Specialty Travel Books

Not bad, though I found others a bit better. It is a bit difficult to read some of the information and equate that to practical use. However, the section on teas is excellent, Not being a tea drinker, I found that helpful.

I don't disagree with the negative reviews this book's gotten, but I think it needs elaboration. If you've never run (or started) a small business before, this is an -okay- intro to various concepts you'll need. Better has been published since 1994, & there's almost no depth. To add insult, of the 243 pages only 60 really have anything to do with starting a coffee/tea retail operation. If you're thinking of getting this, save your money & read _Start & Run a Coffee Bar_ (Matzen & Harrison), which makes an effort to actually address vital stuff like sanitation & how to make a decent espresso.

The first line of the preface should tell you everything you need to know about this book: "Start Your Own Coffee and Tea Store is the result of many hours of in-depth research into the mail order industry."

Uhh... okay. You'll quickly discover that this is a generic book tweaked just a bit for the coffee business. You'll find anecdotes about carpenters, wildly varying numbers about the profitability of this business, and such sage advice as, "Although it is still possible to rent telephones through certain telephone companies, the best bet is to buy your own. They are inexpensive, come in a variety of styles and colors, and are generally covered by a warranty."

The information in here is dated (1994) and, given the inconsistencies of dollar figures from chapter to chapter, I have no idea if it was ever accurate. Despite the listing in Amazon.com, nobody had the courage to even sign their name to this book -- there's no author listed anywhere, neither on the cover nor anywhere inside.

I'm planning to return this book, if I can. Given that there were some marks in it when I purchased it, I'm pretty sure someone else had bought and returned it before me.

The paper used to publish this book could have better served mankind by burning in a forest fire.

Sorry for the harsh review but there is no good excuse for a quality publisher to put out such a generic useless book - Bill Anderson.

This book was good in the general starting a business vein. However, it really does not deal in real depth with the actual coffee/tea business. A bit of a disappointment.

There's no index. There is no breakdown by geographical area, camp type, program length, cost, or any other factor. The lengthy "directory listing" in the back of the book contains nothing but contact information, which is also available (and is in some cases easier to find) on the Internet. The "in-depth descriptions" section covers just a fraction of the camps in the directory listing and contains no information not supplied by the camps. (The "in-depth" section is also divided, for no obvious reason, into two separately alphabetized but unlabeled sub-sections, making the book harder to use if you are looking for information about a particular camp.) The first 40 pages of the book contain perfunctory how-to-choose-a-camp material that you could have written yourself off the top of your head: "Could there possibly be a camp where you can sculpt a masterpiece and water-ski? You bet!" But there is no way to use this book to find camps like that -- or any other type of camp -- unless you read every listing and personally contact every camp in the directory.