Good morning, welcome to Bould Brothers! I’m Max and this is my brother, Alex. We have decided that we want to share our journey, our secrets, and our attitude to business in the hope that some of you may find it interesting – “good luck with that one, Max!”
To give you some context for this collection of ideas - we are brothers and we opened a coffee business in Cambridge at the tail end of 2017, we opened our second site at the tail end of 2019 and we do things differently.
Moving forward, we want to use stories of our experiences and talk you through how we approach growing a first-class coffee business in a crowded market – how do we make quality coffee consistently? How do we approach design? What’s our hiring model? Why do we use a crazy water system? Why are we so obsessed with detail? These are some of the questions we’ve posed in our business development meetings over the years and so far we have found some pretty good answers that we’d like to share. Maybe you’ll find it interesting, maybe you won’t. Maybe you’re dying to open a coffee business of your own (though we’d advise you don’t do it anywhere near us because we’ll have no qualms taking your business down ;).
Let’s do the intros. Try not to fall asleep.
To me, Max – hi! I’m the older brother (28), the bossy one I suppose. I love great food and drink, building teams, developing individuals and teams, and solving problems. I’m really interested in learning new skills and I’m never satisfied with anything when it comes to business. Dislikes - I hate inexperienced food critics, bad work ethics’, and badly run coffee shops. I struggle not to find flaws in things that others might describe as fantastic, but ultimately business for me is about creating something special and bringing some joy to other peoples lives, even if it’s just for the 5 minutes they spend with us while they enjoy their coffee!
I wear a cap, pretty religiously. I think if I’m really honest with myself it’s because I’m worried about losing my hair (dad and grandad both as bald as they come – you know how this story goes). That, and I’m vain, so I’d need to do my hair otherwise! You’ll find me in the basement of 88 Regent Street most days, thinking about what we can do to improve, having meetings and doing boring finance things.
Hello! Alex here – let’s get into me. Who am I? I’m not going to get deeply personal but in the simplest terms, I would say I’m someone more on the creative side, a bit quirky and pretty obsessive. By obsessive I mean that if I have a strong interest in something then I want to be the best at it and I have the, maybe ever so slightly blind confidence and drive to get there. Bould Brothers has become that professional and creative outlet.
I can’t sit still for very long and I get bored easily. I’m still trying to work out whether that’s a good or a bad thing. I guess it keeps me moving in the right direction. As a whole, I’d say I have a positive outlook on life and nothing much phases me. That being said, when it comes to business, the fear of failure is definitely something that is on my mind most of the time. That might sound a little bit negative but in my opinion, if you own a business and failure isn’t playing on your mind then you’re not striving to improve and that’s the moment you’ve dropped the ball.
You’ll find me in one of our shops pretty much every day, maybe not behind the bar serving so much these days but if you really really want, grab me and I’ll make you your coffee! I feel extremely fortunate in that I have an avenue through which I can have a positive impact on the people around me and that is what is most rewarding. Having a business like Bould Brothers feels like a great opportunity to make that real and positive mark on Society.
So that’s us, in a nutshell! We hope you enjoy the ideas we share with you – stay tuned…