exterior of a tea and spice shop called Chai Cupboard, with a large replica Moai outside

The Tough Reality of Running an Independent Retail Shop in Downtown Everett

It’s been just over two years since my wife and I opened the doors at Chai Cupboard, our loose leaf tea and spice shop in downtown Everett, and I thought it would be a good time to share how things are going for our little mom and pop shop. Can we call ourselves a mom and pop shop if we’re only in our 40s? Whatever, I’m going for it.

In short: It has been and continues to be difficult!

Starting up

Let’s start with what it took just to open our doors. We spent about $32,000 of our own money (no investments, no loans) to start up. This included things like buying the initial inventory, all our jars and other supplies, furniture, and putting in new flooring.

Finding a good location in downtown Everett was a challenge. It seemed like every space we looked at was either way too large (2,000+ square feet), way too expensive ($2,000+ a month), or both. The space we eventually landed in is around 1,100 square feet and costs us just under $1,800 a month. Plus electricity and gas. Plus parking. Plus basic building maintenance, repairs, and real estate taxes. You would think that those last few things should be the responsibility of the landlord that owns the building, but this particular landlord owns such a large portion of downtown Everett that they are able to dictate the terms of the lease to dramatically favor them and there’s basically nothing you can do about it. Fun!

a Shiba Inu named Maya lays contentedly in a ray of sunlight in front of a shelf full of glass jars that contain tea

Keeping the lights on

Okay, so let’s talk about ongoing costs. All together, running the shop five days a week, we need to make about $100 a day in profit to pay our basic bills. That means we need around $200 a day in sales to break even after paying for our inventory and other supplies. So far in 2023 we’re making an average of $117 per day in sales. That’s up from $100 per day during the same period in 2022, but still far short of where we need to be in order just to break even—and these figures are with no employees, just us (mostly my wife) running the shop entirely by ourselves. If we wanted to hire just a single employee at $20 an hour for 20 hours a week, the wages, taxes, and other costs would add up to another $2,000 a month or more than $100 a day.

All of this means that we’re putting about another $1,500 into the shop every month out of our pocket to keep the doors open. To date we have made around $55,000 in revenue, but spent a total of about $128,000, meaning that over $70,000 has come directly out of our pocket to try to make this work.

Expanding our horizons

Since it has been difficult selling enough loose-leaf tea and spices to make ends meet, we have been working on a few different ideas to try to bring in more money. The biggest of these plans was to open a full tea bar, serving things like tea lattes and iced tea. Unfortunately, our space is not equipped with the proper kitchen to obtain the necessary permits from the health department.

Our landlord was open to letting us pay to upgrade their space (how generous of them!) and we were able to get a grant from the city for about $16,000 that we thought would cover the plumbing improvements and appliances we would need. Unfortunately again, once we opened up the walls we discovered that the existing drainage was nowhere near sufficient for the amount of sinks the health department requires. Fixing this would require considerably more work than we originally expected, including cutting a trench into the concrete floor. Between the extra drainage work and the extreme inflation that ratcheted up the cost of everything else while we tried to figure it all out, the total cost of the project ballooned to over $50,000. three glass tea brewers, each with tea currently brewingWe applied for a second grant in hopes of still moving forward, but were denied. So the full tea bar idea is dead unless we find a whole new location with a proper restaurant kitchen, which would of course have much higher rent, somewhat negating the benefit of opening the tea bar at all.

Thankfully as long as we only serve hot tea in a to-go cup, we are not classified by the health code as a “food establishment,” so we can still do that without all of the extra sinks. We have been able to set up three tea brewers on a custom stand that I built out of hardwood, and at least provide a basic cup of tea to-go.

Building the physical and digital space

a custom-built wooden counter holding a register and some tea brewers, in a shop with brick walls and a shelf with jars in the background

Speaking of building furniture, the shop has given me a good excuse to spend some quality time with my woodworking tools. I built our custom shelves that hold all the jars, as well as the custom main counter, and I’m quite pleased with how they all turned out.

a shelf made of wood and pipe, full of glass jars with spices, in front of a brick wall

Surprisingly, building physical objects like the furniture has been easier than building things in the digital space. While we have had a basic website set up since before we opened, building a proper online shop has been a bit of a pain. Aside from the challenge of synchronizing all of our inventory with an online storefront, to get it properly set up we need to take individual photos of all 200+ of the teas and spices we sell, which is a daunting task.

