The Coffee Shop

When you buy any business you should perform what is known as due diligence. You can pay a consultant to do this for you or you can look at the last 5 years of tax returns, check the assets and be a mystery shopper, hanging around the shop and observing the trade. Well it didn't take an MBA to realize within the first 30 seconds that this place was shot. Every year the returns grew dimmer and dimmer and whenever we made our sneak raids the damned place was shut. Eventually a visit coincided with one of the few moments of the day when the place was open and we ventured in. I have had colder welcomes but I really can't remember when, this was like I had offered the head rabbi a bacon sandwich. Whilst we sat with our nasty cappuccinos some sad lady wandered in looking for a lunch, at 11:45 she was told "I don't start lunch until 12:00". She left and took her money with her. Clearly this place is going to need a lot of work. So here we were about to buy the assets of the business and the goodwill. The assets looked like they all needed a bath in Clorox and the goodwill was clearly a negative quantity. Any sensible person would have run like a jack rabbit and found a more wholesome career cleaning sewers or squeezing boils. We, of course, made and offer there and then.