Lately I have been pulled toward philosophy, and I realized I almost forgot to talk about the most important thing: why. Why Fenster matters to me, why it matters to Vienna, and what drives everything that happens here. That’s what this chapter is about—bigger, more strategic thoughts.
So. It is OBVIOUS that any business exists to make money. Any business. If it is a business. But not everyone will do just anything for money. One person paints pictures, another sells gasoline. Each of us chooses what we will do—and, more importantly, how we will do it.
From the standpoint of profit, Fenster is absolutely a business. Rational. Pragmatic. The goal is always the same: the maximum possible profit, in the shortest possible time, for as long as possible. Simple, clear.
But the way Fenster goes about reaching that goal is not entrepreneurial in the conventional sense. At least not at first glance.
For example, we buy only the best and most expensive equipment. I will go into detail about this in the very next chapter. The fact is, we own a huge amount of unique and very costly machines, and we replace them regularly without hesitation. By the number of devices, we probably have the most professional coffee equipment experience in all of Vienna. No other café has rotated through so many espresso machines, grinders, and tools. And that is by design. Unlike most business owners, I do not even look at the price tag when I buy something for the café. That’s not exactly a “business” move.
The same goes for coffee, milk, even—pardon me—honey. I approach everything as if I myself am the main consumer. Everything has to taste good to me. And I am, God help me, unbelievably picky. Even with something as playful as a “marshmallowccino.”
We are the only place in Vienna where you can get cashew milk that we make ourselves—with only two ingredients: 80% pure filtered Viennese water and 20% organic cashew nuts. Organic, Elon! And Fenster is also the only place in the city where you can choose from a dozen different variations of the most expensive coffee variety in the world: Geisha. Including from the producer “90+” in Panama, whose coffee ranks in the top two globally and sells for over €1,000 per kilo, depending on the lot.
And the same philosophy applies to salaries. No savings there either. In fact, no savings on anything. The one condition is this: everything we spend must serve the purpose of making the best coffee in the world. For that, I will do everything I can—and maybe even a little more. That, to me, is no longer entrepreneurship. It is competition. It is sport, where profit is just the physics of motion, not the ultimate reason for moving.
So: buying cheaper and selling higher? That is not Fenster. Many of our colleagues do not understand this approach. Luckily, our customers do. And they can taste it—I hope.
For me, Fenster is a platform to create the best product in the world—from a technical standpoint and from the customer’s point of view—while at the same time remaining profitable.
And if we take coffee as an aesthetic drink, then the profession of brewing coffee—the modern “barista”—is, in my mind, purely creative. I compare it to being a painter. Our canvas is the customer’s taste buds, and coffee is our paint. Through brewing methods, we can guide and shape flavor notes to create different kinds of taste “paintings.”
And the pleasure of taste can be just as moving as the pleasure of music or a brilliant canvas. After all, our mouths, like our eyes and ears, are simply organs that receive information from the outside world. When that information is combined in a special, beautiful way—we feel joy, delight, satisfaction.
But when such creativity happens every day, with consistent quality and repeatability, it becomes—at least in part—a craft. Because at its heart, craft is simply the faithful reproduction of creative work.
So is Fenster a business, a craft, or even an art? The answer is layered. It might sound a little vague, a little self-assured, maybe even a bit “artificial.” But that’s how it really is. I will try, in future chapters, to explain more about our daily routine, and the many details that shape my perspective on this question.
As always, time to grab my morning coffee. 🙂
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