest in our coffee house plans.
We broke down our dream into smaller chunks. Obviously, building our dream coffee house would be the best chunk, but not within our reach right now. Here are the phases we have.
Phase 1. Planning
During this phase, we have written everything we could think about that would be required to start a coffee house from scratch. It’s taken over two years to research, learn, write and dream. I suppose it would take less time to just write a business plan and put it in action for the typical person, but my husband and I are not your typical person. We had a lot things going on that had to be taken care of first, before we could dedicate our lives to building a coffee house. We still do, but the planning stage is almost done.
During this phase, we have developed our draft business plan, and are now fine tuning it. Our business plan contains the following sections and sub-sections:
A. Vision
B. Company Summary
C. Action Plan (this is what we’ll use to monitor our business and make sure we stay on track)
D. Products & Services
E. Marketing Plan
F. Operations Plan
G. Financial Plan
H. Appendices
Phase 2: Test Kitchen
We are in this phase. This is what we spent the $200 on. We bought a brand new, unused Kitchenaide mixer for $50 (with separate parts, a bowl, paddles and a box of stuff that came with it. We also bought some small wares and ingredients. We are now testing all of our recipes and costing out the products, and making modifications to our recipes (thanks to our family and friends who are taste testing and critiquing for us.)
During this phase, we will fine-tune our business plan, and also develop our marketing materials. We’ll stay in this phase until we can move to Phase 3.
Phase 3: Start Up Location
This is where we’ll open to the public and stay until we can afford to build our dream coffee house. We’ve looked at three properties in the past week, just dreaming of course! It doesn’t hurt to look. You never know what kind of miracle God can work out. It was fun to look.
Phase 4: Permanent Location
Our dream coffee house will be built from ground up!
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