It has been a tiring few days with little sleep and plenty of anxiety, but interestingly I am still very much awake and sipping a quiet beer to celebrate, I guess, the next major stage of my life. But this is not about me – Red Bulb would not be possible without the support and work of the people around me and these are the folks that I will like to thank today.

Tammi: our real estate agent who has persisted in our often frustrating but finally rewarding search for our location. Extra points for sending Andy to help with our security system. It is definitely armed and ready for any intrusion

Mike & Team: Turning the drawings of Sching into reality; there are challenges but i think the overall result is great.

Gloria/Maria: Thanks for believing in my dream and joining the team – the road ahead is going to be even tougher and I will need both of you to show the drive and determination to make Red Bulb successful.

Facebook friends/Stouffvillites – your continual suggestions and messages of support are the reasons why i think we may just have a decent chance of doing well.

Our equipment/food suppliers – true we are paying you guys , but you have educated me so much in your respective areas and some of you have gone beyond your means to help us.

Canadian Friends: too many to name here, you have contributed money, time, encouragement, and effort to help make the dream come true. For Sching and I, the fact that we are here in Canada by ourselves, your friendship means the world to us. Some of you have followed my path from Staples to Telus and finally through Rogers, it is always great to listen to your advice and encourgament.

Friends from elsewhere: It started way back in 2002 and you have listened to my initial ideas and griping about being in a office. thanks for continuing to follow the journey.

Family: Always believing and supporting my decision with no question. Whether it is advice, support or financial, I know I can always count on you. We will not be here without you.

Kay: the first time you said Red Bulb, you have no idea how much it warms my heart. The last few days when I looked at you sound asleep when I came back from the cafe, words cannot describe how much I love you and how it makes no sense to have Red Bulb without you running through the cafe.

And finally to my wife Sienching: you have stuck with me through thick and thin, and this project would not be possible without you. Your creativity turns Red Bulb into something cool, and you are the single most important person who have turned the site into the cafe with your talents and dedication.  The tough times are always the times that demonstrates your love and you have been the heart and soul of this journey. I love you and thanks for being there all the way.

Dear Red Bulb Team

It has been over a year since you made the decision to pursue your dream of opening up your cafe. Now, with about 6 weeks to go, you are finally arriving at the finishing stretch. You have to bring it home now!

I am sure you are feeling a great deal of anxiety and everyday seems to uncover something new that you have not think about before,  or you have thought about them but have yet to take action. Sometimes you may feel overwhelmed by the number of items you have to handle and that you are running out of time to finish all the necessary tasks. On more than one occasion, you may have thrown your hands up in the air and shout out in frustration.

These are all relevant concerns and they tell me one important thing – you care about the cafe and you want to succeed. As with any new business, they will be hiccups and there will never be enough time, but you need to stay COOL amidst all the chaos.

We should all be like Fonzie from Happy Days!

Draw upon your previous start-up experience, trust your own team members, believe in yourself and your past cafe experience, prioritize your to-do list, work hard, and most importantly, keep a positive and calm mind. You have done your homework and it will translate into great results.

All the best and I look forward to seeing you at the opening!.

your friend

Red Bulb Espresso Bar

so many choices

We visited a few trade shows this show and we have seen some really nice cups and saucers. While a cup is a cup, there are several considerations like:

• volume: we are intrigued to find that 12 oz means different things in North American and the UK, but the lack of standards to sizes. Hence we have a bit of difficulty settling on the correct size for a sit-in beverage, as we don’t have the normal 8, 10, 12 oz to pick from
• function: different beverages require different cups sizes, diameter, height. Eg a latte will require a wider diameter for latte art while brewed coffee can be taller without a saucer.
• colour: the easy option is to pick red but we are considering the aesthetics of the drink and in the end, we decided that white is still the most elegant
• Price: being cheap is not an option but neither is spending on exquisite china. thankfully, we are able to meet some suppliers who are able to provide quality at an affordable price. (Note to self: please try not to break any cups)
• Features: Cups that looks radical may not be user friendly; I for one, like to loop 2 fingers through the handle – form and user-friendliness are also areas we look at.

While Sching was agonizing over the cups, saucers, cutlery, and plates for the last 2 weeks, I am simply confused about our water situation over the last month. Here’s the situation – Stouffville has really hard water with lots of sediments in it; thanks to Steve from Social Coffee, the water here measures a hardness of 400ppm CaCO3 or 23gpg and 420ppm TDS(total dissolved solids). Essentially hard water does serious damage to the pipes and machines because of limescale, and with sensitive equipment like our espresso machines, this is a big no-no. We would also need to consider other things like chlorine and other unwanted particles that will impact the taste of coffee – we all know that 98% of coffee is made up of water and the kind of water that goes into our equipment has a direct impact on the quality of our beverages and food.

It is also not easy to find the right solution out there as there are myriad solutions and companies out there, all touting their greatest technologies out there. Thanks to folks like Steve and Dawson from COAG, I am able to settle on a solution that will give us the right profile of water. Phew!!  One more thing off the list.

