It started with a flight delay and one espresso.

In 2000 I took my first trip to Europe. Before that, I honestly wasn't a coffee drinker.

I got stuck on a flight delay in an airport in Italy, and I had my first real espresso right there. It blew me away. The flavor, the texture, all of it. I spent the next two weeks having espresso every single day.

By the time I flew home, I was in love.

Then I spent twenty-five years trying to make that shot at home. I got good at it on prosumer equipment, but I had a full-time job, so it stayed a passion and never became the thing I did for a living.

Along the way I made a lot of friends in the coffee business. People who opened their own shops. People who roasted. I picked up a real understanding of how a coffee shop actually works, and how it gets run, from the people running them.

Years later I retired. My daughters were getting to the age to head off to school, and I finally had the time. So I decided to do the thing I'd been thinking about for a long time. I was going to open my own coffee cart.

That's when I ran into the roadblocks — and one of them was that there was no operating system, no program, that really helped the solo cart operator, or the small mom-and-pop, or the small independent coffee shop. Everything was geared toward large operations.

So I set out to create something that would benefit and help the solo individual, the small shop — help them be successful, and let them reach their dreams.