We started looking in September 2022. We signed a lease in November 2023. In between we saw 31 places and made four offers, and we lost three of them.
The rules nobody tells you
Most shop units in Amsterdam are zoned only for shops, and turning one into a café takes a permit and months of waiting. A roaster needs its own environmental permit and a flue. Outgoing tenants often ask for goodwill, a five-figure payment for fittings you will rip out on day one. Landlords prefer chains, or people with three years of accounts. We had neither.
The ones we lost
In February 2023 we found the perfect corner in De Pijp, two streets from my first flat. The tenant wanted 85,000 euros in goodwill. A bubble-tea chain paid it within a week.
In April it was a canal-side unit in Oud-West, in a listed building with beautiful light. The heritage office would not allow a flue through the facade, so there could be no roaster. We tried to imagine a café that bought its coffee in. It took us two days to admit it was not our shop.
In June we saw a huge, cheap unit in an old shipyard hall in Noord. On the second visit, at 17:30 on a Tuesday, we counted four people walking past in an hour. We rode the ferry home without saying a word and turned it down the next morning.
Through all of it, Maksim's permit tied him to his employer, so he could not own any of these places with me. In spring 2023 he applied for a residence card as my partner, with two years of joint rent and photos from both families as evidence. It took five months. Until it came, every offer was in my name alone.
By August I had quietly accepted a head-barista job in Zuid, just in case. We gave ourselves until the end of the year.
The flat tyre
In September, Maksim got a flat on the way home and stopped at a corner bicycle repair shop in the Indische Buurt. Henk had run it for 31 years. While he pumped the tyre, he mentioned that he was retiring at Christmas. I saw it the next morning: light from two sides, a back room the size of a roaster, eight minutes from our flat.
A phone-repair chain offered Henk more. He wanted someone who would keep the hand-painted sign. I promised to restore it and drew him the shop on the back of a receipt. He still has the receipt. I turned down the job in Zuid the day we signed.
Maksim's spreadsheet
I scored all 31 viewings against the fridge list, out of 10. Only one place scored above 8 for both of us, and it was the De Pijp corner we could never have afforded. The bicycle shop scored 7.5 on my sheet. I have since decided the sheet was wrong.
If you were one of the 214 people who bought a coffee card before we had a single cup to sell, your name is on the board by the door. Come in and find it, and look up at the sign that won Henk over.
Inés, behind the bar
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