Coffeebythirty.com got hijacked by spammers. The volume of returned mail was so great, this domain alone threatened to shut down the entire web server on my shared hosting plan. Not good.

Rather than have my entire account deleted, the web host and I decided it would be best if coffeebythirty.com didn’t resolve to anything for a while.

But now it’s back, and boy are there stories to tell.

Today I started to revisit the shops I visited back when I knew nothing of coffee. What a difference two years makes.

While I’m still not to the level I’d like to be, my palate has certainly trained itself to distinguish good coffee from bad coffee. Today’s coffee was bad. Stale and lifeless, the beans had obviously been ground for some time; easily a few days. It tasted the same today as it did two years ago. To my palate two years ago, though, it tasted like any other coffee.

The moral? Continuously drink better coffee; today’s brew becomes tomorrow’s swill.

Coffee by Thirty isn’t going to happen. There will be a coffee house, but the 30 part is dwindling.

Coffee by Thirty came very, very close to happening back in January. Had the timing been a little different or the sun shone a little brighter, you would be enjoying a coconut mocha in the corner of my shop while I stood behind the bar, portafilter in hand, with a smug look of satisfaction on my face.

For any variety of reasons, someone, somewhere along the financial path said no toppling everything set up for the coffee house, one domino of planning after another. Within days, everything I had worked for lay in rubble at my feet.

The Hard Price of Almost

I lost a lot of time and resources chasing the fallen shop location. Shop funds dwindle under the weight of lawyers, paperwork and government interests. My own career has taken a significant hit, and with it, a toll on the family life. A second chance on a loan is very low at this state, and there are no foreseeable locations in my area. With little ground to stand the shop on, choices needed to be made.

I’m returning to the work force. Most likely until after I turn thirty years old.

But you know what? That’s okay. I haven’t quit the coffee house, nor do I have any plans to. Yes, I’ll be older than thirty when my coffee house opens, but that’s life. Anybody that claims life went as planned never had any plans to begin with. I took a risk and got bit. Hard. But that’s always been part of the game. Without a risk, I wouldn’t have gotten anywhere.

Some people will tell me I failed. Or gave up too soon. I’ve already had people tell me I still have time if I try hard enough. Maybe I can, but at what cost? I’m at the point where something will be sacrificed. The location won’t be perfect, or the decor will be wrong. Maybe I’ll have to skimp on bean quality or order a few less tables. That’s not what I want. I would much rather have my ideal Coffee by Forty than a half-assed Coffee by Thirty.

I’m still here. The site’s still here. The business is still here. It’ll just take a little longer to sell lattes. I’ll build some more equity, get better at coffee, and maybe take a vacation or two. That makes me happy.

Ultimately, happy is what this whole project is about.

This nifty little piece of tax law allows vendors to file their sales taxes a couple times a year without needing the full tax ID. It’s very handy for tiny little businesses like me. Unfortunately, I found the drawback to this tax return the hard way.

The state doesn’t want to wait for it’s money. Prepping my tax return on the Thursday after the end of faire, I happened to glance at the fine print. Taxes are due three business days after the end of the event. Three days. Of course, I was filing on Thursday, also known as business day four. Fifteen extra dollars in penalites and interest later, my tax return dropped in the mailbox, bound for the money grubbing hands of the state of Michigan.

Frankly, I feel a little gypped. Three days is not a lot of time in the business sense. Some vendors from the faire aren’t even home yet after three days. Heck, I’m not even totally unpacked yet. This whole setup seems very mobsterish - easy to get into, but following the convenience comes the unreasonable terms.

I’m still waiting for the bounty hunters to come for me.

Thanks to you all, we had a banner weekend. The Hummingbird Coffee House blew through the weekend’s stock of cold cups in a single day, prompting me to return home to fetch additional supply.

Not to mention the midday emergency milk run I made. We used twice as much milk on Satruday as any of the previous four days of the faire.

Thank you, thirsty patrons of Silver Leaf, for drinking way more than I could have planned.

Wonders of the East weekend brought us Vietnamese Iced Coffee. Celtic Celebration week brought the Iced Nutty Irishman. Both went over very well.

This week’s theme is Coronation & Commencement, in which Silver Leaf gets a new queen. To commemorate the occasion, I’ve spent the afternoon in my coffee lab (which happens to look an awful lot like my kitchen.) After several hours of concocting, I have a new special of the week.

Presenting God Save the Queen, a white chocolate mocha with a hint of raspberry, blended with ice to smoothie-like consistency. It’s velvety, icy and royal, fit for monarchs on a hot summer’s day.