Once we do get the online side of the store set up with all the photos, another idea we’ve had to increase sales is to set up a tea sampler subscription box, but the economics of subscription boxes is pretty rough. There are competitors in the space that sell a tea box for $20 that includes shipping. It would be difficult for us to make and ship a box of teas for less than $20 in actual cost to us.

So, what’s next?

We have really enjoyed running the shop, learning more about teas and spices, and meeting all the lovely people who have come in over the past two years. To date we have had nearly 2,000 customers, about 25% of which are repeat customers. We have had zero problems with crime, and only one unpleasant run-in with an individual having a drug-induced psychotic episode. Downtown Everett is a great location, and we love the increasing number of events that are happening downtown like Sorticulture, Salty Sea Days, and the Wintertide Festival & Market.

We’re convinced that our shop is a valuable addition to Everett, but it’s tough to keep pouring thousands of dollars into it every single month, and to be so far away from even being able to hire a single person to help out. It is beginning to feel like running a small independent retail shop in downtown Everett may not be viable with the current cost of rent, lack of significant downtown foot traffic, and most people’s default mode of shopping online first. We’ve still got over a year on our current lease, so we’re going to continue trying to make this work, but looking around at the other businesses downtown, it’s easy to see why they’re mostly restaurants, breweries/bars, coffee shops, or retailers who have been around forever and own their own building.

And of course, I haven’t even mentioned the other big complicating factor: In just a few weeks we’re having a baby! This means we’re going to have to dramatically cut back how many hours the shop is even open, due to the aforementioned inability to afford to hire any additional help.

Anyway, if you fancy some tea, stop on by! We’re at 2809 Colby in downtown Everett. And if you have some brilliant idea for how to make this type of business actually turn a profit, please drop me a line and share it!

a row of glass jars full of colorful spices, with white labels and gold lids, sitting on a wooden shelf in front of a brick wall

Even more collisions and near misses at the intersection the City of Everett refuses to fix

Enjoy (?) this collection of near misses and collisions collected over the past year and a half. The City of Everett has declared the existing traffic controls at this intersection to be “appropriate” and they refuse to make any changes to the design.

Previously…

And of course these are just the ones that happened while we were home and checked the camera after hearing the commotion.

Update: One of my neighbors contacted the city yet again to request some sort of improvement at this intersection and the similar one a block north. Here is the city’s reply, in part:

It appears that no crashes have been reported to the Everett Police at the intersection of 36th Street and Wetmore Ave in recent years. The intersection of 35th Street and Wetmore Ave does have an average of 1.5 reported crashes per year, but only about 1 crash every 2 years results in any injuries. While ideally there would be no vehicle crashes in Everett, the low incidence of injuries in this area is considered acceptable to the City.

Tugboat with stuck horn at Port of Everett

Listen to the tugboat’s stuck fog horn at Port of Everett that kept my neighborhood up all night

Sunday night just as I was about to go to bed, I heard a strange noise coming from outside. It wasn’t too loud so I didn’t think much of it, but then I got a notification that someone had just started a thread on my neighborhood’s Nextdoor page: “Boat horn/siren 11pm?” When I got onto Nextdoor, there were two other threads that were rapidly filling up with people complaining about the noise, which was apparently really loud in parts of the neighborhood. There was speculation that maybe it was coming from a train, or maybe a boat at the Port or the Navy base.

So of course, instead of going to bed I decided to hop in my car and go try to find the source of the noise and get it on video:

It turns out the noise was coming from a tugboat with a stuck horn, as first reported that night by My Everett News:

The tugboat horn did not stop until around 3:30 AM, keeping many people awake for most of the night. In the follow-up story the next day on My Everett News, they included a photo of the offending boat, which you can actually see in my video starting at around 1:25:

Tugboat with stuck horn at Port of Everett

Tugboat with stuck horn at Port of Everett (click to enlarge)

A lot of people must have been disappointed that they missed out on the sound of the horn, because my video turned out to be fairly popular. It was featured on a handful of local news sites, radio reports, and even the national Fox News site:

So I guess I’m officially a video journalist now.

