By the time my friend and I had worked out all the details, there was only one last hurdle left—the landlord’s approval. On paper, it sounded simple. In reality, it was the one thing standing between me and the dream of turning this tiny, historic space into a coffee shop.
The problem? Her lease flat-out prohibited subleases. And opening a café in the space? Forget it. Those words weren’t even in the vocabulary of most property owners in Vienna.
To make things even trickier, this wasn’t just any building. Fenster was housed in one of the five oldest buildings in the entire city. That meant every change, every decision, every “yes” was ten times harder to get than in a normal place.
So when the management company gave me their first answer—“No coffee shop”—I can’t say I was surprised. In Vienna, that’s the default.
But I wasn’t ready to give up. I asked if they could at least let the owner himself decide. Weeks later, the reply came back: another “no.”
Still, I didn’t cave. I wasn’t angry. I wasn’t even discouraged. I just kept pushing. I asked for a face-to-face meeting.
It took months to finally set a date. Vacations, scheduling conflicts, endless waiting. But eventually the day came, and I walked in to meet the landlord.
He was a kind, polite, older gentleman. He listened. He asked about my previous café. He wanted to understand my plans, not just the numbers. That first meeting ended with no promises—just his word that he’d think it over.
Weeks later, we met again. By then, I felt hopeful. After all, nobody schedules a second meeting just to say “no.”
And I was right. That day, the owner said yes. He laid out a few conditions—hours of operation, how the space could be used, and so on. Of course, I agreed to everything. He shook my hand, congratulated me, and promised an official written confirmation to make it binding.
I was overjoyed. Four months of rejection, back-and-forth, and uncertainty had finally paid off.
Here’s the part that makes it even more special: the right to sublease and run a coffee shop in that building was granted only once—and only to my company. If anything changed, those permissions would vanish, and the space would go back to being just a storage room.
By then, March was around the corner. I had to move fast—clear out the old junk, rewire the space, install equipment, and breathe new life into it.
But that’s a story for the next chapter.
For now? I needed a coffee. 🙂
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