The History of Cafe Evoke (Part 2)

This is a multi-part series discussing the history of Cafe Evoke -- from the time I started this blog to today. The posts are rather long which is why I am breaking them up into several parts. Let's continue with the history of Cafe Evoke. You can find Part 1 here. During the month of October, we began getting ready for our future by talking with the SBA about funding. We had (and still have for that matter) private financing that will work for the start-up period but thought it would be good to give the SBA a go. It ended up not being any better than what the bank was offering as far as rates and terms. We got our S-corp organized as Conversations, Inc. doing business as Cafe Evoke which was an exciting step. We now had a "real" business name. This was about the time that we begin to run into some turbulence with the lease and our newest future home. What made this even worse was the fact that my wife and I were trying to get this all worked out before heading to Portland and Seattle -- a two week trip for some coffee education. I was excited about the trip but knew it would be difficult closing the lease deal from a hotel room. The day before we hit the road for Portland, the lease was agreed upon and was on its way to Oklahoma City to be signed by our financial backer who would overnight it to us in Portland to sign and get back to the leasing agents. It was a great day and a great start to our 2 week vacation. One the 25th of October, we signed the lease! After 10 long months of planning and sweating, we were going to go back to Bozeman with a location in hand. It was a great feeling. We did not have time to sit around and enjoy it however. We had deals to make on equipment and furniture and also needed to start getting the floor plans finalized and the build-out planned. We planned to make as many deals as we could at the trade show and wanted to have it all going by the first of November when we would be heading back to Bozeman. The first 3 days (1, 2, 3) of November might have been the toughest we have faced so far in our journey towards our dreams. The lease fell through and we were put up against the problem of budgets and finding a new location. By the 15th, the lease had officially been broken. The company tried to say it was because we changed our menu but really it was for Starbucks. Go figure.. On November 22nd, we began looking for new locations. By the end of November, we had a nice little surprise in the publicity column. We were featured in US News and World Report. That was a bit of a pick me up to the end of my toughest month since I began planning the business months before. We still had some tough decisions that needed to be made but I knew that with patience, we would get to our goal. ..be bold Tagged: Cafe Evoke, coffee catering, bozeman, montana, coffee, tea, espresso