Expansions, Contractions, and the Never Ending Search for Improvement

August and September have been a business roller coaster for Simpatico Coffee.  In early August we opened our third location, at 975 Butternut on the North Side of Holland.  It's a beautiful space and a welcome addition to our corporate expansion.  It has a drive-thru and we are learning how to maximize such a feature for our retail operations.  If you haven't been to our new location, please stop in and say hi!  We have great staff, bake all of our own products, and we have free WiFi and comfortable seating.

In September, we closed our second location, which was in Downtown Market Grand Rapids. For the past year, this location had been under-performing.  Downtown Market is slowly transitioning itself from an innovative food hub into a food mall, which means it doesn't get busy until lunch hour.  This is a death sentence for a coffee shop.  There are so many great companies involved in Downtown Market, and we will miss being affiliated with them.  More than anything, we will miss our former employees.  They are fantastic people, deft baristas, and thankfully they have all found great new jobs. The gain from this important business lesson (closing a shop) is that we now know Simpatico Coffee works best in its own bricks-and-mortar locations - where we can market how we like, have hours which work for us, and free parking.

Closing a location is almost as much work as opening a location.  Luckily for us, most of the equipment from Grand Rapids will now be used to create the drive-thru expansion for our Holland South Side location.  We'll get going on that right after our new roasting facility is done next month.  Whew.  We're exhausted.  Who needs a cup of coffee? There is no rest for us however, because we're on an invigorating quest to improve all 5 aspects of our business operations: Coffee Production and Packaging, Wholesale Accounts, On-Line Operations, Retail Locations, and Farm Markets.  Please like our Facebook Page in order to check out our customer input polls.  We want you to help guide us into the future. http://www.Facebook.com/SimpaticoCoffee