Not mine, thankfully.
It's the coffee shop right across the road from the office - I can see it out the window.
It's one of those CBD hole in the wall places.
The woman who owned it for ages sold it last week.
She was smart, cheeky, a bit flirty, and had one of those memories we wish we all had.
If you went there once, you never had to order again. People who always ordered one coffee (like me) would walk up, stand on the footpath and she would see them. Then she would call out their name and tell them their coffee was ready.
People whose turn it was to get coffee for their work mates would show up and she would say, 'Everyone?'.
They might say, 'No, just me, Roger, Jane, Mary and Peter wants a double shot.'
I was standing there once reading the paper and a bloke wandered up. She called out, 'Peter. Flat white with two?'. He nodded and caught my eye and told me he'd been working in North Sydney and hadn't been there for four years.
At any time up till noon, there could be as many as a dozen people standing on the footpath. There were never none.
She finished up last Thursday.
Friday morning, there was a young, slightly lost Chinese bloke behind the machine. It's a generalisation I know, but deserts and coffees aren't their strong point.
Monday this week they were closed.
He's been there for the rest of the week, but I reckon business must be down about 80%. Within a 300 metre radius of my office, there would be at least a dozen places that make coffee. There is now no reason for people to walk past them and go to this one.
I've perservered with him because he's a nice young bloke and I feel a bit sorry for him. I reckon he would be mystified at where all the business has gone.
He would have done a bit of due diligence before the purchase, but he would have been looking at the numbers on paper. What he should have done is get there at 6am one morning and sit there till 3pm when she closed and watch her operate. All those businesses have that 'goodwill' intangible, but anybody who watched her operate would never buy that business at the on paper value.
It's noon now, and the foothpath is deserted.
Scott
It's the coffee shop right across the road from the office - I can see it out the window.
It's one of those CBD hole in the wall places.
The woman who owned it for ages sold it last week.
She was smart, cheeky, a bit flirty, and had one of those memories we wish we all had.
If you went there once, you never had to order again. People who always ordered one coffee (like me) would walk up, stand on the footpath and she would see them. Then she would call out their name and tell them their coffee was ready.
People whose turn it was to get coffee for their work mates would show up and she would say, 'Everyone?'.
They might say, 'No, just me, Roger, Jane, Mary and Peter wants a double shot.'
I was standing there once reading the paper and a bloke wandered up. She called out, 'Peter. Flat white with two?'. He nodded and caught my eye and told me he'd been working in North Sydney and hadn't been there for four years.
At any time up till noon, there could be as many as a dozen people standing on the footpath. There were never none.
She finished up last Thursday.
Friday morning, there was a young, slightly lost Chinese bloke behind the machine. It's a generalisation I know, but deserts and coffees aren't their strong point.
Monday this week they were closed.
He's been there for the rest of the week, but I reckon business must be down about 80%. Within a 300 metre radius of my office, there would be at least a dozen places that make coffee. There is now no reason for people to walk past them and go to this one.
I've perservered with him because he's a nice young bloke and I feel a bit sorry for him. I reckon he would be mystified at where all the business has gone.
He would have done a bit of due diligence before the purchase, but he would have been looking at the numbers on paper. What he should have done is get there at 6am one morning and sit there till 3pm when she closed and watch her operate. All those businesses have that 'goodwill' intangible, but anybody who watched her operate would never buy that business at the on paper value.
It's noon now, and the foothpath is deserted.
Scott
) that had been closed for 12 months with equipment worth maybe 30k, and they wanted 400k in goodwill. I politely asked them if they would like to reconsider after they stopped chainsmoking marijuana cigarettes and shooting elephant loads of LSD prior to business meetings, since there was another fish n chip shop that was giving away all their equipment etc free just so long as you paid rent (part of the complex caught on fire and the whole place was closed for a couple of years waiting for insurance to fix the burnt part) but alas, they were firm on price.
