A Coffee Roaster’s Lessons From Scaling Up—and Back Down Again

The takeover of a small chain of coffee shops in 2018 supercharged Belleville Brûlerie’s expansion and delivered brand recognition, helping the Parisian supplier of beans land bigger clients. Soon the company’s American co-founder and majority owner, David Flynn, was overseeing a roasting operation and a mini-retail empire including coffee shops and boutiques selling at-home brewing equipment, bagged grounds, and accessories, as well as an old-world neighborhood cafe serving meals that he’d taken over a couple of years earlier—and 50 employees. But by 2019 the team was stretched thin, and Flynn felt the roasting operation was being neglected.

So after scaling up, he decided to scale back down, with no regrets. Flynn declared bankruptcy on Cuillier, the coffee shop business that Belleville Brûlerie had maintained in a separate holding company. And after initially retaining the cafe-bar, La Fontaine de Belleville, he sold that this year, too, to focus on the roasting business in northeastern Paris. Now, Belleville Brûlerie is preparing for another expansion—this time looking to replicate its success with beans—with a roasting outpost and cafe in Tokyo in early 2022. “We’re in a good place,” Flynn says.