As all regular readers know, my life is anything but mundane. In fact not at all normal and sometimes not even believable.
Living with the King is a never ending, anxiety invoking, edge of your seat thrill ride that is usually (but not always) all that thrilling from my perspective.
Being woken up at 4 am by a 300 pound, partially intoxicated (or what he likes to call residual happiness) 7 year old jumping on the bed, saying we just bought a bank may be exciting to some but when you have lived through some of these adventures, you get to be a little more wary than your first walk down “pathologically optimistic” entrepreneur’s lane.
Now I must admit that the last 4 years have seen the King diligently working on the launch of a real estate search technology that monetizes media traffic (whatever that means).
He has finally got the last stage funded and is rolling it out, so he is by no means a scatterbrain jumping from project to project but let me assure you there has also been plenty of other activity during those years while building the infrastructure and raising capital.
One of those, of course, has been the development of a global coffee franchise empire designed by a South African entrepreneur named Wilhelm Liebenberg.
Wilhelm and the King met at the Core club over a year ago where Wilhelm had launched a pop-up version of the new coffee brand and couture patisserie named Coco Safar. Since that time the King has been actively raising capital for the brand and has now informed me that we own a reasonable percentage of an international third wave coffee brand. That’s what they call it, third wave. Starbucks, I assume, was second wave but then people realized that for virtually the same amount of money they could have a much higher level of quality and generally a better experience.
The first flagship storefront is set to open in Manhattan in the coming months and then William Liebenberg and the King, along with an entire entourage, are scouting locations all over the city including Harlem because the King has declared he would like a Coco Safar within walking distance. The brand and the store finishes are amazing as you can see from these images.
Wilhelm and his wife Caroline speak passionately about the brand which they have spent years perfecting. They compare it to the highest end luxury brands, calling it the Hermès of coffee and patisserie.
I must say it is extremely impressive and we now have Coco Safar coffee beans at home and of course the precise espresso machine that Wilhelm fanatically recommended. I am still not sure if it was a good thing they met but here we go on yet another adventure.
I do recall the King talking about launching a coffee chain in Australia, when he wrote his book in 2003 entitled ‘How To Steal From Banks’.
Then we moved to America and he got too distracted, thank God.
But alas espresso was in our stars regardless and now there is talk of thousands of these things popping up all over China, Israel, Dubai in fact all over the middle east and the rest of the world.
So when people ask what it is the King actually does, I now answer “well he’s kind of a digital media, real estate, technology, author, artist, coffee baron but that could change at any moment’.
I think in future I shall just say savant and add the word idiot in front of it, depending on how he’s behaving.
From here on in, “let’s catch up for coffee” could mean anything from the corner to the other side of the planet.
I am thinking I am going to need a vacation pretty soon but I just can’t think where to send him.
Comments 3
Very impressive, indeed. Congrats! Can’t wait to receive some in the mail 🙂
The place looks beautiful. How cool is that? I’m down with a couture patisserie. I came to see your titanic post & this one snagged my attention. You certainly do have a lot going on.