Building Magic - The Cafe Neo Story

Lessons for entrepreneurs

There is a lot of talk going round about how the lack of funding is going to lead to tough times for startups. And whilst much of the Western commentary is quick to talk about how some of the best companies were founded in a recession (Square, Google, Facebook etc) there is no local champion that has been put forward for us entrepreneurs this side of town. I have no Google analogy but I wanted to put forward the example of how two brothers (me & Chijioke) from nothing built West Africa’s largest coffee chain in 2012. To be fair, when we had three locations we could have claimed that title 😀 but at our peak we had 12 locations across Lagos until we had to shut down permanently due to Covid.

But the basic premise of Neo was that coffee originated from Africa and yet every year from Ethiopia, Rwanda, Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya etc we exported our best coffee to the west and drank the remnants. We wanted to change that narrative and create a platform where African would keep the best coffee, roasted, brewed and drunk by African.

As a taster, first go and see our profile on CNN and watch the video. See how fresh we look. How confident & full of hope. Aaaaah, them where the days.

What you won’t know is that we were fighting battles of a spiritual nature to keep the chain going. Only love and conviction could keep us motivated and excited despite the setbacks that we suffered. And there were many. Whilst we were forming GenZ vibes with no pimples, life was giving us raw pepper to lick via some of our key stakeholders.

The animals took over the zoo

One day we found out that the majority of our baristas were stealing from us. Not a few but practically all. Chijioke did an MBA at Harvard but this situation firmly belonged in the “What they don’t teach you at Harvard Business School”.

How did we find out? A new barista recommended by a friend started and quit on the same day saying: “As a Christian he can’t do what the other baristas are doing”.

Come again please? One quick sting operation and we realized we were running a hornet’s net. Felt so stupid when I thought about all the motivational speeches we had given; no wonder our bonus scheme was no working. These f**#$$* had created their own incentive scheme.

What do you do when this kind of thing happens? Shut down operations because you are outraged? Not after you have taken investors’ money and owe suppliers 3 months of goods. As practicing Christians we only sent one of them to jail and pretended it was just a bad dream. You won’t see this kind of story on Hacker News but hey, welcome to the jungle and real life.

Regulators: Running a retail operation is an obstacle course but we encountered some mines. Once our liquor license had expired so we told baristas to stop selling wine. At one location, a customer convinced a barista to sell them a glass of wine despite the latter’s protestations.

“Come on, its just a glass; I have had a hard day and who’s going to find out?” Customer comes first right?

The barista made the sale. Next day the store is shut down for breaching our liquor license until we paid a penalty; that customer who enticed baristas actually worked with the local government. In other markets his actions would be entrapment and illegal. But here, just another day in the life.

Customer is King/Queen

Everyone that runs a consumer focused business will tell you how much they love their customers and are motivated to solve their problems. But when you prick that marketing balloon, they will tell you stories that belong on a therapists chair. We were not different; some of our customers ( we loved you all really 😍😍😍) used to piss us off daily. There were two types (you guys know who you are):

The squatter: He (it was alway a he) would come at 8am and if you were lucky they would buy a small bottle of water and stay the whole day enjoying our air condition and wifi without buying anything else. The worst were the ones that would come in, bring their wi-fi routers, and then go to a local restaurant for lunch and then come back to continue in their ‘office’. Such was the piss-taking that I had to physically restrain my mother one afternoon from “protecting her sons’ investment when she met one of our regular "parasites customers squatting in his usual corner nursing his morning coffee in the late afternoon.

The Feferiti - She (it was always a she) would come at all hours and play “let’s assume I am in Starbucks in Chelsea” ; she’d try to order a skinny latte with skimmed oat milk and then get upset when we couldn’t even provide a skimmed almond or coconut milk substitute. After browbeating the hapless barista for 20mins, they would get our number and call us to express their support; how it was only bececause of God they were still coming to Neo.

“ I love what you guys are doing but this is so frustrating and last time I came you had also run out of hazlenut syrup. Have you been to Starbucks (in overemphasiszed fake foreign accent). Ok you have good; well you know that Starbucks NEVER run out of these basics.”

Auntie, have you every dealt with customs at Apapa Port before? Abeg GTFOH.

And yet

And yet, we loved it all. Because we created something that didn’t exist. Created a third space where anyone could come, chill away from home, office or that friend that was tired of you squatting.

Friendships were formed at Cafe Neo, new companies started and arguably coffee culture in Lagos started through our chain. The most gratifying however were the transformation of our baristas (yes them!). Most came just because they wanted a job and were lacking in confidence dealing with our typical clientele. Many customers insisted on getting served at their table and tried to bully the baristas. In time, they grew more confident, skilled in their craft and assertive in a way that was surprising.

Equally we loved seeing customers who had never been to a true Starbucks-like cafe who, unlike Auntie, were grateful that this thing existed. Ironically it was those who could afford it the least that would come in and go on a caffeinated journey. Today latte, in two days a caramel machiatto. No airs or graces, they would mangle the pronunciations and laugh at themselves. Loved those guys.

We had big dreams to expand and be to Africa what Cafe Coffee Day was to India. In trying to achieve those big dreams however, we helped others achieve theirs in our own small way.

Ok great, but this is getting too long.

In many ways, Cafe Neo wasn’t really about coffee - that was the excuse. It was creating a third space where magic could happen. Friends could relax, companies could be formed, baristas could grow and importantly, stuck up customers would learn that perhaps they were taking life too seriously.

For me this is what entrepreneurship is about - true impact that you can touch and feel. And the commitment to go through a lot of shit because the mission is important enough. You know you are on the right track when you don’t believe you have a choice in attacking the problem; that failure is not an option.