The best that money can buy

We have let the cat out the bag!

The most significant and visible(to the world) development is of course the banner that is put up in front of the store. The banner is the first time we communicated with the Town of Stouffville and the announcement means that the clock has officially started for us – there will be expectations and anticipation, and we are no longer just a concept anymore. We are happy that we have received some really positive messages, giving us more impetus to work harder.

The renovation efforts has been spearheaded by Sching. With her architectural background and creative eye, she is certainly doing a far better job than if the rest of the team is doing it. It is an understatement to say that renovations is a complicated and costly affair; there are so many things to consider and everything costs money – but if that’s what it takes to brew a great cup of coffee in a nice setting, that’s what we have to do. Progress has been good so far with Mike(our contractor), and if we are able to get the necessary permits from the Town, we should be in good shape for opening day in July.

This is what the building looks like 100 years ago(ScotiaBank)

Trying to get from cherries

to coffee beans in 4 months

After the euphoria of finally locating a home for Red Bulb, it dawned on me that the process of setting up the cafe has finally become a reality. It is perhaps a blessing in disguise that we did not manage to secure the first location as we ended up with more time to source out suppliers and also try out more coffee, syrups, tea, and other cafes(including those outside of Toronto). All these preparatory work has really come in useful as we set about building up the cafe.  With a target ETA time of July, this does not leave us with a lot of time.

On a high level, these are what we are looking at:

1. Renovations – Thanks goodness for Sching. With her background and creativity, Red Bulb is in good hands here – the biggest concern is whether we will run into any extended discussions with Town Hall. Hopefully, they can be fair and will not adversely disrupt our timelines.
2. Coffee & stuff – Ahh.. the key ingredients. I am thankful that we had put in a lot of hard work here and we should be able to decide on our coffee. This aspect of the journey has been the most interesting so far, and as I mentioned in my earlier blog entry, there are a lot of impressive folks out there.
3. Equipment – Most of the key beverage equipment(eg, espresso machine, grinders, etc) has been decided, but we need to nail other food-related items like pastry case, baking equipment, coolers etc. This will in turn impact the dimensions on the renovations side.
4. Supplies – It is always the small things that cause the most trouble, and there are a lot of small things in a cafe. From paper cups to napkins, from cleaning supplies to cleaning equipment, from milk pitchers to thermometers – they affects customer experience in some way.
5. Marketing – Getting the word out. Sching’s branding work has kick-started the process and we need to start the communication.  While blogs and facebook are great, we will need to reach out to the rest of the world. We like to have a booth at the Stouffville Strawberry Festival, and will need to map out a continuous plan to convince folks to give us a chance. Friends and fans (that’s you the red movement reading this post) will be critical to our success.
6. Administrative preparation – The boring stuff; but needed to make things happen, stuff including  permits, accounting, payroll, GST/HST, etc. The one interesting exception but also critical, is to make sure all of us(including our baristas) receive the right training to provide the best products and service to our customers. It is no use having the most prominent location if we scald the milk in a latte and be rude to our customers.

Of course, each of these buckets consists of numerous little tasks and inter-dependencies. With this, tax season, and also my current full-time job, I have not been posting as many blog posts as I would have liked. Nonetheless, the blog is Red Bulb’s window to our friends and I will probably give up my weekly dose of ‘24′ and Jack Bauer to provide weekly updates. This has been a plan eight-years in the making and over the next few months, everything that previously existed on paper and in my thoughts will be turned into a tangible 850 sq feet cafe. Scary..obviously! Busy…without a doubt! EXCITING.. I can hardly wait!

p/s: for fans of ‘24′, this is the last season. here are some Jack Bauer jokes for the weekend.

The green building is the home of Red Bulb in Summer

After 9 months and 3 days, countless viewing, and several lease/purchase offers, we have finally secured our location for RedBulb. It was a process that was worth enduring, despite the frustration and anxiety, as we could not have asked for a better location for an espresso bar in Stouffville. Situated on the north side of Main Street, steps away from the GO train station, and about 850 sq ft, it is just the right starter place for Red Bulb.

Stouffville is the place we want to be after starting our location research from downtown in June 2009. It brought us through some interesting neighbourhoods in Toronto, including Mid-town, Richmond Hill, Vaughan, Markham. Stouffville, while smaller than the other areas, is growing leaps and bounds and it is definitely able to support more caffeine spots in the town.  Moreover,we lived in Stouffville and this is really where we want to be, being part of the Stouffville community.

Side view - great to have windows by the side.

Throughout the whole hunting process, Tammi, our real estate agent, has shown great support and perseverance. She has drafted countless documents, done numerous viewings, conducted multiple negotiations, and knocked on all the doors on Main Street Stouffville. We are thankful to have known her and she will always be linked to Red Bulb’s first location.

