Opening a coffee shop is an idea that we have considered off and on for a number of years. The first time that we took an actual step in that direction was when we planned on moving to Chattanooga, TN.
We considered leaving the Poconos and spent a fair amount of time considering where we would like to go. There was much research and investigating. Spreadsheets were involved. We ended up deciding on Chattanooga because it checked the most boxes of any city in our list. We found and purchased a commercial building on a busy road and hired an architect to help us plan it.
It was a large building and had three different commercial spaces at street level. One of those spaces was going to be a studio/training space and in another, we decided to build out a coffee shop. We invested more than two years into the process before we decided that it was going to be overwhelming and possibly too expensive for us to complete. We were disappointed, but ultimately opted to put the building back on the market. Luckily for us, the real estate market in Chattanooga overall and the neighborhood in particular had improved so we made a small profit on the sale.
The challenge of working on a project that is 10 hours away proved to be too much and when we decided to look for another building, we decided that it should be within 1/2 hour of home. We also decided to put the idea of a coffee shop aside and focus on finding a permanent home for the yoga studio. A building that we would own so that we could have control over how it looked and functioned and would also become a part of our retirement plan.