It's not that easy to open a boutique cafe. You should not only have feelings but also understand business.

Follow the caf é (Wechat official account vdailycom) and found that Beautiful Cafe opened a small shop of its own.

-Segmentation line-

Do we all fantasize about opening a clean, elegant, affectionate cafe where we can work, live, fall in love, talk about life, no more suits, high heels and bosses, and make a complete break with the monotonous work life?

If that's why you want to open a coffee shop, then I advise you not to act immediately. Because the truth may be a far cry from what you think.

That day, when I was walking on the Coffee Street of Wudaoying in Beijing, I saw many shops "under construction" again and began a new round of makeover. The story of "watching him rise a tall building, entertain guests, and see his building collapse" has happened countless times here. According to my limited observation, every cafe here has a short life cycle and basically closed down before the investment was recovered, and the owners'"coffee shop dream" was also shattered.

You can say that it doesn't matter if your dream is shattered, it's just starting all over again. But have you ever considered the gory reality of grafting on your dream: do you want to pay back the hundreds of thousands of yuan you borrowed from your parents? How to settle the final payment of the design and construction team? Where does the money owed to suppliers come from? If personal credit is gone, can we start all over again?

If you haven't thought about these questions clearly, you are not a qualified entrepreneur yet. A qualified entrepreneur should consider whether he can bear the result of failure before taking the first step. So, before you make up your mind to open a coffee shop, I want to talk to you about what it's like to really open a coffee shop.

To be a cafe requires several times the effort of being a Lanzhou ramen restaurant, but the economic return may be even less.

In reality, it is far less poetic than imagined to take care of a cafe. Opening a coffee shop is different from opening a "Lanzhou ramen restaurant". Its management is quite complex and cumbersome, and it costs several times more than being a ramen restaurant, but the economic return may be less.

In China (or Asia), cafes represent a relatively refined way of life. Although it costs 40 yuan per capita, you generally don't ask for elegant tables and chairs, exquisite dishes, warm music, and the smile and patience of the service staff in a Lanzhou noodle restaurant, while in a cafe, these are all "basic configurations." If you are an aspiring curator and want to build a caf é above average, you have to worry about more details. Small to napkin folding, oil-absorbing paper shape, service staff's standing posture, to catering style, shop culture and so on.

Compared with other industries, cafes can not offer employees too high salaries, so how to make employees do things with a "boss mentality"? In addition to providing a salary, you must care about their lives. You can say it's none of my business, but you're sure to lose an employee. This is not something out of nothing, but the real situation I have faced.

You still need to keep learning. To be a cafe, it is far from enough to know coffee.

To be able to choose a location, you need a basic understanding of the real estate industry

To understand design, you need to understand the decoration industry

You need to know how to register a company, as well as the financial problems related to the company

You need to understand "social insurance and house fund" thoroughly from the point of view of the boss, not the employee.

You need to know what to do with water, electricity and natural gas.

You need to keep track of the vegetable and fruit markets.

You need to understand all the laws and regulations of the catering industry.

……

I am not scaremongering, because if any of the above links are not handled properly, you may fall into a "pit" and allow months of hard work-it may be a fine for industry and commerce or fire fighting, a sudden change of heart from the landlord, a POS (Point of Sale Intelligence Management system) fraud, or a premeditated encounter.

Opening a coffee shop is a pleasure, and it brings you more spiritual enjoyment than opening a Lanzhou ramen restaurant, but at the same time, opening a coffee shop is also painful, it will bring you more hard work and frustration: this is the real experience of opening a coffee shop.

Need feelings, but also need to understand business

There is no doubt that it takes emotion to open a coffee shop.

When financial gains are out of proportion to your investment, and when you feel frustrated and depressed, the ideal and passion that transcends business is what motivates you to keep going.

However, feelings do not solve all problems.

Feelings work when you lose money for 10 days, but can you hold on when you lose money for a month, two months, or three months? According to my limited observation of the industry, many small owners can't bear it after losing money for two months. They may not close the shop, but their mindset has changed, and they have become worried and anxious, and this anxiety will also be passed on to employees and guests, leading to a decline in the level of service in the cafe, which leads to a further decline in turnover-this is a vicious circle.

Therefore, to open a good cafe, in addition to transcending commercial feelings, but also needs scientific strategies and methods. It is wrong for many people not to learn the basics and skills of opening a restaurant and want to open a cafe with a little spare money-which is why there are fewer and fewer well-run cafes.

Please don't get me wrong-I'm not saying that running a coffee shop doesn't make money. I can tell you responsibly that with the right methods, cafes can achieve the goal of starting a business and achieve financial success.

More importantly, due to the unique atmosphere and heritage of the cafe, this kind of entrepreneurship has a sense of spiritual pleasure that ordinary entrepreneurial projects do not have, but only if you are professional enough. The environment of the coffee shop is comfortable and romantic, opening a coffee shop is a rational thing. Don't start until you figure it out.

Related readings:

Four misunderstandings of starting a Cafe

1. The preparatory work is not enough.

Yes, you love coffee, you can make good coffee, you know the local market, maybe you've lived there since you were born, and no one knows your city better than you do. But one of the most common mistakes made by coffee shop operators is to start investing money purely on imagination without doing a good job of preliminary research and market analysis. It is true that you have ideals and motivation, but you cannot succeed with these alone. There is a lot of preparatory work for you to complete. For example, to calculate the flow of people at future locations, to find out how many local people drink coffee every day, to see what your competitors do, don't make blind predictions, everything should be verified by facts.

two。 Do not know the rental price of the store

Many coffee shop entrepreneurs end up in front of high rents. In order to ensure the long-term operation of the coffee shop, you must ensure that the rent does not exceed 10% of the monthly running water. Find out how much the nearby coffee shop rents, and be prepared to communicate with the intermediary or the owner of the house. Remember, if the store rent is too high and does not match your running water, it will be difficult for you to succeed.

3. Insufficient interaction with local communities and businesses

Wishful thinking that guests will come naturally when the business opens? Wrong! People will visit only if they know who you are, and if they don't interact enough with local communities, companies and organizations, people won't know you exist at all! Therefore, be sure to invite as many employees, social organizations and residents of nearby companies as possible before the opening, especially at the opening ceremony. only in this way can you have the opportunity to establish contact with these potential customers and provide a guarantee for long-term and stable business in the future.

4. Do not pay attention to detail

When the coffee is ready, the coffee shop will be successful! Wrong! This may be the misunderstanding of many coffee shop entrepreneurs who focus too much on making high-quality coffee and ignore the importance of other details, such as keeping the store clean, the way products are displayed, the attitude of service, the selection of employees, and so on. Customers will not miss any details, so any small mistake may lead to your ultimate failure.