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.
On a hitchhiking trip to Italy with a friend at the age of 18, we ended up in Italy and I fell in love with traditional Italian espresso. Over the years I was known as the coffee geek and went through all manner of espresso and coffee making machines and methods, eventually resorting to roasting my own coffee. As I came to the end of a successful corporate career in IT and Software, I became acutely aware of the lack of real community in the suburbs of US cities.
I felt the combination of excellent coffee and a place where the authentic community was encouraged would be possible following the model so commonly seen in historical European coffee houses and also what used to be so common in the UK pub environment. So we opened our first coffee house in 2006 with a used Diedrich roaster and predominantly young people serving with a desire to focus on serving, respect, and relationships among the team and with the customers.
This was a hard first 3 years with word of mouth being the only way in which I was happy for the business to grow, not being particularly enamored with modern pervasive advertising methods. Our patience and desire to maintain our ethical standards and focus on what was important paid off and in 2010 we were able to open our 2nd location in downtown Fort Worth. A new and bigger roaster from Giesen was added at our Roasterie in Haltom City and a 3rd coffeehouse in Southlake in 2017.
We do not have any plans to become much bigger and have refused overtures to franchise the business because the values we hold dear would probably be compromised by serving a model that focuses on making money rather than the vision that gave birth to our business in the first place. Of course, making a profit is important but mainly so the business can be sustained into the years ahead and provide my wife and I an income, having invested all our retirement funds into the original business.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
We underestimated the amount of money required to keep us in business in the early years and are grateful to those who invested to give us the ability to continue. We had to sell our house and invest all our retirement funds as it was, but we eventually turned the corner and have since been successful in generating a reasonable income.
One of the biggest challenges has been to transition from working myself for 18 hours a day to allowing others and preparing others to take on responsibilities to the point where I now have a General Manager and individual managers in all the locations to continue to uphold the culture and vision we originally had for Buon Giorno Coffee
Buon Giorno Coffee – what should we know? What do you guys do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
1. Our charter that promotes respect, loyalty, love, and acceptance right through the company and the customers.
2. The impact we have had on people’s lives. I have personally officiated at 7 weddings of customers or team members because Buon Giorno was so influential in these couples’ lives.
3. The way in which people have forged relationships and businesses through being involved with Buon Giorno.
4. The excellence we have created with our coffee and products and the way we allow people to enjoy them rather than try to sell people.
5. Sticking to our principles on not advertising but allowing our story and the unpaid opinions of others to grow our business.
What is “success” or “successful” for you?
The fulfillment of our vision to create an environment that impacts people in a positive way and is good enough to inspire people to continue to support us financially and allow the promotion of authentic community as we set out to do.
Contact Info:
- Address: 2350 Hall Johnson Rd, Suite 100, Grapevine, TX, 76051
- Website: www.bgcoffee.net
- Phone: 8174217300
- Email: info@bgcoffee.net
- Instagram: bgcoffeeco
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bgcoffeeco/
- Twitter: @bgcoffeeco
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/buon-giorno-coffee-grapevine, https://www.yelp.com/biz/buon-giorno-coffee-fort-worth, https://www.yelp.com/biz/buon-giorno-coffee-southlake-2
Getting in touch: VoyageDallas is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.
