Nemo’s Coffee One Year Anniversary!!

Well, we have made it to our first year in operation. It is amazing how quickly a year can go by when you are as busy as we have been. It seems as if it were just several months.
We would like to thank everyone who has supported us over this time. We have so many wonderful regulars, as well as companies/government agencies in our area who consistently use our product/services.

Here is some trivia from the first year:

# of Customers: 2,200
Total Sales: $147,300
# of items sold: 62,100
Average ticket: $4.57
Busiest Hour: 8:00-9:00am with 4260 customers
Biggest seller: Espresso Drinks, 20,232 sold for $45,900
Brewed Coffee: 6745 sold for $11,100
Lunch items sold: 9961 sold for $37,560
Pastries sold: 8100

We exceeded our break even budget for our anniversary week, which has been updated to include our new vehicle lease! It is wonderful to see us on the profitable side of things this week!

Biggest lessons learned this year:
1. Success is made up of daily individual efforts. If you look at it as a whole, it seems impossible and insurmountable. If you look at it daily, it requires a great deal of effort, but you can do it.
2. Be prepared to think outside the box. Get creative in the products you offer, the way you market them to your customers, and how you manage the logistics of buying/storing supplies and preparing the products for sale.
3. Take care of your equipment. Put the effort into keeping it clean. Spend the money to have preventive maintenance completed, which will save you in more expensive corrective repairs if it were to break down.
4. Never compromise on the quality of your product.
5. Get to know your customers. They will come back if you make them feel welcome and important.
6. Spend time with your kids. Don’t let business push them out of your life. It is better to play with your kids and then lose a little sleep to get work done.
7. Figure out how to make money to supplement the business start up. Nemo’s did not support us this year, and may not support us in our second year. Our sources of income were: unemployment, photography, past tax returns for 2004, 2005, and 2006, my job at Intel, and my job with RK Mechanical.
8. Trust that God will provide a solution… We expected to have sales that provide us a decent income by now. If you start a business and have decent income in the first year, then you are in the minority of new business start-ups. Every time we were concerned about how things will work out, a solution popped up right at the last minute. I believe that God will provide for the faithful…

This has been a difficult and very rewarding year. Tracy and I have learned how to find solutions to challenges, how to use time more efficiently, and how to give more effort than we thought we had to give. Business ownership will help you to grow more as a person more than you can imagine. I don’t recommend it for the faint of heart, or for those who don’t like hard work. For everyone else, it is a very rewarding endeavor, even if you don’t pay yourself a dime.

I have no idea how many people read this blog, but I appreciate you following along for the last year. It doesn’t matter to me if it is 10 people or 1000 people. I hope I have written/documented some things that have been a positive influence for you as a person, and for your small business.

Take care,
JD