“AN ENTREPRENEUR SHOULD HAPPEN WHEN

YOU COME ACROSS AN IDEA THAT YOU LOVE.”

WORDS: LIV MORGAN

Sahar Hashemi, one of the two faces behind Coffee Republic — the New York style coffee bar chain, is listing qualities every entrepreneur should have. Of course, these traits are those that she herself possesses. “They need to work hard and have a passion for products. Entrepreneurs should be good consumers who love products, appreciate them and come across ideas that they love.”

In 1995, the first Coffee Republic was opened by Sahar and her brother Bobby. Both had

left high salary jobs; she a lawyer in London and he an investment banker in New York to pursue a dream. Having returned from a trip to New York, Sahar was raving about how much she loved the coffee bars there when Bobby had the lightbulb idea that they should

set one up in Britain. As risky as the endeavour was, Sahar has one motto in life and that

is “leap and the net will appear.”

“When I started out everything was a challenge! We were providing coffee to a tea drinking nation. No one thought it was a good idea, no one knew what coffee bars were, there were just hundreds of challenges that I’ve written an entire book on!” says Sahar.

With a vision of opening just one coffee bar, no one could have predicted the success bean that they were sowing. One coffee bar turned into two and then the continual roll out of more. “It’s much easier when you’ve got the DNA of the first one right. People sometimes
rush through too much during expansion when the core of what you’ve got, the DNA, isn’t correct. So we really worked through it to make sure we had got it right,” recounts Sahar.
Coffee Republic developed into a chain of over 100 stores with a turnover of £30 million.

Her most memorable moments from that time in her life are essentially the most ordinary, “seeing people carrying ‘Coffee Republic’ cups of coffee. That was a really great moment. And people flocking to the stores when we opened them because they thought it was such

a great idea.”

Read more about Sahar Hashemi in the June 2009 issue of WMB, on newsstands now.