Entrepreneur: Maya Haiman-Eilon
Business name: Mont58 Coffee
Industry: Retail
Business location: North West London
Growing your business
Founded in 2018, Mont58 Coffee started in Shai Eilon and Maya Haiman-Eilon’s garden shed with a pair of 2kg roasters. Now it’s a Great Taste Award-winning brand delivering coffee all over the UK – including by bicycle.
Shai had started roasting for himself, then family and friends, then their neighbours, before starting to explore other avenues. Maya says,“It grew organically, until the point we decided to go for it and turn a sidekick into a business.”
“We built a shed in our back garden, where we still have part of our roastery. We got a couple of small coffee roasters and started doing local deliveries.”
Maya and Shai were always keen on diversifying their revenue streams to include both wholesale clients and individual customers, the latter supported by a subscription model, which helped them to accelerate growth.
Funding options
Before starting Mont58, Maya ran her own pilates online streaming service, while Shai worked as a marketing director for TripAdvisor. These roles provided the funding foundation for Mont58.
“We didn’t want to [start Mont58] with any financial pressure. We [had] a family to support and a mortgage to pay and everything else,” Maya says. “So we actually saved for a year. We put a bit of money aside every month, with the aim of being able to not earn any money for at least six months. We thought this would give us enough space to develop what we wanted to do.”
However, Maya acknowledges the importance of exploring funding options. “There’s quite a lot of funding opportunities that no one tells you about,” says Maya. That means you may well be leaving money on the table that could help you grow your business.
“Invest some time in exploring those funding opportunities,” she advises, “and get registered on all sorts of initiatives by your local authorities, or the Government … Because if it’s not you, it is going to be someone else who gets it.”
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Running costs
“The main cost that we have is the cost of goods,” says Maya. That’s everything from green coffee beans for roasting to packaging.
“Food and coffee packaging is a nightmare if you want to do it sustainably,” she says. “It never feels like you reach a point where you are happy with your packaging. So there are always costs to do with the development of packaging.”
There are also postage costs, the salaries for their employees, and Mont58’s business energy bills. The rise in energy costs in particular has been an issue, as it coincided with the business opening a second, bigger roastery in Ashford, Kent.
“It really impacted our business,” says Maya. “The second roaster allows us to have more capacity, which was the aim, but it also uses up much more energy.”
She adds: “All of our costs have risen, and we have tried as much as we can not to transfer this on, but we’ve had to raise our prices a bit.”
“I think generally people want to support a local independent business, and everyone understood [why prices had risen],” says Maya. “But in parallel to that, everyone’s bills have gone up, and everyone feels like they have less money in their pocket.”
Fortunately, Mont58 has a loyal base of customers, especially in South East London. “We’ve seen a bit of a plateau in subscriptions, but that has been compensated for by one-off purchases. People still buy the coffee, but some might not feel like they can justify a subscription ”
Smart marketing
“Sales and marketing is still the biggest challenge for a business like ours,” says Maya. “For marketing you have to invest heavily online, the money small businesses often don’t have. And for sales, you have to really like sales, and none of us do.”
Maya and Shai have worked as smart as they can when it comes to marketing. “We’ve tried to be clever about it. We’ve done partnerships with other people, we did giveaways to get more followers,” reflects Maya. “If we did buy ads in a magazine or publication, we have always tried to get something more out of it, such as a bit of editorial coverage.”
But it’s a never-ending challenge. “I would say it takes up more than 50% of our time.”
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Investing in growth
Starting a business provides one set of obstacles. But growing your business throws up an entirely new set of problems. “The challenges of growing surprised us more than anything,” says Maya.
“I always imagined that growing your business would be a really great feeling and a good opportunity, which it is, but it is the harder thing to do. In my opinion, it is harder than starting,” she explains.
“When you start you almost have nothing to lose, and everything you do is a game. But there is a tipping point where you have to grow but you are not making enough to cover your new costs.”
And this can leave your business in a precarious position. “You invest quite a lot in order to grow, and then you feel vulnerable on the cash flow side.”
Sustainability
While you can order Mont58 coffee from anywhere in the UK, if you live in South East London, your coffee is delivered by bicycle straight to your door. It’s part of the business’s efforts to be as sustainable as possible – a decision that has benefits beyond being good for the environment.
“Whatever business you are doing, there is no other option than doing it sustainably,” says Maya. “As well as being the right thing to do, it has quite meaningful financial rewards. It is a good business decision.”
This is because of the impact going green can have on your brand – as long as you take it seriously. “For example, when we did a bit of market research about what [Mont58’s customers] value most about our brand, our sustainability ethos was what they liked most.”
And making your business as sustainable as possible can create a point of differentiation between you and your competitors. “If [Mont58’s customers] had to choose between us and someone else, they would choose us because we deliver to them by bike, our packaging is recyclable, and we pay the London [Living] wage,” she says. “Customers want to identify with businesses and brands that reflect what they think is important.”
This article was originally written by Connor Campbell in May, 2023. It has since been edited and updated.
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