I will be lying if I said that I have been optimistic about finding a location in Stouffville. It is inevitable that you start asking questions as weeks drag into months,  and there was with no results in sight. The worst thing is the inability to push things along, because it is not like I could force someone to rent/sell their place.  But as Herb(one of my customer from Starbucks)has been telling me, things happen for reason and sometimes, you just need to dig your heels in and keep moving forward.

The most crucial element is decided – now the hard work begins. These are exciting times!!

The blog has been silent for a while as we have been busy working out lease locations and possibilities these past few weeks. Nothing firmed up yet but hopefully we could settle something really soon. In the meantime, I am finalizing my search for coffee suppliers and we should be set pretty soon. Meeting 49th parallel at Vancouver and also roasters at Quebec and Ottawa next week.

Vancouver’s trip will be fun, not only because I will be seeing multiple exhibitors and also the Canadian Barista Championships, but also because I will be meeting up with friends in Vancouver. It’s been some time since i travel to BC(last time in 2008 May) and it will be great to see the ocean. What a difference a year makes – no more staying at grand hotels and taking cabs courtesy of Telus, but budget travel on limited Red Bulb savings (thanks Chris N for putting me up for a few days). It is all good though – I am really enjoying the experiences of working on Red Bulb for the last few months; it’s been a different lingo altogether.

The La Marzocco FB80 - does this not make you yearn for a latte?

La Marzocco and Synesso are generally regarded by the coffee folks to be the 2 leading brands for espresso machines – an important principle of Red Bulb is to ensure the best quality in our product offerings, and even though it costs a fair bit more to go for the best machines, it will provide our customers with the best espresso. Talks are still ongoing and hopefully we can reach a fair deal with La Marzocco. The other area I have to settle on is the drip coffee brewing machines – again I am focusing on quality and it will either be the Twin Infusion Bunn or the Fetco Extraction series with pulse brewing. I could not wait to serve out the coffee to Red Bulb’s customers.

I have also been discussing extensively with coffee suppliers, including areas like the syrups, teas, chai, disposable cups etc. A cafe looks really simple to set up but the list of inventory runs and runs, and then runs some more. Great machines must go with great coffee and I have obtained plenty of samples this week to test out the right product mix to bring into Red Bulb, in addition to all the coffee that I have drank while visiting cafes around the city.

Another big area is the non-coffee equipment that has to be brought in. This includes the oven, pastry case, coolers(kitchen and undercounter), blenders, ice-machine, kitchen sink, freezer, dishwasher, panini press, cash register, water softener, water filtration – this is of course only a partial list of items. I have been visiting both old and new equipment places and they have been an eye-opening experience, especially the price tags associated with the commercial equipment. To say that they are not cheap is the biggest understatement – I have to figure out how we can get some of these equipment used to stay within our budget.

Last but not least, we bought a bulb making tool that basically allows us to create hanging lamps from discarded bulbs.

Hanging Lamp with discarded bulbs

We intend to build 3 of these hanging lamps above our coffee bar counter and I think it fits in so nicely with Red Bulb. If you have any unused or spoilt E27 bulbs, please give us a shout and we will come and pick them up – we need loads of them.

Although it has been an extremely busy and stressful week, I have not enjoyed myself so much in a long time – I guess the passion has fueled me and it is exciting to see my seven-year cafe dream slowly turn into tangibles.  I guess it is somewhat disappointing and frustrating to find out over the past 2 days that we are not moving forward with 6130 as there are additional leasehold improvement costs that we have been asked to pay. Hey, nobody says this is easy – life always throws you a sidewinder when you least expect it and it is a matter of picking myself up and try some other place again.

Let’s move on and forward…

It is pretty interesting … that Red Bulb’s first Cafe may end up being located in a Victorian Building circa 1886. We will be taking cues from this relationship for sure. I’m thinking reclaimed wood elements with industrial cast-iron black accents, modern red mosaics and … exposed light bulbs !

This will probably be the general colour palette with punches of red.

The evolution and popularization of specialty coffee means that the number of coffee roasters has grown exponentially over the last decade. This has been great from both the retailer(cafes) and coffee farmers’ perspectives. For retailers, this means a wider and choice selection for their customers; personally I am a big believer in offering the best product to my customers and this will be one of the most important guiding principles of Red Bulb Cafe.  For the latter, growth in the coffee market means farmers are able to get a fairer deal on their coffee yield, which in turn leads to better living standards, and subsequently better coffee plantations, which will then lead to better coffee… well you get the picture.

In my research for coffee suppliers/roasters, it is common to find most roasters offering fair-trade/direct trade and organic coffee. I will be blogging extensively as my search for the perfect(or close to perfect) coffee for Red Bulb takes place over the next 2 months. My hope is that Red Bulb will be able to support a Canadian roaster that meets our requirements, and is also a responsible coffee citizen, eg  suppliers like the Kicking Horse Coffee Company. I am seriously looking at some serious caffeine loading as I try out the various roasters’ coffee.

p/s: for more insights on the coffee farming trade, check out the book ‘God in a Cup’ by Michaele Weissman.