I opened the first Kingans café in Torreón in 2011. I didn’t have a fifteen-year plan. I had a small space in Senderos, a lot of drive, and a business partner who believed in the same thing I did. Today we are more than a hundred people, three cafés, a pastry shop, a salad bar and a kombucha factory.

People often ask me how we got here. I don’t have a formula, but there are things I would do the same way again.

We open every day

Christmas, New Year’s, holidays. At first it seemed crazy. Over the years I understood that on those days people go out and many places are closed. I know it isn’t easy for my team, so we open with shorter hours on those days. But a customer who finds us open on December 25th remembers us.

Make what we sell most

Bakings started as the place that made the desserts for our cafés. Then came roasting our own coffee and, in 2019, the Karakorum factory. When you make it yourself, you control quality and cost. And what started for our own locations is now something we also sell to other businesses.

Look at the numbers every week

Most of my week goes into reports: sales by location, what moves and what doesn’t. It isn’t the glamorous part of the business, but that is where problems show up before they grow. Several menu changes came from there, like offering more individual desserts when we saw people no longer wanted a whole cake.

The apps aren’t everything

We are on Uber Eats and Rappi because they bring visibility. But once you add up commissions and everything else, ordering direct is better for the customer and for us. We also learned what doesn’t travel well. A cappuccino, for example, arrives with the foam gone flat, so on the apps we only offer lattes. Small details, but they protect the experience.

Grow where I can take care of the details

Karakorum is living, unpasteurized kombucha. If it travels too far, it goes off. That is why we chose to grow in La Laguna, and I still make many of the deliveries myself. I would rather grow slower and do it well.

What comes next

We want to supply more hotels, restaurants and companies in the region with our desserts, coffee and beverages. If that is you, or if you have an idea for doing something bigger together, write to me at lucas@kingans.com. I like hearing proposals.