The art of negotiation

My husband, his mother, and two different cafe bosses are in the process of negotiations...

Initially Caglar went to Aykbuk(little city around here) to run some errands with his friend. He came back to the house ecstatic because he had found the perfect location for our cafe venture. It was big, available, had a garden and on the sea. Sounded perfect! So they negotiated with cafe boss #1 and thought everything was fine until they went to apply for the liquor license...trouble turns out that the previous tenants had skipped out??? or something happened? (please remember this is all going on around me in Turkish- I don't speak Turkish(YET!) and need translation, Except when people talk about food, ha-ha I know most of those words but this is another blog entry)

Anyways so Caglar went to the neighbors and wondered if they would be interested in giving up their lease, with compensation of course. So many cups of tea and several cigarettes later they decided on a price. OK so now we are going to go forward with the little cafe and cafe bosses/couple #2. Then cafe #1 comes back and drops his price 6,000 YTL, oh that got our attention again.

What I have noticed about Turkish business is you always sit down together, and then first discuss where you are from, where your family is from to get a grip on what you think of each other, all while drinking tea and smoking cigarettes.

Birsen, my mother-in-law has a great business sense and always throws out there how she is a former music teacher (she's adorable really). So cafe boss #1 came back with the lower price, promises that the liquor license problems had been worked out, and neighborhood gossip. He said that the cafe bosses/couple #2's brother sold tons of marijuana and is in jail now (not that it's too big a deal for us but OK). Then the cafe couple #2 comes back with the cafe boss #1 got in a bar fight. Someone had gone onto his property and boss #1 hit him with a sledge hammer and killed the guy and is awaiting trial...uh OK??? But neighborhood drama aside boss #1's promises of a liquor license were taking to long so we(actually caglar and his mother) went back to bosses/couple #2 with a final lower offer.

So many trips, talks, government office visits later I think we will be proud owners of a cafe...