09/24/2026
A more honest update from us.
First, thank you. The kindness, concern and encouragement we have received since announcing our closure have been overwhelming. We don’t want to leave everyone wondering what happened, so we want to share more of the truth while we work through what comes next.
The simple answer is that Kandu is facing serious financial difficulties.
When we opened, we were already coming out of a difficult first year of learning how to operate our trailer. Opening the drive-thru was something of a Hail Mary, and we never expected the immediate and extraordinary response we received. For those first few months, there were lines, nonstop orders and more demand than we had ever imagined.
We tried to build a business capable of sustaining that level of demand. We invested in equipment, inventory and staffing so we could serve people efficiently without burning out our team. At the time, those decisions felt necessary and responsible based on what was happening in front of us.
What we did not understand yet was how quickly things could change.
Beginning around the start of summer, our sales began to decline. They have continued declining into the school year and are now roughly 40% below what we experienced during our first months. The roundabout construction has likely contributed. The economy has likely contributed. The excitement of being brand new naturally wore off. There probably isn’t one single explanation.
What matters is that we built our expenses around a level of business that did not continue, and we did not have enough time, experience or financial cushion to adjust before everything caught up with us. That is the painful reality.
We take responsibility for the decisions we made. We invested money back into the business when saving more of it may have protected us during this downturn. We made choices based on the success we were experiencing, and some of those choices did not work out as we hoped. We were learning in real time, moving incredibly fast and doing our best with knowledge we did not yet have.
At the same time, we have been trying to raise two very young children. Cyrus was only two months old when Kandu opened, and he is still just nine months old. Soren has begun her first school experience. Our family’s needs have continued changing while both of us have been working to keep the business afloat. Somewhere along the way, trying to sustain everything began taking more from our home and family than we could continue to give.
None of this is meant to be a sob story or an excuse. It is simply the honest explanation. We got in over our heads, and now we are trying to get our heads back above water.
We are currently examining every part of the business and asking difficult questions about what Kandu could realistically look like going forward. That may mean fewer operating hours, a much smaller team, a different division of responsibilities between us, changes to our current model or other adjustments we have not fully determined yet.
We do want to come back. We are trying to find a way to do that responsibly, without immediately recreating the same problems that brought us here.
We have also heard the questions and concerns about outstanding gift cards. Those have not been forgotten. We are working through what continued operations may look like, including the trailer and possibly limited opportunities to reopen the drive-thru. We will share clear information about gift card redemption as soon as we are able to make a responsible and concrete plan but we do want you to know you will be able to redeem them.
For me personally, as Kristen, coffee is still what I want to do. Kandu has been a passion, a community and one of the hardest, most meaningful experiences of my life. I am not ready to give up on finding some version of this that can work. But I also need to be honest about my responsibility to our children and the fact that our family cannot continue living exactly as we have been.
We do not have all the answers yet. We are speaking with people, reviewing our options and trying to make decisions that are fair to our family, our employees, the people we owe obligations to and the community that has supported us.
If you have legitimate resources, professional guidance or constructive ideas that may help us navigate this, we are willing to listen. More than anything, we ask for patience while we work through an extremely difficult and complicated situation.
Thank you for supporting us, believing in us and allowing Kandu to become part of your lives. We hope this helps explain how we got here. We made mistakes, we learned some brutally difficult lessons, and we are doing everything we can to determine whether there is a responsible path forward.
We hope this is a pause and not the end. Stay tuned. 🚀👍🤍
