Today we’d like to introduce you to David Clarke.
Thanks for sharing your story with us David. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
At the age of 18, I hitch hiked to Italy with a friend and was presented with ‘real’ espresso for the first time. Having been born and raised in the UK, at that time, tea was the drink of choice and coffee was mainly made using freeze dried instant granules. So this was a new experience, which I immediately decided to make a part of my life going forward. On returning and for the next couple of decades I invested in various coffee makers and espresso machines to pursue my love of this wonderful drink. My friends and then wife saw me as a bit of a coffee geek, but openly admitted to enjoying the results. After traveling the world and working in the Middle East and finally settling in the Dallas area with the company I had worked for last in Dubai, I began to envision a place not dissimilar to the ‘English Pub’ that could perhaps restore a semblance of community and interaction I saw sadly missing in the US suburbs. I wanted to differentiate my ‘European Style Coffee House’ by offering my very own coffee beans and so, in preparation, began to experiment with roasting at home and having friends and acquaintances try the results of my efforts. This led to a business plan and in 2006 we opened our first Coffee House in Grapevine, in the mid-cities area of Dallas/Fort Worth. Initially we roasted in the store, but after opening a second community based coffee house in Fort Worth, I invested in a new Giesen roaster from Holland which could produce double the capacity of our original Diedrich machine. Just this year I opened a third location in partnership with 2 other coffee lovers who helped finance the venture and we have also developed our off-site roasterie in Haltom City, just outside Fort Worth. This Roasterie provides an increasing number of wholesale customers as well as the 3 coffee houses.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
Not at all. Most business owners I know have been through difficult times to get where they are today and I was no exception. After about 3 years of reasonable growth at our first location, we were struggling to pay the bills and profitability was a much more elusive goal than I had originally imagined. The high number of moving parts in operating a coffee house from the multiple fridges, machines, building issues and my insistence on not investing a penny in advertising, which I believe has become so all pervasive in our society that it robs people of their dignity and sells it back to them at the price of the product – that’s another story. However, the unexpected intervention of a couple of customers who offered to invest in our business and helped us transcend the cash flow issues at the time saw us progress to our 11th year with no further financial issues to speak of and the business and community now operates with a general manager and managers in all 4 locations, giving me a little more freedom and the necessity to only work part time while I sit and enjoy a cup of coffee in my own place. My initial 6 months to 12 months period involved working 16 – 18 hours a day just to give you some perspective. I rarely had more than 4 hours sleep a night and I remember one famous occasion when someone behind me had to sound their horn to wake me up at stop lights as I had fallen asleep the moment I brought my car to a stop on one of my many supply runs!
Please tell us about Buon Giorno Coffee.
We sell coffee, beans, drinks and other beverages. We pride ourselves in maintaining the Italian espresso tradition and have had many Italians and other Europeans visit and say how authentic our product is. We also promote an atmosphere that brings people together in community, though we don’t manipulate that I hope, we have seen hundreds of people forge relationships, start businesses, get married etc based around our coffee houses. Just to give you an idea, I am also ordained to perform marriages and have now married 7 couples whose relationship had some significant involvement in the coffee houses. I am most proud of this last element of what we have done. We have extremely favorable ratings on all online reviewing sites and a most frequent comment has to do with the atmosphere, the team that work there and the way in which it has impacted people beyond the cup of coffee. I started this business not with an aim to make money, but to create such a community and make enough money to sustain it and give my wife and I a reasonable living. We have succeeded in doing this and more – for which we are grateful.
If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
Not much to be honest. Perhaps sought to increase the initial funding. It seems that everyone I spoke to has told me to expect funding to be greater than anticipated, and that was indeed the case. We opened on what was a relative shoestring and more than half of the equipment we purchased was used. This created its own problems, but I pleased to say that most of what we now have has been replaced as new. In as much as this has exceeded expectations in what it has produced, I think I would do most things in exactly the same way, though naturally we have learned a lot along the way – one example being the culture we have created around our team which makes us very unusual. We do not have any disciplinary procedures and have only effectively ‘fired’ 3 people in 11 years. What we have done is sought to create a family environment with a written charter based on love, respect, loyalty and honesty that all employees are asked to sign up to before working with us. Any issues encountered are dealt with through open and honest communication with strict guidelines on not talking to others but to the person concerned and seeking to work through things that are an issue. This goes for all of us including management and owners. I think this has created an environment of trust and respect that spills over into the way people are treated who come through our doors.
Contact Info:
- Address: 2350 Hall Johnson Rd
Suite 100
Grapevine, TX 76051915 Florence St
Fort Worth, TX 761021901 W Southlake BLVD
Suite 100
Southlake, TX 76092 - Website: www.bgcoffee.net
- Phone: 8174217300, 8176989888, 8179121483
- Email: david@bgcoffee.net
- Facebook: Buon Giorno Coffee
- Twitter: davidbuongiorno
- Yelp: Various
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