There’s a tiny cafe in Midtown with room for exactly three people to stand up inside. They open from 7 until 5 on weekdays and close at 3 on weekends. The two staff working behind the counter are always smiling and engaged. They clearly love what they do.

Lucid doesn’t have a website or another branch across town. What it does have is a reputation to be proud of, a sustainable business model, staff who care and customers who would miss them if they were gone.

This is no Starbucks. There is no grand expansion plan, no eventual IPO. Of course it’s quite possible that the team at Lucid could leverage what’s working to scale and serve more customers, the risk is that they might lose some of the magic.

It’s tempting to seek growth for growth’s sake, and worth noting that sustainable growth requires three things—a reason to make it work (preferably the right one), a plan to make it happen and a way to keep both you and your customers happy as you go.
The magic of just enough is often underrated.

Image by John Gillespie.