The next year, Uyaroglu relocated to Washington, D.C., to learn English and study business. While in college in Turkey, he opened up an internet café, which he sold six months later at a handsome profit, he says.
#COFFEE TYCOON GAME HOW TO#
Though he joyfully just worked the cash registers and boxed products, Uyaroglu says he learned some of his most important business lessons during those formative years, including how to negotiate, he says, and “dealing with people, day to day, understanding how people react to certain conversations, and where you want to set your limits, without pissing people off,” he says. “You go to a café, you relax, see what’s going on, drink, talk, meet–and that was the idea,” says Uyaroglu, a native of Istanbul.Ĭonsistently well-crafted products are the brand’s hallmarkĪt age 12, still living in Turkey, he worked at his father’s electronics store and later at a tool manufacturer run by his father’s cousin. While many customers may grab-and-go, Uyaroglu designed his shops as places for people to linger, which he attributes to his Turkish roots. The Portland, Ore.-based company, one of the pioneers of the third-wave, artisanal-coffee movement, has a roasting plant in the Red Hook neighborhood. Uyaroglu made a decision early on to focus on the brewing and serving rather than the roasting, choosing Stumptown Coffee Roasters as his supplier. “If you do your job right, they’re always going to come back to you.” Hungry Ghost makes an obsession of quality, acknowledging on its website, “We seek out baristas who share our passion for coffee and are not afraid to chase the perfect shot and coincidentally become very overcaffeinated.” The most important factor in building a customer base is the consistency of the product, Uyaroglu says. The entrepreneur invests heavily in decor for his shops, believing it makes a difference with Brooklyn customersĬonvenience isn’t enough, though, says the entrepreneur. The many subway stations near Hungry Ghost locations help ensure that traffic flow, while having multiple locations provides fiscal flexibility–if one shop’s revenue is down, the others can help support the business. “Actually, I could do five in five blocks!” Creating a coffee-shop brand has a lot to do with understanding the flow of foot traffic in the neighborhoods, because commuters typically walk the same route every day, Uyaroglu explains. “People say, ‘What, are you crazy? You’re opening three locations in five blocks?’,” says the 39-year-old Uyaroglu. But you can’t convince him he’s expanding too fast. (The fifth shop is inside NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts in Manhattan.) By June, Uyaroglu plans to open two more shops in Brooklyn and another in Tribeca. Set across the street from the LIU Brooklyn campus in Fort Greene, it’s the fourth Hungry Ghost within about a one-mile stretch. This month Uyaroglu opened the fifth location of his coffee-bar-and-café chain, Hungry Ghost, on the ground floor of a high-rise apartment building at 80 Dekalb Ave. It’s important where you get it, how you roast it, how you brew it.” “Coffee started being treated like wine it’s special. “I saw the game changing,” Uyaroglu says. His angle: he would do it better, from the espresso to the decor. Starbucks was well underway in pursuing its manifest destiny to blanket the world with its coffee shops when Murat Uyaroglu, a Turkish immigrant living in Brooklyn, decided there was room in the business for him too.
This month, Murat Uyaroglu opened the fifth location of his coffee-bar-and-café chain, Hungry Ghost (Photos courtesy of Hungry Ghost)
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