City Of Everett Continues To Declare Dangerous Intersections “Appropriate”

Still more dangerous driving persists right in front of my house. The city of Everett traffic engineering department refuses to make any modifications to the flawed designs at this intersection that are obviously conducive to such dangerous behavior.

Here are the latest examples:

[Update November 28 – Here’s another.]

Note that these are just the ones that we happened to see first-hand. This kind of dangerous driving happens daily, I just don’t happen to be looking and save the video.

Here’s my latest email to the city of Everett traffic engineering department:

From: Timothy Ellis
Sent: Wednesday, October 05, 2016 11:36 AM
To: Michael Brick; Ryan Sass; Engineering / Public Services
Subject: Re: FW: dangerous intersections on Wetmore Ave

I would like to reiterate my request for four-way stops on Wetmore Ave. at 36th, 35th, and 34th streets. We continue to see people driving at unsafe speeds (35-40mph) north on Wetmore and other drivers running the stop signs on the cross streets. We’ve already seen one fatality and without adjustments I am certain we will see more.

Just a few days ago the same Everett High School bus almost t-boned a van that rolled through the stop sign at 35th: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxvPcgtUktM

Please consider adding four-way stops at 36th, 35th, and 34th where the steep hills lead down to Wetmore. By adding the four-way stops it would 1) discourage through traffic from using Wetmore Ave, moving them instead to the much better suited Colby Ave and 2) slow all traffic through those three intersections, dramatically reducing the risk of a fatality collision.

Thanks,
-Tim

And here’s their non-response reply:

From: Michael Brick <mbrick@everettwa.gov>
Date: Wed, Oct 12, 2016 at 9:11 AM
Subject: RE: FW: dangerous intersections on Wetmore Ave
To: Timothy Ellis
Cc: Ryan Sass <rsass@everettwa.gov>, Tim Miller <tmiller@everettwa.gov>, Kevin Allen <kallen@everettwa.gov>

Mr. Ellis,

After further review of this location Traffic Engineering still finds that the existing east-west stops at these intersections are appropriate. I have contacted Sgt Allen with the Everett Police Department and made him aware of your concerns. He agrees that this is an issue of compliance with the existing stop signs and that police enforcement is the appropriate next step. He will be contacting you shortly to discuss what option the Police have to address your concerns.

Sincerely,

Michael Brick, P.E.
Associate Traffic Engineer
City of Everett Public Works
(425)257-7790

It’s only a matter of time before there’s another serious injury or fatality collision at one of these intersections. It’s a shame that the city refuses to take the appropriate measures to prevent it.

Dangerous Everett Neighborhood Intersections Result in Predictable But Avoidable Collisions

Earlier this month I emailed the City of Everett Transportation Engineering department about a pair of dangerous intersections on my street: 36th & Wetmore (which I live on the SE corner of) and 35th & Wetmore, one block north.

The main problem is that people (often on bicycles but also in cars) frequently ignore the stop signs on 35th and 36th and blow right across Wetmore Avenue, especially when heading east, since both of these streets have a steep hill leading down to the stop sign at Wetmore. This has led to many close calls already. Here are just two recent near-misses that I happened to catch on camera at 36th & Wetmore:

Here’s an excerpt from my April 5th email:

I have seen people coming down the steep hill eastbound on 35th blow through the stop across Wetmore, and when you’re coming southbound down Wetmore, you have zero visibility of oncoming vehicles from the west thanks to that row of hedges. I typically avoid driving that portion of the road at all since I am afraid I will run over someone on a bicycle or skateboard without any chance to even see them coming.

This is what it looks like as you approach 35th heading southbound down Wetmore. Note that this street view was taken in 2012. The hedges on the right are even bigger than that now. [2021 Update: The streetview below shows how large the hedges were when this post was written. Thankfully in August 2020, the hedges were finally dramatically trimmed, mostly eliminating the zero-visibility hazard.]

