Welcome to Coffee Kings

Coffee Kings is my new blog dedicated to helping coffee business owners develop financial literacy through sharing and exploring strategies to profitability. Internet sites, trade associations such as the Specialty Coffee Association of America and trade magazines dedicated to coffee focus primarily on strategies to improve quality, freshness, product range, as well as roasting and barista skills. While these things are very important, none is possible without a profitable business to serve as host. Ultimately each of us founded our companies in order to create an income level sufficient to support our needs, our family's needs and by extension, our employees and community's needs. In the next few weeks, most of us will receive preliminary Financial Statements for 2010 from our accountants. Ideally content published here will advance your understanding of your own company, and furnish you with some tools to positively impact financial results.

One of my goals for Coffee Kings is to focus solely on financials, and how business decisions affect them regardless of the relative positioning of the company's products. Cutting edge espresso bars, and local family owned coffee shops each make decisions which impact profit. Some rely on innovation, some on consistency, some on exclusivity, others on accessibility, all use financial statements.

I have spent some time creating pages on my blog which explain in simple terms, important definitions necessary to the development of financial statement literacy. These pages are Income Statement, Balance Sheet, and Cash Flow Statement. I have also attempted to make these definitions relevant to coffee business owners and I will expand the number of pages as our conversation grows. Hopefully I can generate dialogue and suggestions from some of the industry experts I admire, and some I haven't even met. Welcome to Coffee Kings.