How to sabotage your own business

One day, whilst out for a Sunday afternoon stroll, my wife and I found a coffee shop that was exactly to our liking.

It was quirky, filled with art work from local artists and they used genuine artisan coffee from a newly established local small scale coffee roasting business and they sold genuine home baked cakes from a local small baker who baked her cakes at home.

Over the next several months we became regular visitors on most Sundays and during the rest of the week at random intervals if we both happened to have a day off that coincided.

We became friendly with the owners and the staff and would still have been visiting their coffee shop if the following event had not happened and made almost certain we would never even consider going back there.

One day we were sat at our usual table my wife had her black coffee, my coffee was with milk and my wife said: "There's something wrong with my coffee. It doesn't taste the same!"

I tried my coffee and had to agree that it was not up to their usual high standards.

I tasted my cake and I immediately knew that it was not home made. My wife tasted her cake (mine was chocolate, my wife's was coffee and walnut) and she pulled a face. "If this is home made, I'm a..." she did not finish her sentence. 

Meanwhile the owner was chatting to a friend of hers in the cafe. "Yes, we stopped using that coffee chap. He was good, but we can get much cheaper coffee from the big wholesaler on the industrial estate. And I'll tell you something else. Since we have switched from using that woman who bakes cakes at home and started buying big catering cakes from the same wholesaler, our profit margins have shot through the roof! And our customers can't tell the difference!"

My wife looked at me and whispered: "We certainly can. And I don't want to come back if they are going to rip us off!" To which I agreed. I never give people a second chance to cheat me.

The coffee shop used to be packed but it looks to be struggling a little, sometimes closing early, these days.

And all because the owners decided to sabotage their own business by cheating their customers. What remarkable folly!