Carbon Kopi has been going for about seven years now. We were a baby of the global pandemic. That awful moment when you sink your life savings into a venture and within three months the world shuts down, and you seriously consider whether you’ll ever reopen.
There were two silver linings. The first was that we’d picked a residential area for our coffee shop, and suddenly everybody was working from home. We just had to be allowed to open and serve them. We always knew we wanted to be a space for the community, and nothing brought the community together quite like a shared global crisis.
The other was that in the short few months we’d been open before we had to close, we’d been doing it really well. High standards, a great team, exceptional coffee. It was what the area had been missing. So when Eater London noticed what we were doing and nominated us as one of the best new coffee shops in London, it was more than we could have hoped for. More than we thought we deserved, honestly.
I had no hospitality background. A 20-year career in IT was all the experience I had, so essentially none. To get that kind of recognition gave us hope through the toughest times. It proved we were onto something. New people came. Coffee people came. Word spread. After a short break we reopened and we were slammed, every day getting busier, every day watching the numbers grow. That was partly thanks to the pandemic, but also largely thanks to that early recognition.
The next few years were tough. We learned lessons the hard way. We lost staff who we loved and who we felt had helped shape the business. Not because we did anything wrong, but because around 80% of hospitality staff are transient by nature. The reviews kept coming though. We were still doing well. We tried things. We tried doing brunch, and the reviews were fantastic. We believed our own hype.
But inside, something was off. Asking coffee people to run a lunch service changed the DNA of what we were doing. Staff were less happy, and I believe the coffee suffered as a result. Personally, I didn’t enjoy the business during this period either. It was busy and chaotic. Visiting the store wasn’t enjoyable, it just felt stressful. Yet the reviews kept telling us how great the coffee and brunch was, so we kept going. We should have changed sooner.
The stress of the brunch service pushed more staff away. Staff who were passionate about coffee, the very people who made us special.
Eventually I knew it had to change. We took a deep breath and went back to just being a coffee bar. Coffee with cakes, pastries, toasties. It was easier, it was simpler, and our coffee was the star again. But what we’d lost in that period were the team. The stars, the ones who made the real difference.
Over the last couple of years, we haven’t innovated enough. Our food, cake, and pastry offering stayed the same while our coffee, I believe, improved to another level. But the reviews became more average. Our Google rating dropped. Our proud five stars became 4.9, then 4.8, then 4.7. My morale dropped with it. I started to believe we were sinking and that it couldn’t be rescued. Was it the lack of innovation? The staff? The quality?
The truth is, the pandemic was a very special bubble. A point in time where customers were just grateful to have somewhere to go. Nobody was negative about hospitality businesses. People were just happy they existed. Very few were leaving bad reviews.
These days hospitality is fighting challenges on every front. Taxation, rising costs, increased competition, the closure of long-standing institutions. Brexit left us with a far smaller staffing pool, and the staff we do have cost significantly more. Our prices have risen to keep pace with all of it. And it seems that when hospitality talks publicly about the challenges it faces, the reviews get harsher. When our costs are higher, customers’ expectations rise, and when we fall even slightly short, people are happy to let us know.
That’s not a complaint. It’s reality. A challenge of the business we’re in. We have to do better, but without increasing costs. Increased costs mean increased prices. Increased prices raise expectations. It’s a vicious circle.
So while I was writing this (and it was genuinely supposed to just be about awards) I realised something. We do this well. We can do it better. We always want to do it better. But rarely do places that have been going five to ten years get fresh recognition. That’s usually reserved for the new kids on the block.
So when we appeared in the UK’s Top 40 Coffee Shops, and Top 10 in London, I was sceptical. My first thought was that it was one of those scams: they tell you you’re the best, then you have to pay for an award and buy a ticket to some function where a fake trophy gets handed over. I was so convinced of this that I ignored it entirely. Didn’t go to the ceremony.
I only realised it was a big deal the day Time Out picked up the story and suddenly the shop was rammed again. It was buzzing. It was alive. It felt like it used to. My spirits picked up. The team were energised. We were doing something right and people were noticing.
Awards don’t make us better. But on the days it gets hard, when morale is down and you’re questioning everything, to realise you built something that’s recognised as one of the best in the country, and you did that with nothing but a passion to do well and a fantastic team of people?
That’s what the awards are for. That’s really all I need.
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