Opening My First Store — Part 1: Feel My Pain
Had you asked me if I would ever leave tech and open a food establishment, I would have most likely laughed at the sheer thought of it while having panic attacks of my restaurant baby days (kidding as those are some of my fondest memories). Although I had previous restaurant experience in my youth (still am as 30 is the new 21), it was a good 10+ years and most of my limited knowledge vanished. Yet, here I am at 8:31 pm on a Tuesday night outside Koi Tea feverishly pounding on my keys. Had it not been for my parents’ encouragement, I would most likely still be living in an NYC “chimichanga”, a Dominican-Bronx slang for a crappy apartment, slaving away at a startup. Even though I worked my butt off doing freelance, contracts, and side hustles, opening a food spot really pushed my limits in a different direction. It’s not until now that I can talk about the struggles I went through and somewhat chuckle about specific situations. If you couldn’t guess from the title, this is story is going to break into several parts.
Conception and Development Stages
One of the first questions people ask me is why I would open my first store in Stafford, Virginia rather than somewhere hip in Northern Virginia (NOVA), DC, NYC, or another larger city. There are a few reasons why:
- This is a new thing for me so I want a small retail space as a trial run without blowing the bank. It would be terrible to have a large space and no customers, thus wasting money on rent.
- I know the Stafford market enough to give it a test ideas, and Staffordians are generally more forgiving compared to the rest of NOVA. If and when I mess things up, I wouldn’t be crucified compared to opening in Alexandria or Arlington where it is slightly more transactional over personal.
- Northern Virginia is practically overrun with boba shops in each city and a few rolled ice cream joints, so we would need to aim at a different market completely to stand a chance. Too much blood in the water as the saying goes.
- Ice cream shops and frozen dessert shops in Stafford don’t tend to stay open long. If we were able to stay open for a year, I would interpret as we got something good going (assuming it wasn’t the drinks that kept bringing customers back).
- My family still resides in Stafford meaning if I need support, which I definitely do, they would be there. Also, free food!
Given the circumstances above and the lack of popularity of Stafford, finding a suitable location was difficult as there are not many popping areas available without a heavy price tag. As Stafford is already a small town, “third places” are not too common and sporadic. It took months of calls, visitations, and location comparison that we settled to take over a lease formerly owned by Radio Shack, #RIPRadioShack. As we couldn’t possibly fill up the entire store, we partnered up with a local laundromat to open up with. We joked about renaming the laundromat in collaboration with Koi Tea as Bubbles and Bubbles, Bubbles and Boba, Wash and Sip, and the list goes on. Once the pen dried, the real work began. Little did we know the overwhelming issues in our coming our way.
Starting construction in January, my father and I put in at least 80 hours per week building out both the laundromat and boba tea stores trying to get them open by March. The contractors we hired underestimated the workload between both stores, so we need to help as much as we can. Pops is a very handyman whereas I haven’t touched tools in over a decade, another thing I seemed to forgot. On top of all the construction, I still needed to test my recipes, find vendors, try unfamiliar supplies, build the marketing plan, interview potential employees, and run expense reports. Finding folks to validate our drinks was not too hard; it was finding the right combinations and preferred suppliers that proved to be time-consuming. As for rolled ice cream, I couldn’t necessarily test those as the machines needed 20V of power to operate, which no outlet in my house was not built to supply. I’ll write up a post later on how I performed the market research, recipe testing procedures, and overall strategy. It was difficult to pinpoint the rolls as I could not give them a trial, so I picked a few things that I thought would work and wait for construction to be completed for experimentation. All during this time I was deeply in love with this woman who I had every intention of marrying her. I picked a date to propose, selected a ring, and simply waited until I opened Koi Tea to have something to show her and her family. Given all the work pumping into the store and maintaining a relationship, I worked at least 80 hours per week, slept maybe 4 to 6 hours a night, and frequently visited to New York for the woman.
