Oleksandr Seroshtan has already opened ten coffee shops all over Ukraine and was planning to start ten more.

Oleksandr Seroshtan has already opened ten coffee shops all over Ukraine and was planning to start ten more. Nevertheless, quarantine stopped him. Successful franchisee told us how to make splash with opening first coffee shop in a small city and explained why it was important to paddle own canoe.

Oleksandr is one of the most successful businessmen who opened AROMA KAVA coffee shop franchise. Currently he has ten coffee shops: five in Bila Tserkva, four in Vinnitsa and one in Zhytomyr. Oleksandr recalls with a smile how he started his first coffee shop in Bila Tserkva and it resulted in a real boom in the city.

He found out AROMA KAVA network quite long ago when he moved to Kyiv: ‘My wife and I liked a lot AROMA KAVA near metro station Kontraktova Ploshcha. And when coffee shop opened in our district on Kharkivska metro station we visited it to have coffee even oftener and paused to think to open similar location’.

However, it played itself out. Oleksandr found out that one of his casual friends was working in AROMA KAVA and was dealing with franchise.

‘I realized it was a sign of fate. I met him that day to get out all the conditions for buying franchise. First I wanted to open in Irpin’, Kropivnitskiy but I could not find appropriate premises. That is why I started in Bila Tserkva’. – recalls businessman the events of 2017.

On the second month after opening coffee shop went beyond all financial expectations of Oleksandr. Indeed, day and night to a small coffee kiosk there were queuing those wishing to taste fresh coffee and author drinks.

‘It was a real furor as I opened the first such a coffee shop in a city. People were queuing day and night. My AROMA KAVA became a hot spot for the whole Bila Tserkva. In six months from revenues brought by the first coffee shop, I opened the second one’. 

However, opening was not without its difficulties. Two hours before getting started, it happened to be that we are lacking enough pitchers to whip milk. At 4 am, Oleksandr had to go to Kyiv to bring them.

Instead, we had no difficulties with the staff. In the first coffee shop in Bila Tserkva there were working people already acquainted with AROMA KAVA. The majority had their relatives, friends working in the network in Kyiv. For this reason, the first team was excellent.

‘Much depends on the staff. I am always saying to my employees, 50% of success is a performance of barista.  You do have nice location, recognized brand but if the product is bad, nobody will come. In the first coffee shop the whole city was coming to my guys to drink coffee and to chat’.

Oleksandr fairly admits that he would have never started such a successful business alone from scratch,

‘I wanted to have a coffee shop but I had no idea how it worked. They explained everything to me: starting from which location should be to the drink’s standards. When I had a problem, I called managers and we solved it quickly and effectively.

You are not able to predict everything: somewhere coffee machine will not switch on, somewhere furniture will not fit’, - says franchisee.

If not a quarantine, businessman would have had twice more of locations: ‘I had quite an ambitious goal – to open 20 coffee shops till the end of 2020. A year ago I was going towards my goal but now I have to make a pause’.

However, success of coffee shop does not always depend on external circumstances but to a greater degree from businessman himself:

You need to live it and to be committed to it. I cannot entrust managing my business to someone else. If you are not living it at some point, you will miss something important. You should be there and control everything. It is important when you start to assess your capacity reasonably and rely only on yourself – emotional, physical and financial capacity.