Alex Clark and Aaron Hagegorn of New York's Ost Café. Photo: Erin Meister

Erin Meister trains baristas for North Carolina-based Counter Culture Coffee and sporadically maintains the blog Meet the Press Pot from her home in New York City. This is part of a series of tips for the caffeine-addicted.

Sometimes it seems like owning a coffee shop is on everybody's bucket list: Travel around the world, write the great American novel, retire and open a top-notch café. Last year, Alex Clark, 26, and Aaron Hagedorn, 33, checked that last one off, abandoning their steady (if somewhat boring) financial-sector 9-to-5s in midtown Manhattan for predawn mornings and late, overcaffeinated nights helming Ost Café in Gotham's Alphabet City neighborhood.

The friends traded in their office desks for Ost's beautiful corner location in an ever up-and-coming part of town -- complete with floor-to-ceiling windows and plenty of sunlight -- in order to live the proverbial dream as small-business owners... but do they think it was worth it? Leave it to the CoffeeMeister to find out.

What did you guys do before you opened Ost?
Hagedorn: We worked doing research at a boutique marketing firm that has a focus on mining -- precious and base metals -- and commodities.
Clark: Aaron started there a few months before me and left a few months before me. I moved to New York after college to do stand-up, but I had studied chemistry and couldn't find a job. I started waiting tables, and I would go to a coffee shop to write. I met one of the partners [from the firm] there, and he ended up offering me a job.
Hagedorn: I transferred to Columbia University from school in San Diego, and the student culture at Columbia is basically you're going to be either a banker or in finance. I did and do have a real interest in it, but you know, as soon as you start a job you basically start thinking about what's next.
Clark: And I thought it'd be great -- I'd have so much time for comedy! [Laughs] But then the stock market crashed and I knew I needed to get out.

So why open a café?
Hagedorn: My wife and I have long-range plans of opening boutique hotels, and I've always been drawn to hospitality and the hospitality industry, but. ...
Clark: It's not just something you just pick up.
Hagedorn: Right. So this, you know, is my foray into hospitality.
Clark: And my first job was in a coffee shop, at an independent café in Connecticut called Daybreak. They roasted their own beans in the shop. I was 16 when I started, but they let me learn and watch them, and I was there three years. I got a lot of exposure to the coffee business. I learned about buying bags of green beans from brokers, I learned about roasting and I was a barista. It was a really great introduction to coffee.

Did your job at the firm prepare you at all for business ownership?
Hagedorn: It had its moments, and it was a good experience -- especially for this, the next episode. The firm was so small that all the responsibilities fell on us, the non-partners. We learned what it takes to really get things done.
Clark: The biggest challenge for us was learning everything for the first time. Things like the fact that the Department of Buildings doesn't, you know, turn a permit around in a week.
Hagedorn: Everything took longer than we thought -- but we still turned it around pretty quick! We came from a high-pressure environment, so we were used to keeping our foot on somebody's neck to get the job done.

Were your families supportive to your career switch?
Clark: Mine was really supportive! I was supposed to go to med school after college, and they were already pretty prepared for me to not go on with those plans. So they took it in stride.
Hagedorn: Mine was the same way. My family's pretty entrepreneurial anyway -- my grandfather started a family business after World War II, and it was a typical family business in that my mother worked there, my aunts, everybody. Having their support was important, because they know what it takes. Bouncing our ideas and expectations off them and not having them say, "You're crazy," was really positive. They had that confidence in us.

Where did you get your inspiration for the café from?
Hagedorn: Our decor and ambiance is all Central European inspired. My wife and our other partner are from Slovakia -- specifically Bratislava, which is about 40 miles east of Vienna. They were able to answer questions and give us some legitimacy on the style of the café. It's not just a guy from the Northeast and a Midwestern dude deciding to open a Viennese café!
Clark: We lived in the area a number of years and didn't feel like there's a coffee shop where you'd want to sit or stay. There are places to get great coffee but not want to hang out, and then there were places where you'd want to hang out but you didn't get good coffee. We wanted to be both.

And have you been successful so far?
Hagedorn: We've been lucky enough to exceed our plans, yes.
Clark: We don't have much to complain about, for sure. The way it's caught on has been really exciting. My biggest fear was that it wouldn't catch on. There were three cafés on the street when we opened!
Hagedorn: "Were" is the operative word.
Clark: I was just afraid we'd be making great coffee but nobody would know. Those first two months one of us could go into the back room and, like, read Tolstoy -- there was just nobody asking for anything from us.
Hagedorn: But it's very much a neighborhood shop now. Everyone who works there lives in the neighborhood. We've all got a vested interest in the community. The reason we opened here is that we like it here.
Clark: Yeah, midtown is dead to me!

Do you have any advice for anybody who's thinking of changing careers to open a coffee shop?
Clark: It's a bit of a cliche, isn't it?
Hagedorn: Yeah, it's really romantic.
Clark: I'd say, "If you want to work your ass off. ..."
Hagedorn: Some people have this romantic idea of opening a café and spending leisurely days there, but you quickly find out it takes a whole lot of your time. Now we're working six days a week and we think it's marvelous because it's not seven days.
Clark: Five would be even better!
Hagedorn: But the day off is in name only.
Clark: Yeah, Aaron is "off" today, but he was up at 7a.m. to pick up supplies or put in an order, or you have to come in to make the schedule. It can be exhausting.

But are you guys happy?
Both, simultaneously: Oh, yeah.
Clark: Definitely. The worst day here is better than the best day I've had at any other type of work. Without a doubt.