Every day when I drive my kids to school, I drive pass several drive-through coffee stands. It's a mystery to me how a town our size supports as many coffee places as we do. There is on in particular on Ramsey that stands out to me, not because it's my favorite as I have never actually been there, but because it's always for sale. Every six months or so, some inexperienced wanna-be coffee-stand owner buys the place, repaints it, renames it and puts out an OPEN sign, not realizing that the location is terrible as it's hard to get in and out of. Not only that, but there are two quite successful coffee places barely a stone's throw away that are much easier to navigate. In the last five years I think this place has had six or seven different owners -- at least.
The demise of this stand follows the same pattern with each owner. The first few weeks, the OPEN sign is lit every time I drive by, when I take my kids into school and when I pick them up in the afternoon. Rarely is there a car in at the window, I'm sad to say, but they keep trying. The last owners even gave away free mochas for a day hoping to drum up business, and even then the response was poor. The problem is that by the time you notice the place when you're driving by, you have already passed the entrance to it. Inevitably, about a month after opening, the OPEN sign is lit less often, mostly in the morning. I guess they figure they shouldn't staff the place in the afternoon if no one is coming in. This is the beginning of the end. Usually two or three months is all they last before the FOR SALE sign is back up again.
As a small business owner myself, it always makes me sad to see a business go under. I know the work that goes into starting one up, the hopes and dreams that you have for making it a success and the stress of not quite making it. I want to post a big sign out front: "DO NOT PUT A COFFEE STAND HERE! The last 16 people who tried to make it work failed!" Whenever someone buys it, I want to stop and knock on the window to tell them, "Just close up shop now; it'll be cheaper in the long-run."
As an outside observer, I can see that this location is not a good place to a coffee stand. I've driven by it day after day and seen all the attempts to make this place a success only to follow the same fate as the others. Not that we shouldn't try to follow our dreams, but sometimes I think that we want our dreams to succeed so much that we don't make the wisest of decisions while chasing them down.
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