I originally slated March as the opening month and set a Facebook event for our grand opening back in January or February. March rears its head to only see our construction was not close to completion meaning I needed to push back the date. This led to a few unhappy folks, but they were content as the opening month was set for April. Then April came and construction still was not complete meaning another Facebook message pertaining to the store being postponed. This time around I see angry posts with comments like,
- “Is this even real?”
- “Are they ever going to open?”
- “Let’s not hold our breath and just go to NOVA.”
- “WTF?”
Despair found a home, threw up a welcome mat, and popped a few bottles. I should have charged it rent. While all of this went on, I had to explain to an ever patient woman why the opening was delayed week after week, and why I couldn’t go see her. Towards the end of April, the minimal amount of construction finished so the county could inspect Koi Tea and inspect the laundromat a few weeks later. Figured it wouldn’t be a big deal to have an inspector visit, we contacted the Zoning department to in order to acquire our Occupancy Permit. And can you guess what they said? They couldn’t do final inspections until the laundromat was ready as our permits were tied together.
At this point in time, I say eff everything, opting out of aesthetics and quality, and get things done. I was fed up with construction and want both stores opened. I contacted the potential employees to see if they would be able to assist us in cleaning the stores so we would be ready for inspection. To this day, I’m still grateful to those who came. Quick shout out to these people, in no particular order:
- Cheyenne
- Chase
- Autumn
- Hellen
- Steffani
As the laundromat came close to completion, my mental state began to relax until we ran into issues with electricity, water, and other small incidents when we test the equipment.
Testing Operational Flow
Fast forward a few painful weeks, all equipment is fixed, the layout was rearranged several times, recipes tested, and a few employees trained. Still needing final inspections and real market data, we had to do a test run. I was excited to test our operational flow in real life, find what works, gaps in the flow, which drinks were actually good, and analyze the stress level. Goes without saying, a lot of crap went into this. I did a small post on the Facebook page announcing a test run and expected ~30 people to show up throughout 4 hour window. I was shocked to see over 100 come at once, and I pretty sure none of my staff expected that as well. These were a few of our findings at the end of the event:
- Our barista flow were set up ineffectively and needed to change completely in order to accommodate the flow.
- Rolling ice cream took much longer than anticipated due to the sheer number, machine frost time, decoration, and finding the right customer.
- Stafford seems more interested in our products than originally guessed.
I swear we changed the flow for all stations at least 12 times each over a span of 3 days. Those shake machines are not light, so lifting those bastards were a pain each time we had a new idea. I’m sure the employees purposefully told me to move them so they can watch me sweat profusely. Borrowing from my tech background, I said it was good enough and we will come back to the flow once we open to see if there was a better way of doing things.
Grand Freaking Opening
Things were looking up. I felt confident Koi Tea would work out as a business based on the Facebook reviews, customer feedback, inspections being finalized, and a revitalized market ready for us to open. Only one last inspection to go. Crossing my fingers the inspector would approve, I ran through the entire store with a checklist to ensure it was smooth sailing. Lo and behold, we passed! I set May 10th as the “birthing” date to give me ample time to go over last minute changes, train a few more employees, and prepare to continue losing sleep. Obviously, I couldn’t have too many good things happen without stepping into crap; however, this turd was greater than I imagined. A day before Koi Tea open its door, my girlfriend cut the final ties with me. Although a knife slashed my heart, I could not dive into despondency, ire, or misery as I have people relying on me to get this boba shop running. I shed too much blood, tears, and sweat in this to stop. It wasn’t until months later I was given time to grieve and reflect on the outcome.
Finally, Koi Tea was born on May 10th at 11:00 am, weighed 500 sq ft, employed 18 folks, and ready to take on Stafford. I knew the road was only to get harder from there, but once again I didn’t think it would be this difficult as Part 2 will disclose.
With all that was said, would you still open a retail store? For those who have, what issues did you find?
