Do they have to be mutually exclusive?
It took Boaz Keeda a few years to go from new immigrant to buying his first Coffee Cart and going into business for himself. Along the way he was a bricklayer, a warehouse packer, and a security guard. What he learned on those jobs wasn’t about the individual tasks.
‘The most important thing I got from these ventures was the education,’ says Boaz. ‘I learned people skills – how to listen and hear what people were saying.’ He learned how to handle complaints, how to break ideas down to communicate them, and how to help people to get what they needed. ‘I learned that if you help enough people get what they want, you will get what you want.’
His second lesson was that you never stop learning.
‘To me, this sounded too much like school, which I didn’t like and was very happy to finish. But I soon figured out that this is the school of life; take what you want and leave the rest.’
Finally, Boaz was ready to take on the next challenge.
‘I woke up one morning and realised I could make up my own mind about what I wanted, and how to do it. I figured out I would bear the consequences (good or bad) for my results. This was liberating as well as frightening. I felt free because I realised I could effect change – change in my life and change in others. I also felt fear because if I was to be honest with myself, I could only blame myself for the result I get.’
But as they say, he felt the fear and did it anyway – and look where it took him!
When is the right time for people to join ACE?
‘People come to us in different ways,’ says Boaz, ‘But mostly they come when there’s frustration and pain somewhere in their life. Anywhere from the boss driving them crazy to feeling frustrated with their financial position, or changing circumstances like being retrenched.’
Sometimes that pain of frustration is the motivating factor, and sometimes it’s that they have ambitions to achieve more beyond their current workplace.
‘If you feel strongly about it, come and ask the question and learn about what we do. We don’t believe we can push somebody into something that’s not right for them. We share some information, we expose them as much as we can of the business.’
This means getting potential Cafe owners to spend some time in a shop, wearing a uniform and becoming part of the team and seeing what it’s like to interact with staff and customers.
And if it’s not for them?
‘That’s fine – at least they know it’s not for them. But if they like it, they might be ready for the next step.’
Cafes are not ‘one size fits all’. Shops and locations come in everything from small kiosks to cafes and café-bars, with different levels of investment for each.
As a result, our Cafe opportunities can meet different capabilities, financial goals and expectations. The business even offers a pay-as-you-go program to help new owners pay the start-up fees from their new shop’s cash flow.
‘We try to give people the best starting point to make a decision,’ says Boaz. ‘Once they see what we’ve got, they know that it is, or they know that it isn’t for them.’ Occasionally, people aren’t ready yet, but come back to Boaz a year or more down the track, and say ‘I’m ready now.’
When will you start to see financial return?
Boaz notes that a cafe, being a cash business, there’s no delay in creating an income. The business analysis conducted at the start calculates the shop will provide a wage for the owner-operator pretty much immediately.
‘People are investing a lot of money and a lot don’t have income from other sources – they need the income from the business to live. We completely appreciate that.’
It takes time to build a the business further than that, but the business analysis that calculates the cash flow and wage expects the business to reach a level of minimum profitability within the first couple of months.
‘After that we start to look at marketing strategies to build the business further.’
‘At the end of the day,’ says Boaz, ‘It’s about how they feel about us and how we feel about them.’
‘A partnership of this kind is almost like a relationship. It takes hard work but provides fantastic rewards, with some structures in place to help both parties move forward for the benefit of both parties.
If you are interested in making your dream Cafe a reality, simply reach out with 1300 884 165 and we can set up a discovery call.