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Let’s Own a Coffeehouse
Part 1: Location and Setups
By Bridget Weber

In their quest to own a coffeehouse, Mike Love and Alicia Kelligrew endured the ups and downs of locating the perfect site, lease negotiation, family hardship, being pre-empted by a movie filming, building code obstructions and a flood. Roadblocks were continually placed in their path to ownership. But like the Labrador retrievers pictured in their logo, they persevered towards their catch despite obstacles, with plenty of good humor to help them along the way.

Love and Kelligrew knew the restaurant business from the inside before undertaking the pitfalls of a coffeehouse start-up. Knowing the demands of the foodservice industry didn’t dissuade them from embarking on their own food business venture.

A setback in his career choice of chef actually provided the impetus to Love to become the owner of a business. Three months after setting up a kitchen in a new restaurant in New York City, and getting rave reviews for the food, Love says he found himself out of a job as the restaurant owners economized with less-experienced cooking staff.

That signaled it was time for a career change. His fiancé, Kelligrew, worked at a coffeehouse and the atmosphere, the coffee and the idea of being business owners appealed to both of them. Schooled as an art major, Love thought the roasting aspect of coffee retailing would satisfy the creative urge fulfilled by his chef work. At about the same time, Kelligrew’s mother inherited a sum of money and offered it to the couple so they could make their business dream come true.

Timing and money came together in a serendipitous way—or so they thought at the time. Little did they know the difficulties that lay ahead.

The first priority was to find a suitable location. They told family, friends and acquaintances about their search for the perfect coffeehouse location. They didn’t want to locate in New York City proper, but in a surrounding small town or suburb. In the beginning of their search, a friend who lived in Tarrytown told them the quaint little town an hour’s drive north of the City badly needed a good coffeehouse. First inquiries into a vacant florist shop didn’t pan out.

They searched leads in Long Island, New Jersey and Connecticut. Tracking down every possibility often led to dead-ends, like the building that needed to be gutted or the one where they happened onto a gang fight on the front steps. But in the end, their search kept bringing them back to Westchester County and Tarrytown. “It was the most bustling river town on the Hudson River,” Love says. In their research effort, they checked the demographics of the area and found it was a very diverse community, combining wealthy, blue collar and Hispanic segments. According to all they read, it was an area to support the affordable luxury of a latte a day.

Once they found the general area that would support a coffeehouse, they didn’t realize how difficult finding a space to lease would be.

“We called every number listed on signs in the windows for lease or rent,” says Love. “We talked to every business in town about the possibility of opening a coffeehouse nearby.”

Asking the question and getting very positive responses inspired them to keep searching. It also propelled their name into the local nomenclature. Talking to possible business neighbors prepared the way for future customers and good relationships with other businesses in the community. “We went to every business in town and talked to them about what we were doing,” says Love. “We didn’t want to come into a small town, like others before us, and have a New York City attitude about the way things should be done.”

Finally, a couple of friends walked into a realty office to check on some office listings for them and learned the realty office’s space would be available in three months. When Love and Kelligrew saw the location they fell in love with it. It had large arched windows and the elegant façade could be seen from all directions. It was on the main corner of the business district, next to a historic 1880s music hall still in operation, and a couple of restaurants shared the same street.

Initial meetings with the building’s owner left the two with high hopes to soon build their dream business. He told them to expect the lease by September.

With the prospective site within reach, they vetted the location for probable sales. “I sat on the corner in Tarrytown for weeks doing traffic counts with a hand clicker,” says Love. “I watched and counted people who walked out with a coffee or paper from the 7-Eleven and from the diner down the street.”

Come September they had no lease to review. Instead they saw a “For Rent” sign in the window. Unbeknownst to them, the building’s owner had had a much better offer.

Afraid the building would be leased to someone offering to pay more, Love and Killigrew frantically tried to talk with the landlord who had other things on his mind, like signing a short-term rental agreement for an unusually high sum.

Two months after they were supposed to have the lease, the building’s owner finally told them about the action occurring behind the scenes. He still wanted Mike and Alicia to lease the building for a coffeehouse, but it just so happened a movie was being filmed in the area and he opted to rent the building for a few months as an office during the shoot.

The production office of “Mona Lisa Smile” was housed in Love’s ideal coffeehouse location in Tarrytown. The small picturesque city was used as a stand-in location for Wellesley, Mass., of the ‘50s because it still maintained a village quality. Love says the wait strained his patience, but having a connection with movie stars has lent a certain air of glamour to the place.

The two decided to wait out the two-month intermission, and November finally brought the lease. Love and Kelligrew worked with an attorney in negotiating the lease terms. “Without a doubt, anyone leasing commercial space should hire a lawyer,” says Love. “There’s so much legal jargon that needs to be understood and hiring a lawyer to handle the lease contract is imperative.”

During the six-week lease negotiation, Love says they worked out the terms of who pays the property tax, the amount of incremental rent increases based on sales, and other figures. “We were happy with the lease, especially that the landlord worked in a good-guy clause that basically entailed if the business is not profitable, the landlord would release us from the lease with no further legalities,” explains Love.

But during the lease negotiation, another calamity befell the couple. A very supportive member of their family passed away. Kelligrew’s mother had given the couple the monetary support to start their own business, but she wouldn’t be around to see the result of her investment and belief in them. “She told us she had wanted to do some good with the money and offered it to Alicia to start the business,” remembers Love.

Love and Kelligrew finally signed the lease in January, more than six months after initial inquiries. But that time wasn’t wasted.

During the period of scouting for locations and waiting on the lease, Love fine-tuned the business strategy and planned the menu. The two decided to partner with a friend who is a pastry chef. Love would develop the expertise on coffee roasting and the pastry chef would provide the baking expertise for fresh-baked items and gourmet desserts. Kelligrew hit the books and spent the time conducting in-depth research on coffee retailing. They attended trade shows, made connections in the coffee business with roasters and vendors, and attended workshops on roasting. It only deepened their feeling that they were making the right decision getting into the specialty coffee business.

With Love’s kitchen background and Kelligrew’s knowledge as a barista, they knew the best-planned kitchen and serving area would lead to fast service. They decided to spend their money on professional help in designing the work space rather than on interior décor.

From the time they first decided on Tarrytown as a location, Love and Kelligrew had lined up a consultant to help with kitchen design. Since the menu dictates the kitchen layout, early plans included substantial space devoted to the baking area with oven, mixing area and food storage. As the time of the buildout drew near, however, the financing didn’t come together with the pastry chef. That meant completely changing the floor plan.

But, with the halting pace of leasing the space, all those changes did not hold up the buildout. “We went through 13 floor plans by the time we came to the actual buildout,” says Love. “It (working with a designer) was the best money we spent on the place. I could fit five people behind the service counter and nobody bumps into each other.”

Love says the designer planned in accessibility, efficiency of movement and well-placed presentation. “We went through the floor plan and general ideas of square footage and what we thought the layout should be and he took it from there.”

With the lengthy wait for the lease and the absorption with revising floor plans, Love says by the time they got to the buildout phase, all the planning made for smooth construction.

Well, until they moved the roaster in and the owners of the historic building next door worried about fire. To their credit, construction took only three months. On the downside, building code complications with venting the roaster prevented Love from opening with a working roaster.

On the upside, he didn’t have an inventory of beans to lose when the building flooded.
Next issue, overcoming disaster: fire codes, cost overruns and flooding.

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