on a dime
Great interiors don't need to bust your budget.
BY ED AVIS
The owners of The Pearl coffeehouse in
Blond wood furnishings create a sleek, inviting motif at Water Ave. Coffee,
Portland, Ore. Photo courtesy of Cafe Design & Architecture
C
off eehouses are generally warm, comfortable places, and getting that feel just right requires a lot of planning and
work. But it does not necessarily require a lot of money. "I designed my fi rst shop—the one I owned and that got
me into the coff ee biz—with items from resale shops and fl ea markets," says Tony DiCorpo, a consultant to coff ee shops and owner of Troubador Coff ee Co. in Cleveland. "It was 100 percent eclectic and quite charming." What does it take to design a coff ee shop on a budget? Four
things: Budgeting, planning, knowing where to economize and where not to, and being creative in your search.
MAKE A BUDGET Th e fi rst step to decorating on a tight budget is deciding how
much money you can spend on the décor. Even used furniture and fl ea market treasures cost some money. If you are working with an architect or designer, communicate
that budget with her. Th e last thing you want is a set of plans for an interior you can't aff ord. "It's not unusual for an architect or designer to gather
the specifi cations on the interior design without asking the customer how much money is allocated for it," says Tom Palm, owner of Design and Layout Services, a company that specializes in coff eehouse design. "Tell the architect or designer how much money you have."
10 | December 2011 • www.specialty-coffee.com If you're going it alone, without the help of a designer, an
interior design budget is equally important. You don't want to be swept up in the excitement of an auction and end up paying so much for a few cool old couches that you can't aff ord tables! Make a budget and keep it in front of you whenever you go shopping. Creating a budget gives you or your designer a starting point.
Th e budget will naturally constrain you or your designer's choice of furniture and decorations, but that doesn't mean a limited- budget design will be unattractive. In fact, if done well, customers will never know the budget was low when the place was built. "If you put a light fi xture in the ceiling from Home Depot
that costs $30 and another one from a designer that costs $300, not one person in a hundred will be able to tell you which one is which," Palm says.
MAKE A PLAN Don't think that those creative, charming coff eehouses fi lled
with rustic furniture and cool local art just magically turned out that way. Somebody carefully planned them. "We spent eight months on the design alone," says Justin
Durham, marketing director of Sisters Coff ee Co., which owns Th e Pearl coff eehouse in Portland, Ore. "We put a lot of thought into getting it right from the beginning." Th e Pearl is located in Portland's North Pearl District, in a
Portland, Ore., spent eight months on the interior design alone.