Last Friday, April 22, the city traffic engineer responded to email. Unfortunately, the only action the city plans to take for these two intersections is to improve stop sign visibility and measure traffic to possibly recommend “emphasis patrols” by the Everett Police for speeding on Wetmore. Neither of these solutions really does anything to address the structural problems that make these two intersections so dangerous.

Sadly on Monday afternoon 35th and Wetmore was host to the exact kind of collision I warned the city about:

Bicyclist critical after collision with Everett school bus

Everett Herald: Bicyclist critical after collision with Everett school bus

EVERETT — A bicyclist suffered critical injuries Monday after colliding with a school bus in north Everett. The man, 52, was knocked unconscious but was breathing, according to police.

The man was taken to Providence Regional Medical Center Everett. No students were injured.

The crash happened about 2:15 p.m. at the intersection of Wetmore Avenue and 35th Street. The southbound bus was carrying the Everett High School track team to Memorial Stadium, according to the school district.

Police believe the eastbound bicyclist ran the stop sign and collided with the school bus, which did not have a stop sign.

[Update: According to a May 2 update from the Everett Herald, the bicyclist has died.]

I initially requested that the city install “traffic calming circles” at these two intersections. These exist at quite a few other intersections in our neighborhood, and would serve to slow traffic in both directions. The traffic engineer rejected that suggestion, saying that “they restrict the ability of emergency responders (particularly fire department vehicles) while they have proven to provide little to no reduction in crashes or excessive speeding at locations where they have been installed.”

Therefore, my latest suggestion is that the intersections on Wetmore at 35th and 36th streets should be made into four-way stops. There is already a four-lane north-south road with a flatter grade and a higher speed limit that is designed for through traffic just one block to the west on Colby. If vehicles on Wetmore were made to stop at 35th and 36th streets, collisions like the one that happened yesterday would be far less likely.

Here is my email exchange with the city on this matter:


From: Timothy Ellis
Sent: Tuesday, April 05, 2016 1:33 PM
To: Ryan Sass; Engineering / Public Services
Subject: dangerous intersections on Wetmore Ave

Hello,

I have lived on the corner of 36th Street and Wetmore Avenue since 2011, and I am very concerned about the safety of this intersection. In the time we have lived here, we have seen many people driving much too fast down Wetmore (usually northbound down the hill), and also many people–usually on bicycles or skateboards, but sometimes in cars as well–blowing through the stop signs on 36th Street.

Frankly I am amazed that nobody has been killed yet, and I fear that it is inevitable if changes are not made.

Here are just a couple recent examples:

August 26: two bicyclists heading westbound blow through the stop sign and are nearly hit by a pickup truck heading south on Wetmore – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKUIbppnn88
April 1: a bicyclist heading eastbound blows through the stop sign and is nearly hit by a car heading north on Wetmore – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Oe708gx_KI

We also witness people driving far faster than 25mph up Wetmore on a daily basis (usually northbound as that is the downhill direction), occasionally even fast enough to catch a little air off the slight bump in the road just north of the intersection. It is ridiculous.

I would like to request that the intersection be modified in some way. I’m obviously not a transportation engineer, but it seems like the traffic calming circles solution in place at the intersections of 35th and Lombard and 35th and Oakes would sufficiently slow traffic in both directions to avoid any tragic events.

Also, I’m not personally there to witness it as often, but 35th and Wetmore has the same problems. I have seen people coming down the steep hill eastbound on 35th blow through the stop across Wetmore, and when you’re coming southbound down Wetmore, you have zero visibility of oncoming vehicles from the west thanks to that row of hedges. I typically avoid driving that portion of the road at all since I am afraid I will run over someone on a bicycle or skateboard without any chance to even see them coming.

Thanks,
-Tim​ Ellis


From: Michael Brick
Sent: Friday, April 22, 2016 11:53 AM
To: Timothy Ellis
Subject: RE: dangerous intersections on Wetmore Ave

Mr. Ellis,

Thank you for taking the time to make the City of Everett aware of your safety concerns. We have evaluated the line of sight for the intersections of Wetmore Ave with 35th Street and 36th Street, checked that the stop signs at these intersections are clearly visible, and checked crash records along Wetmore Ave.