Mention this blog post during Silver Leaf’s Coronation & Commencement weekend and I’ll give you $0.50 off one.

Coffee samples came a couple days ago, and I’m expecting pastry samples any time now. I don’t know what’s going to happen when the cups come.

Criminy, this is exciting.

The Hummingbird will offer a variety of coffees, smoothies, pastries and other coffee house items for your culinary pleasure and caffeine fixes.

As a huge ren faire geek, I’m ecstatic to be combining coffee with faire. Plus, it give me the chance to order a ton of new equipment.

Update:Upgrade successful, and everything appears to be just peachy.

I’m battered, bruised, and sore in various places, but I survived the National Restaurant Association’s annual trade show. It took exactly two days to go through all the booths, and I certainly have the loot to show for it, not to mention the piles of food I ate, from gelato to deep-fried mac and cheese to specialty sodas.

Even the scavenger hunt ended with great success. I expected to miss out on one or two items on the list, instead I scored every single item.

Let’s review.

One Stress Relief Ball

Not one, but three squeezy nuggets of marketing goodness. The first one we fished out by test-driving Cambro’s new tongs. The NRP booth people handed us the globe without reason, and I blatantly ripped off the cow from the Hood booth after getting totally blown off.

One Logoed Frisbee

We seriously lucked out on this; we were talking with kids’ menu developer JMS Designs about illustration, and I noticed a small pile of these puppies on thier back table.

This was the only frisbee we saw in the entire show.

One Bottled Sample

Fancy foo-foo water company, Ferrarelle, handed out bags with full-sized bottles of their mineral water. While I’m grateful for product samples, we got these almost as soon as we got to the show, and I ended up carrying these full glass bottles all day.

One Cellophaned Sample

In retrospect, I should have called this one pre-packaged sample, as I meant to include foil-wrapped and plastic-wrapped samples in this category. As my wife smart-assedly pointed out, though, cellophane is not the same as foil.

I figured this one would be easy to acheive. I was right.

One Oven Catalog

Some of these items were a little awkward to get. Many of the scavenger hunt items came from companies I really have no use for, and justifying their giveaway took a little finangling. Sometimes, I just plain came out and said “Look, it’s for a scavenger hunt.” This was always met with amusement and the item in question.

In this case, the coffee shop actually needs an oven. I learned a great deal about convection ovens from the guys at MIWE and snagged a catalog without issue.

Something Printed with the Papyrus Font

The Papyrus font is like your average pop music princess - with some touching up, it looks pretty, but there’s little substance underneath. Despite the font’s craptastic default kerning and difficult readability, Papyrus is officially my most-overused font of 2006. It’s everywhere, from major corporations with marketing people who should know better to mom-and-pop operations with Microsoft Publisher and a Kinko’s account.

I knew I would find marketing materials with the Papyrus font at the NRA show. Unfortunately, I found it more often than I could have imagined. I stopped collecting after three - it was simply too depressing.

Special bonus points go to Grecian Delight, who had the balls to print their entire piece using just Papyrus. I should note, though, despite their marketing flaws, Grecian Delight’s product is fan-friggin’-tastic. Get some Feisty Feta Spread. It’s tasty to the power of ten.

Printed Material Featuring a Celebrity Chef

In addition to being an Iron Chef and participating in a smattering of other Food Network programs, Cat Cora is also the president and Co-Founder of Chefs for Humanity, an organization devoted to raising funds and resources for various nutritional causes around the world.

Their booth was unmanned, otherwise I would have learned more about their organization. At least I got the brochure featuring a ginormous Cat photo.

Two T-Shirts

This was tricky. I had counted on failing this challege, since T-Shirts are a little pricey to just give away with baseless abandon. Still, screen printing company Chestnut Identity Apparel handed us a lovely little shirt package featuring some new Hanes stain-resistant material, and UA Chef provided us a snazzy little tee as well.

Three Business Cards of a Guy Named Dave

This one proved way tougher than I had planned. Out of about 2,000 booths, we counted five Daves. One Dave wasn’t in his exhibit, and deemed disqualified. The second Dave wore a scowl so vicious, we dared not approach his booth, let alone ask for his business card. The other three Daves where lovely sports, though, even though I only needed the services of one of them.

Four Pens

Pens - the typical giveaway of choice. I knew this would be an easy one to check of the list. I was not disappointed.

Clicking pens, twisty pens, pens that light up. I can open an office supply store with the number of writing implements people handed me.

Of course, there’s more to trade shows than inexpensive plastic trinkets. I learned a ton, got a lot of good ideas, and walked away with lots and lots of reading to do. I’ll discuss the high points and low points of the show in an upcoming post.