How many $1 cups would you have to sell to make the equivalent of an engineering salary? Now work backwards from that - cost of a cup, cost of beans, transportation, water, heating the water, and all the people needed to move this, with two shifts covering the peak hours at breakfast, lunch, and dusk, plus cleanup.

Selling was fairly easy, but if you pay good wages, you get mediocre people. If you pay mediocre wages, you get terrible people. And with cheap coffee, we were cursed with either terrible people or working 14 hours a day for terrible profit.

The partners were almost as bad. The people we'd rent the spot from. The ones who moved the beans and sold the cups. The ones who handled disputes. It was just toil for most of them. I don't blame them; they're not getting rich either. At least in software, if you were willing to work 14 hours a day, you get peace.