The owners of Common Groundz coffee shop – located on a formerly beat-up section of Broad Street near VCU – are trying to keep their business above Groundz.

Scott King and Mark Fichter are negotiating with creditors, cutting payroll expenses by working more shifts themselves and scrapping traditional advertising in favor of a more grass-roots approach.

Richmond.com reported Thursday that the shop might close after being open only a year.

King said revenues plummet around 50% during the summertime, when VCU students leave town. He started the business with partner Fichter in 2007.

Parking has proved a greater challenge than King anticipated. So has the competition.

"We didn't count on the fact that there would be three or four operations similar to us springing up in the area," King said. "Nor could we predict that the overall economy was going to tank when we got going."

Another problem: the transitional neighborhood. While improving, it is not quite yet a thriving business district with the sort of pedestrian traffic needed to support several coffee shops, King said.

King said he might have arrived a little early to the 700 block of Broad Street, but he said there are lots of new renovations in the area that will bring more students and more foot traffic. The building likely would have been too expensive had he waited another three years, he said.

The failure rate for non-franchise coffee shops is high, perhaps approaching 80% according to one study. A coffee shop closed in Church Hill in December. The owner wrote a eulogy of sorts blaming the City of Richmond.

Common Groundz has sunk around $165,000 into the venture. Most of that came from an angel investor, King said.

King said he and Fichter planned on paying back the loan in five years, but recently stretched it to ten years. This year the owners are paying only the loan's interest.

"We came to a crossroads back in April. We said, look things are not going well. We don't know exactly what to do. The landlord and the angel investor, we all sat down and hammered out ways to lower the monthly overhead."

Business is picking up, King said. The shop is about breaking even, although the owners aren't drawing much of a salary. Last May King had to borrow $5,700. This year the shop is bringing in a few hundred dollars.

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written by Shirley Balls, May 31, 2008

That place is a bit inconvenient, both with location and for parking, to sustain itself without VCU students. There's plenty of room for small bands to play up front, but there's a post right in the middle of the room that blocks the view, and something's always in the blender, which makes a terrible racket. Worldcup used to have such a great formula on Robinson, being cozy and such, but the new location is missing that, and is now called "Crossroads". Common Groundz has the same problem as Crossroads has. Too much steel and modern crap, not cozy or inviting enough. Top that off with it being on a part of Broad street where vagrants still hang around, especially at the bus stop right out front, and you've got a recipe for fail. The VCU area of Richmond has it's own kind of hipness, and those who try to import the hip style of other cities, especially styles which seem a bit dated, are really setting themselves up for a let down. Common Groundz would have done better in the West End, or possibly even near Tobacco Row. They love all that high ceiling, modern design, stainless steel seating crapola.

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