When I moved to Vienna, I had no plans to open a cafe. I didn’t plan anything at all, to be honest. At first, I was learning the language. Then came the time when I had to decide what to do next. To practice the whole process—how to organize and register a business—I decided to pick something and go through the steps in real life.
I randomly chose gastronomy as my “training simulation.” Honestly, that’s what 90% of immigrants pick. But in my case, it wasn’t a conscious decision—I want to stress that—I didn’t intend to go into this field. I just wanted to go through the motions of starting a business and understand how the system works.
So it happened that the idea came up during a conversation with our little group: me, my wife, and two of our friends. The plan was to open a so-called “anti-café,” where customers pay by the hour. Back then, no one in Vienna had done that, and we thought it might actually work well. That’s why we all sat down to write a business plan around the idea.
One of my jobs in the process was to figure out the coffee part of it all. I dove in deep. I bought the book Espresso Coffee : Updated Professional Techniques by David C. Schomer. I read it and realized I’d never had anything like what he described. I thought I was drinking good coffee, but according to that book—it wasn’t even close.
So I had to find out what this amazing coffee really was and how it was made. I started going around to every café in Vienna—new ones, old ones, all of them—and tasted their coffee. Black. No sugar.
To say I drank nothing but crap is an understatement. Unfortunately, in most cafés—not just in Vienna, but around the world—black coffee without sugar or milk is straight-up undrinkable.
After nearly six months of this self-imposed torture, I started to think maybe Schomer’s book was just a fantasy. Maybe that kind of coffee didn’t actually exist.
Then one day, I wandered into a café called CoffeePirates, right across the street from our German classes.
I still remember that unbelievable moment when I took the very first sip and instantly knew—this was it. This was the coffee I had read about! Finally!!!!
I was so blown away, I started going to CoffeePirates almost every day. I’d buy their beans and brew them at home—as espresso, as filter coffee, in a cezve—any way I could.
That was my first real introduction to specialty coffee, and it totally took over my life. I fell in love, permanently.
If you, dear reader, don’t know what specialty coffee is, I’ll explain it really simply. Imagine comparing generic, mass-produced coffee to specialty coffee—it’s like comparing a stunning, high-performance, perfectly engineered car (maybe even electric, maybe with self-driving, who cares) to a beat-up taxi cab from the ’90s that’s still crawling around some sketchy part of a big city.
Yes, they’re both “cars.”
But which one would you actually want to drive every day—or even just once for the thrill?
And if you, dear reader, don’t care about cars—then swap “car” for whatever you’re into, obviously.
Now, a regular car isn’t necessarily a junker or a luxury ride, and it might be way more practical than either. But that’s a whole other story.
So yeah, I fell in love with it. And then it hit me—if it took me months of living in Vienna (!!!) to find coffee like that, maybe this was the thing. Or it was the one (if we stick to that comparison).
After some thought, some calculations (okay, who am I kidding—there was no thinking at all, it was obvious from the first sip), I decided I’d try to become, just like the four other specialty coffee shops in Vienna, someone who surprises people with the incredible world of real coffee.
As for that original project—it never worked out. Everyone else dropped off and went their own way, and I was the only one left. That whole experience turned out to be 100% useful, and I used all of it when I started my actual business.
Oh man, it’s already 8:25—I’m off to grab the best coffee of the day 🙂
P.S.
While writing this, I remembered one more thing that had a huge impact on what came next for me.
One day I had a long, really interesting conversation with Mr. Serhiy Reminny. He’s a unique and fascinating guy. He had a massive influence not just on what I ended up doing, but how I did it and the path I chose.
There was one key line that changed everything. He said:
— “I don’t recommend you get into coffee. You’re not going to achieve anything. You’ll just waste your time and money.”
And the moment he said that, I knew everything would turn out the exact opposite. If he hadn’t said that—everything would’ve gone in a completely different direction.
In fact, that’s exactly what I say now whenever someone asks me for advice about opening a coffee shop.
Serhiy gave me a bunch of “rules” that helped me reach my goal. He still says them, but very few people actually get what they mean—or know how to use them.
We’ll definitely come back to that conversation again.
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