Booted Coffee Shop Owners Start Over in Decatur

Dan and Judy Kamdar claim when they purchased a Mocha Delites franchise at the on Clairmont Road five years ago, the center verbally agreed to allow them to competitively bid to lease the coffee shop after their existing contract expired in June 2008. But instead, the Kamdars’ contract was extended temporarily before the medical center took over the location in November to sell Starbucks products.

The VA's decision was met with opposition from some employees who frequented the Kamdars’ coffee shop. About 500 of them signed a petition urging their employer to extend Mocha Delites’ contract.

Ultimately the effort failed. The Kamdars opened their own coffee shop, Cafe Mocha, in the basement of Commerce Plaza, an office building on Commerce Drive in downtown Decatur.

Business in this location, they said, is much slower.

“There’s no booming back,” Dan Kamdar said. “We’re just trying to survive.”

The Kamdars have added heartier food options to their menu in the hopes of attracting more business. So far, the additional variety has failed to provide a bump in Cafe Mocha’s revenues.

Judy Kamdar said the transition has been tougher because of the couple’s age.

“We told (the VA) that at this age–he is 62 and I am 58–it is hard to open a new business in this economy,” she said.

“We both have high blood pressure,” Dan Kamdar said. “We both have gone through a lot of things, physically and mentally.”

Joseph Tober, the chief operating officer of the Veterans Canteen Service said the Kamdars were made aware of their status throughout the various stages of contract negotiations. He said his agency, which oversees concessions for the VA, “has no record of verbal discussions with Mr. Kamdar regarding the competitive processes involved for bidding out a new coffee contract.”

He said the canteen service informed Mocha Delites in May 2008 that its contract was set to expire on June 30, 2008, and that the contract would be renewed on “a month-to-month” basis before the canteen service took over the location.

The Kamdars do not dispute the latter half of Tober’s assessment but said that two years of “month-to-month” leases were unsettling.

“Two years, they dragged on,” Dan Kamdar said. “They didn’t give any definite timing.”

The couple appealed to Sen. Johnny Isaakson, R-Atlanta, and Rep. John Lewis, D-Atlanta, to help them negotiate with the VA. Both were responsive, Dan Kamdar said, but they said the issue was out of their control.

“Their offices tried to negotiate for us,” he said. “They were saying that it is already done... that there is nothing really that can be done.”

When the Kamdars recognized they were likely going to lose their business, they hoped that they would be able to sell it or that the VA would buy them out.

“The biggest concern was that we were not able to sell (the coffee shop) to anybody,”
Dan Kamdar said.

He said their realization that Mocha Delites would close its doors without any sort of compensation was very emotional for the couple.

“We were in tears,” he said. “We used to sell to 300 to 400 customers every day. From a quarter to six there was a big line.”

But the sales numbers for Starbucks products speak for themselves, Tober said.

From February to March, the canteen service made $71,622 in revenues in Mocha Delites’ old location, compared to the $24,472 in revenues that the Kamdars brought in during the same month-long period in 2010.