Building A Coffee House One Cupcake At A Time

Category: Projects

Published on Friday, 30 December 2011 21:56

Written by Admin

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So, what happens when you have a dream but you don't have capital to work with?   You get creative.

We have had a dream to build a coffee house since 2008 but have you looked up the cost of that dream?  We originally wanted to build our coffee house in Oak Ridge, TN but there was no place we could afford.

We joined the Entrepreneurs of Knoxville (EOK) and got some marketing tips that REALLY helped us out a lot.  Marketing is something we need to learn.  Well, okay, running a newspaper and starting a coffee house is also something we need to learn, which is why this Kudzu Jungle site was born.  What better way to learn than to make an adventure out of pursuing a dream and having to learn every detail of that dream as you go?

EOK has a program called "Hot Seat" and that's where you get up in front of other entrepreneurs and pitch your idea, and they critique it and help you improve your marketing idea.  Our campaign to do a documentary and build a coffee house one cupcake at a time made me nervous.  There was a banker out there in that crowd and most entrepreneurs seek loans.  I thought we were going to be laughed out of there with our idea.  Instead, we were embraced.  We had taken our Tropical Pineapple cupcakes to the presentation.   We got awesome reviews!  We were told people would pay $2 each for our cupcake (but we are charging less).  And to my surprise, the banker loved our approach to raising capital and offered to look at our financial plan.

From there, another EOK member took interest in our documentary and helped us fine tune our business plan.  He then went with us to scope out a home in Clinton, TN to see if it's an ideal location for the coffee house.  He really liked it, so we pursued that place and got a six month lease reduced so we have time to clean, paint, set up and get inspected.  Talk about a blessing from the Lord!

Now we are going to build a coffee house one cupcake at a time and help other entrepreneurs.

We are an open source entrepreneur and coffee house project.  Why are we going open source?  We know hardship.  Extreme hardship.   How bad?  Well, we lived in our car during the winter of 2010.  Sometimes we parked at a rest area down in the Pigeon Forge area (because I was ashamed to be in Clinton) and when pride was swallowed, we parked at the Wal-mart parking lot in Clinton.  Humility is not a strong part, but I'm learning to be thankful in all things.

Our work dried up for two months and we weren't expecting that, so we continued with our coffee house plans and had to work on gaurding our mouths so we didn't get angry over our situation.  It's easy to be angry at God when things go wrong, but during those two months, we got closer to Him instead.  I suppose it would have been better had we trusted Him at the beginning but we didn't.  We were angry, afraid, embarrassed and doubted our coffee house dreams.

Since we have to learn as we go, and pay as we go, we had to find a fun way to budget.  We budget in cupcakes instead of dollars.   We plan out the projects, then determine how many cupcakes we have to bake and sell in order to raise the capital.  We have to bake a LOT of cupcakes to raise money for our coffee house. 

In addition to cupcakes, we are being creative in figuring out how to raise money as we go. 

We hope you enjoy our documentary, our entrepreneur blog and our coffee house! 

Colleen Crawford

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