Custom Coffee & Chocolate'Sswot

572 Words3 Pages
Custom Coffee & Chocolate Bonnie Brewer and Stacy Kim were college roommates. While at school, they shared dreams of opening their own business. To prepare themselves, they took business and marketing courses, along with courses in management. When they graduated, they each found jobs in Seattle, near where they'd gone to school. Several years later, after working at other companies to gain experience, the two women decided to take the plunge together and made a plan to open a small café where they and their customers could indulge their love of good coffee and fine chocolate. They looked at two locations for their café: one near Pike Place Market, which gets a lot of foot traffic from shoppers and businesspeople, and one near the university, where shops and restaurants are patronized by students, faculty, staff, and local residents. They chose the university location because they thought they knew and understood those customers well. The doors to Custom Coffee & Chocolate opened several months later, with both Brewer and Kim working hard to serve unique coffee blends and specialty chocolates, maintain the shop, and handle the finances. Custom Coffee & Chocolate's business plan included purchasing only fair trade coffee (priced to provide living wages to coffee growers) and chocolates made by a few local suppliers. Their café was small, but it had several comfortable chairs, couches, and coffee tables to encourage customers to stay and chat or read the newspaper between classes. However, the majority of their business was takeout. At the beginning, business was slow. Brewer and Kim had struggled to find the right price points for their coffee and chocolates, and they worried they might be set too high. But everyone who came in to the café loved what they bought, and came back—and began to bring friends. Business increased over a period of about five

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