The photo on the right is a streetcar stopped because the driver got out to get coffee at Peets.
This reminds me of one of my best pieces of business advice.
In the late 1980s, Buttercup a restaurant bakery on College and Ashby in Berkeley, needed help. Buttercup was the first restaurant in the America to introduce the hippy genius for food in the early 1970s. Buttercup had fresh veggies, tasty bread and plenty of imaginative food.
Buttercup had borrowed money to....
Buttercup had borrowed money to build a mesquite fired oven. The loan
had an onerous clause. If the Buttercup didn’t reach a specified level
of sales by June 1 of the critical year, the lenders took ownership of
the business. I was called in in February and told the sales had to
increase by 15% per month in March, April and May.
I did it.
First, I had the owners offer free coffee and pastry to all bus drivers passing Buttercup on College Avenue. Plenty of buses passed every hour. You can guess what happened. Bus riders saw drivers stop on most bus trips to get off and get coffee and pastry. The riders imitated.
Second, I had the owners distribute 5,000 copies of a double sided page to every home in a five block radius. One side of the flier offered jobs. The other side explained the wonderful smell in the neighborhood from the mesquite fired oven. The flier brought in thousands of old regular customers.
Happy ending? Not quite. The owners got to keep the restaurant. But the next month they sold it and moved to Mexico.
The reality of business, I have seen it many times, is that the reason(s) a business closes after succeeding for more than seven years is boredom or burnout. They are probably both the same reason.
Neither WalMart, Starbucks or Borders drive local business out of business. In every case I’ve seen, the owners didn’t have the energy to revitalize their business and compete. They just give up.