On the last day, we made fifteen dollars.
That's how Café Chocolat ended — a specialty coffee and single-origin chocolate shop I built from scratch in downtown Washington, DC, closed by a pandemic after three and a half years. I had left a career in corporate marketing to do it. I had no barista experience. The first time I pulled an espresso on a commercial machine was the day I installed one in my own shop.
Grounds is the book I wrote about what happened in between.
It's not a how-to guide. It's not a business playbook. It's a memoir — about what a coffee shop teaches you that a career never could: about risk, about people, about the distance between the life you plan and the one you actually live.
What's in the book
Fifteen chapters and an epilogue covering the full arc — from the moment I decided to leave a comfortable career, through the hunt for a space, building the brand, hiring staff, earning press coverage, surviving August in a city that empties out, and the final morning when I turned the key for the last time.
If you've listened to this podcast, you know the broad strokes. The book goes deeper into the parts I couldn't say out loud while the shop was still open.
Get the book
Available on Amazon and at book retailers. Paperback $16.99 · Ebook $9.99.
Free bonus with purchase
Buy the book and claim the exclusive bonus: 15 Things I Wish I'd Known Before Opening Café Chocolat — a one-page distillation of four years behind the bar.