Traffic Engineering has evaluated the line of sight at the intersections of Wetmore Ave with 35th Street and 36th Street and found them acceptable. For local street intersections such as these this line of sight check consists of measuring how far away vehicles approaching along Wetmore can be seen from the side-streets when stopped 10 feet back from the edge of the travel lanes. When stopped 10 feet from the travel lanes approaching vehicles should be visible from at least 155 feet away. The City of Everett does not check that drivers along the main road can clearly see drivers stopped on the side-streets, only that drivers stopping on the side-streets can clearly see approaching drivers on the main road. We assume that side-street drivers will respond appropriately and yield to any vehicles approaching along the main road. The large hedge on the northwest corner of 35th Street and Wetmore Ave does extend partially across the sidewalk and a letter is being sent to the property owner directing that the hedge be trimmed but this is to comply with a legal requirement that the sidewalk be kept clear and unobstructed, not to maintain sight lines at this intersection.

Stop signs on local streets should also be visible to approaching traffic from at least 155 feet away. The stop signs on the approaches to Wetmore Ave along 35th Street and 36th Street are clearly visible to approaching vehicles from at least 155 feet away. Because the eastbound approaches to Wetmore Ave along 35th Street and 36th Street are particularly steep the City has already installed “STOP AHEAD” signs mid-way between Colby Ave and Wetmore Ave to reinforce to drivers that there is a stop at the bottom of the hill. The City of Everett is in the process of replacing all of our “STOP” signs with new, highly reflective signs to improve their visibility so the signs at these intersections will soon be replaced with even more visible signs.

It appears that no crashes have been reported to the Everett Police at the intersection of 36th Street and Wetmore Ave in recent years. The intersection of 35th Street and Wetmore Ave does have an average of 1.5 reported crashes per year, but only about 1 crash every 2 years results in any injuries. While ideally there would be no vehicle crashes in Everett, the low incidence of injuries in this area is considered acceptable to the City. We will not be installing traffic calming circles at these locations because they restrict the ability of emergency responders (particularly fire department vehicles) while they have proven to provide little to no reduction in crashes or excessive speeding at locations where they have been installed.

It has been several years since the City of Everett collected speed data along Wetmore Ave near your home. We recently placed a traffic counter along Wetmore Ave in this area to collect vehicle speed and volume data. If this data shows excessive vehicle speeds at specific times of day we will forward that information to the Everett Police Department and request emphasis patrols to address the speeding at those times. As soon as we have reviewed the data currently being collected I will let you know our findings.

If you have any further traffic related questions or concerns please feel free to contact me.

Sincerely,

Michael Brick, P.E.
Associate Traffic Engineer
City of Everett Public Works


From: Timothy Ellis
Sent: Friday, April 22, 2016 4:33 PM
To: Michael Brick
Subject: RE: dangerous intersections on Wetmore Ave

Thanks for the thoughtful response. However, I do feel somewhat like my point was not quite understood. My main concern is not that the stop signs are not visible or that people are otherwise not aware of them. My concern is that especially on the steep hill eastbound on 36th, people just don’t care to stop. Adding a “stop ahead” sign and making the stop signs more reflective will likely do nothing to change that.

Also, the location that you’ve put the speed/volume strips up at 34th street are not likely (in my opinion based on my observations) to measure nearly as much speeding as we see down the stretch of Wetmore between 37th and 36th. Since that portion has the steepest hill, it seems that most of the speeders are going their fastest at the bottom as they pass through the intersection of 36th & Wetmore, and may have slowed somewhat by the time they get to 34th.

I understand the downsides of the traffic calming circles, but I also think that something more than just improving existing stop sign visibility and possible “emphasis patrols” would be prudent to prevent a serious incident from eventually occurring here. I also find it odd that the city would be willing to go on record saying that a dangerous intersection like this “is considered acceptable to the City.” That seems like the kind of statement that might be problemati should there ever be a serious injury (or worse) that results in a lawsuit.

Obviously I still think some sort of modification would be advisable, even if it were just to make the intersections at 35th and 36th into four-way stops. With a wider, flatter north-south route one block west on Colby, I don’t see the harm in intentionally slowing traffic on Wetmore.

Thanks,
-Tim