My coffee shop is for sale?!
Mike Patrick
Dear Diane:
I love your coffee shop. I adore the employees. If I could, I would buy the whole kit and kaboodle, call it The Back Page, serve coffee and pastries and homemade soup and newspapers in what would amount to a delightful, cozy Press annex, and live happily ever after.
When I received an email recently explaining that Calypsos was for sale, my heart suffered an immediate caffeinated crack. When one works a few dozen steps away from your welcoming door, habits set in. And they don’t like it a bit when they feel threatened.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve enjoyed a cup and conversation at Calypsos over the years, but it’s well into the hundreds - maybe more. I’ve met with fans and foes of The Press there. Some fences have been mended; some intel exchanged; some community projects coordinated; some spleen-purging witnessed and reciprocated.
Actually, a hell of a lot of spleen-purging. If you can’t complain in a coffee shop, you can’t complain anywhere.
The story in this issue of The Business Journal of North Idaho probably reflects some of the experiences of many other small-business owners, but I would argue that a gathering place like yours is pretty much peerless. That’s why I asked Kaye Thornbrugh to chat with you, grab a photo or two and maybe help connect you with the ideal person to continue on the customer-friendly Calypsos path.
What I’m really after, though, are two simple things. One, I’d like to be included in the decision-making process of who you sell to, assuming you’ll have multiple good offers. I think I’ve earned that right, and somewhere in this cluttered office across the street I’ve got the receipts to prove it.
The other thing? A 12-ounce drip, no room for cream, to go, please. I’d love to sit there and vent some spleen but I’m already late putting this issue of BJNI to bed.
With brightest hopes for your future,
— Mike Patrick, BJNI editor
