Exactly as predicted, it took four months to collect another thousand reviews and hit that beautiful milestone: 5,000 reviews.
We did it. And I’m incredibly proud of this result and of the team behind it. In this post, I want to unpack what happened over these four months and what I’ve learned from this next chapter in our “reviews story.”
Let’s start with a bit of theory and math.
(more…)Somewhere in the summer of 2020—August, right in the middle of my very personal COVID experience (my first round)—I found out we had to move out of the original Fenster. In that moment, it honestly felt like life was over and that was it. Add to that two weeks of COVID with a 42°C fever. That’s how this insane, crucial, defining chapter in Fenster’s life began.
(more…)We listen to our guests. For real. And the latest proof of that is a full reset of how we do “brewed coffee” at Fenster. From now on, we make every filter coffee to order, one cup at a time, from any bean we have available on the shelf. Sounds pretty simple and obvious, right? In reality, it’s not nearly as easy as it sounds—and that’s what this story is about.
(more…)Yep, it finally happened. Starting today, you can order Fenster coffee with delivery anywhere in the United States. This became real after I organized and shipped our first batch: almost 150 kilos of coffee in total (about 330 lbs). We’ve got whole beans, drip bags, and coffee sticks ready to go.
(more…)This edition is about that “one thing” from the last chapter—Fensterccino. Yes, you already know that Fensterccino is a coffee drink that sits right between a macchiato and a cappuccino in terms of coffee-to-milk ratio, and we serve it in a waffle cone coated with premium Belgian chocolate. How it first got on our menu is a story I’ve already told—back then I promised to share what happened to it later on. Well, here it is. Just a little delayed.
(more…)Today (14.08.2025) we’re celebrating something I consider truly extraordinary. We’ve hit four thousand reviews on Google Maps and, at the very same time—pure coincidence—our average rating climbed from 4.5 to 4.6. I think we’ve pulled off something both fantastic and fascinating.
(more…)One of the most important questions in any business is its concept. To put it simply, here’s what I mean: a concept is the answer to three questions—what, how, and for whom you’re going to sell. Without a concept, it’s impossible to define where you’re headed or how you’ll get there. For someone my age and with my kind of interests, that clarity is essential. That’s why I—and by extension Fenster—have a concept.
(more…)This is a big one. A huge and very important topic with countless angles and nuances. A lot of people think of tips in the “old-fashioned” way, while in reality tipping today has shifted into something quite different. And I want to explain how.
(more…)This is the question. A very current one. As you already know, I’m (once again) living in the U.S. And here—both in Vienna before I left, and now in D.C. (yes, that’s what we call it here, though the “correct” name is DMV: the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area, District of Columbia)—everyone asks me the same two things:
It’s been over a month and a half now since I moved to the United States. For new readers, a quick reminder: before this, I lived in Austria for 13 years. And if you follow my story closely, you’ll know I originally come from Ukraine.
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