Many people follow their passions and sometimes that leads to big businesses. If you really love something, you might be able to share it with other people and build a viable company.
The problem (and it is a big one) is that many people share the same passions. Yes, you may be very good at smoking meat, have great recipes, brew craft beer, or drink the perfect coffee bean, but many others can do it too.
Related: Popular craft brewery closes as owner files for Chapter 7 bankruptcy
Sometimes that leads to mini-booms where a city ends up with many similar businesses that somehow support each other. Customers looking for local breweries can find themselves in an area that features several craft breweries.
That's less likely to happen when it comes to other passion-based businesses, since how many cups of coffee or barbecue dinners can you have? In many cases, companies cannibalize each other.
There may even be a clear winner, the best in class, but each player diverts some of the customers, causing everyone to fail. It's very similar to what happened during the self-serve frozen yogurt boom.
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People liked the product enough that one, maybe two frozen yogurt shops thrived in a market, but once more opened, everyone struggled and few survived.
The coffee business has been a challenge
Several regional brands and breweries have gone out of business largely due to debts they took on during the Covid pandemic. The end of that period coincided with a change in consumer habits that made beer less fashionable, and many of the now-closed brands simply couldn't cover their debts.
The list of closed breweries includes Cherry Hill, New Jersey's Forgotten Boardwalk Brewing, Tampa, Florida-based King State, and even San Francisco's famed Anchor Brewing has closed its doors for good. Several other beer chains have filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and face an uncertain future. These include Roth Brewing Co. of Raleigh, North Carolina, and in May, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, SpringGate Vineyard craft brewery owner Schoffstall Farm.
It's a bleak time to be in the passion-based business game, which has also hurt roasters, producers and coffee chains. California's Frinj Coffee filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in January and Patis Bakery, a coffee chain that has multiple locations in New York and New Jersey, also filed in June.
Now, another coffee brand, Ink Coffee, has just done the same thing.
Ink! Coffee filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on June 20, reporting assets of less than $50,000 and debts between $1 million and $10 million.
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Ink! Coffee fights to survive
Ink! The cafe began in 1994 when founder Keith Herbert visited Italy to study the art of brewing coffee.
“He returned with a new appreciation for espresso and set out to make coffee for a living. On a cold winter morning, brewing hot coffee in a stainless steel cart located in Snowmass Village, ink! Coffee was born,” shared the company on its website.
The coffee brand grew to have several coffee shops and a roastery.
“Ink! The coffee beans are roasted at our facility in Denver's Rino neighborhood. In fact, you can see the beans roasting through the glass wall in our retail store across the street,” the company shared. “Elevation allows for slower roasting, so we can fully develop the unique and distinctive flavors of each of our different blends. Our roaster meticulously roasts each bean in a small-batch roaster, by hand, five days a week. “Without computers and charts, there are no charts to tell us how a certain coffee should be roasted.”
More bankruptcies:
- Popular movie theater owner files for Chapter 7 bankruptcy
- Distressed housing brand files for Chapter 7 bankruptcy and will liquidate
- Popular Restaurant Chain Shares Bad News About Chapter 11 Bankruptcy
The company's bankruptcy filing does not include a financing or recovery plan, but its cafes appear to be open and its website is still taking orders.
Ink! Coffee's said it has between 50 and 99 creditors but does not include a list of creditors.
