We were lucky to catch up with Armando Vasquez recently and have shared our conversation below.

Armando, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Let’s start with what makes profitability in your industry a challenge – what would you say is the biggest challenge?

Commercial kitchen equipment is expensive especially when dealing with smoke, vapors and grease. Very easy to spend over $200,000 building a commercial kitchen. What is worse, is coffee bar production. As a small coffee shop, we have $25,000 worth of equipment required to produce coffee. Espresso machine, fridges, coffee grinders etc. A higher volume coffee shop could hit $75,000 in equipment and even more if they roast their own coffee. Customers expect a 32oz coffee and expect to pay only $4 for it. Customers also refuse to read the menu or learn what they are ordering. Big chains don’t help with this. Common examples, a macchiato is a 3oz hot drink, a shot of espresso with a dab of milk, customers expect a 20oz iced drink drowned with sugary flavors, cappuccino is about 5oz consisting of an espresso shot topped with several ounces of foamed milk, also one size, again customers expect to be available in any size and drowned with sugar. Imagine walking into a Wendy’s and ordering a burger expecting it to be a bowl of chili without ordering a bowl of chili. Customers then want to add sugar after sugar flavor and then alternative milks without paying the associated costs. All of this is after baristas go through regular training to master the art of coffee production. There are so so many things that can make a espresso good or bad and thats something you can only learn through experience. In the end, customers will only order 1 drink. I want to contrast this to a bar where you might pay $10-15/drink and order 3 or 4 drinks. Very little equipment, liquor is usually room temperature, maybe a small fridge or two for cold beers, and the bar tenders do not NEED experience to produce a drink. Jack and Coke, vodka redbull. $12 is standard price throughout Midtown KC for both of these impossible to mess up drinks.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I’m from Guatemala & I’ve been in the restaurant industry for about 13 years now & i always enjoyed helping people & connecting with them. I’ve worked at a Mexican restaurant where i had to learn everything from cero starting with learning the language, learning hiw to cook later became a server & had to learn how to take of customers & make them happy but remembering to smile but smiles are free & make people’s day better. After doing that Mike (my partner) & I decided to open Anchor Island Coffee. Anchor Anchor Island is place where everyone is welcome, no matter the race, color, or gender. A place where you can be yourself without being judged. We focus on taking care of our customers the best we can. We’re Latino, & LGBT owned. Our focus is to bring a unique experience to the neighborhood & all Kc. First tropical coffee shop in Kc, opened in March 4th of 2020, before covid. We serve coffee from local roasters, tea, smoothies & other yummy drinks. We serve classic coffee drinks like cappuccino, americano & lattes but we also have fun with our drinks starting with our housemade Horchatta Caffe, Blueberry Caffe, Coconut Caffe, Taro Caffe etc. What’s Caffe? Is espresso & flavored milk so basically a latte. For our food we focus on providing high quality ingredients with less preservatives, no msg & no soy. We have a good amount of breakfast options such as burritos made from scratch, bagels, French toast, Acai bowls, homemade tamales, quesadillas, tuna melt etc. We do have two floors. The first floor is like your typical coffee shop vibe, the second floor is for our customers that need a place to get some work done, host a meeting, or just hang out away from the crowd. We keep it with no music that way you can concentrate on whatever you’re doing. We’re open 7 days a week. Monday – Friday 7am-4pm & Saturday & Sundays 8am-3pm. We’re currently working on expanding.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

We opened right before covid, we barely had customers at the beginning because of it. So many bills to pay & no customers so we had to get creative to get customers in the door but most importantly not give up. In 2022 when everything started to get better a car crushed into our store front :( destroying the whole front. We felt we had no hope & thought of giving up but our customers didn’t let that happen. One of them set up a GoFundMe & started collecting money to help. The result was so amazing that we opened a week later. And here we are, about to celebrate our 4th year anniversary in March 4th

How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?

We don’t come from money like a lot of business owners. All funds came after a lot hard work to save every penny while working long hours. We knew what our goal was & we were excited to keep going until we had enough to open Anchor Island Coffee.

Contact Info:

• Website: Www.anchorisland.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/anchorislandcoffee?igsh=MXdyeWt1NTNjazdoYw==
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AnchorIslandCoffee?mibextid=ZbWKwL

Image Credits
Photo credit Armando Vasquez I have rights to the pictures since I took them myself.