Do you want to open a Dream Cafe, so how to open a Dream Cafe?

Pay attention to coffee reviews (Weixin Official Accounts vdailycom ) and find a beautiful cafe to open your own shop

Once upon a time, coffee shops have replaced fast food restaurants as the first choice for parties or to spend time. In the annual entrepreneurial alliance exhibition, cafes are always voted as the top ten entrepreneurial industries, which shows that opening a cafe has a fatal attraction for many entrepreneurs. It's nice to smell coffee, talk to customers and make money every day!

Although liking coffee is a basic requirement for becoming a cafe owner, drinking coffee and opening a cafe are two completely different things."Coffee is romantic, but opening a cafe is realistic," says Chou Wen-pei, vice president of illy coffee importer Meifu Foods, who has guided more than 400 cafe owners.

Coffee Shop Lesson 1: Orientation-Dream, Have a Sense of Direction

Zhou Wenpei stressed that determining the positioning of a cafe is the first step to successfully open a cafe.

For example, is it a mobile cafe, a takeaway cafe or a seat cafe? Do you only sell coffee in the shop, or do you sell coffee + pastry, or coffee + pastry + light meals? In addition, is it a single-store operation or a complex cafe allied with different businesses (such as a bookstore)? This was something that had to be thought through first.

The business orientation of the cafe determines the capital, personnel, menu, location, and even the design and decoration of the store; the business direction must be determined first, and then other details are planned. But many shop owners, on the other hand, often first decide on the design and location, and then consider what type of cafe to open, such as "I want to open a cafe full of Provencal style," the brain is all about how to decorate Provencal style, this is the most common coffee shop owners, and the most fatal mistake.

Coffee Shop Lesson 2: Financial Planning-Opening a Shop, Making a Good Plan

The software and hardware required for a cafe are as follows:

1. Menu (menu, including coffee, pastries and light meals)

2. Productive equipment (coffee maker, oven, microwave oven, gas oven, smoothie maker, refrigerator, freezer, etc.)

3. hardware (air-conditioning, lighting, etc.)

4. vessel

5. Design and decoration (bar design, cafe style and color, table furniture, etc.)

Of these five elements, the menu is the most basic, determining what revenue generating equipment and hardware needs to be purchased, and also affecting bar design. If you only want to open a coffee shop with "coffee + pastry" at the beginning, the bar design is relatively simple; but if you find that it is impossible to maintain the operation after opening, you will find that the bar may not have space to place the smoothie machine when you want to increase the smoothie product; If you want to add a simple meal, and there is no planning kitchen at the beginning, the problem will be even bigger, and even need to redecorate the local decoration, which is a large expense. Therefore, at the beginning of the business, we must think clearly about the coffee shop sales project.

Decorative budgets are the easiest to get out of control

In terms of coffee shop funding planning, the following expenses must be included:

1. income-generating equipment

2. hardware equipment

3. vessel

4. design decoration

5. Rent (first month rent +3 months deposit =4 months rent)

6. raw materials

7. Personnel expenses (e.g. salaries of hourly workers)

8. Miscellaneous (utilities)

9. A reserve fund that can maintain the deficit operation of the cafe for at least 3 months [(rent + raw materials + personnel expenses + miscellaneous expenses)×3]

Chou Wen-pei suggests that budgets for equipment, hardware, and utensils should not be changed; the only thing that can be changed is the cost of design and decoration. As for rent, it involves the choice of location, and there are greater variables.

"Why do we always warn entrepreneurs not to start with design when opening a store?" Because experience tells us that when many entrepreneurs have one or two million dollars in cash, the first thing they do is look for a design and decoration company. At that time, they have plenty of money on hand. In order to build a dream cafe, the decoration budget often keeps increasing. Obviously, it only costs 800,000 yuan, but often by the time it is completed, it has already spent 1.6 million yuan." The rest of the funds were used to purchase income and hardware equipment. After deducting the rent and deposit paid to the landlord for four months, there was little left. As long as there was any trouble, the cafe would probably be unable to continue. It would either close down or give up.

Every penny is spent on the knife

"Some people are willing to buy a NT$3,000 chair to decorate the cafe, but others buy a second-hand chair for NT$200 and add a seat cover, and the effect is just as good," says Yen Yun-ching, who opened the Gallery Cafe with her husband after finishing her export business.

Yen Yun-ching believes that the coffee making equipment and bar are the core of the entire cafe."In fact, a good two-hole or three-hole coffee machine costs NT$100,000 to NT$300,000, which is enough to handle the customers of a 50-ping cafe," says Lin Ying-pei, who has been immersed in the coffee industry for many years and currently runs a pure take-out cafe.

Lin Yingpei reminds, must not ignore the coffee machine after-sales service, his experience is that if the Italian coffee machine failure, suppliers can not come within 3 hours, and repair the machine, then the coffee machine is no good,"because the whole day do not have to do business!"

Interior design remains flexible

In fact, the flexibility of the design decoration is very large. For the corridor cafe, at first the designer felt a headache for the long high-rise space that was only 20 ping large and different from the square pattern. However, after adapting to local conditions, he designed the warm atmosphere of a typical European corner cafe. The glass door isolated the noisy traffic outside, plus the large murals, small square tables and long chairs that occupied the whole wall, so that the corridor cafe successfully created a simple feeling different from that of chain coffee shops.

As for the pure takeaway cafe, the decoration is even simpler, as long as the bar design is good, the rest almost cost nothing.

Coffee Shop Lesson 3: Professional-Technology is not in place, everything is not discussed

Since it is a coffee shop, the quality of coffee beans and the technology of brewing coffee are the key to determining the customer return rate.

Lin Yingpei said that with the rapid pace of Chinese people's love of restaurant decoration, the decoration of a shop may be outdated after 3 years. If you only want to win by decoration atmosphere, maybe the media effect will bring crowds at first, but after the fever, what can a bad coffee shop rely on?

Zhou Wenpei suggests that since you have the intention to open a coffee shop, it is best to let the entrepreneur take charge of the bar at the beginning of the shop, and hire two or three full-time or part-time students for the outside part, which is enough to cope with the daily operation of the coffee shop. This can not only save personnel costs, but also make coffee by hand, but also avoid the situation of different coffee quality caused by the lack of manpower in case the bar staff leaves.

What do you know about coffee beans?

Many people don't even know how to make coffee before they open their shop. Zhou Wenpei believes that before opening a store, you must spend more time tasting coffee beans from other homes everywhere. In addition to training your taste, you can also study the quality and taste of different coffee beans and find out what you like.

Domestic coffee bean importers and market vendors are still many, may wish to surf the Internet or consult the industry, and bean vendors or coffee machine suppliers have provided relevant courses, to know coffee beans is not difficult.

In addition, usually read more coffee books, related speeches are best to listen to, because the threshold of coffee shops is not high, competition is increasingly fierce, only to make coffee quality, is the only way.

Coffee Shop Lesson 4: Location-Don't be superstitious about prime locations

Many people believe that the key to success in opening a store is location, as long as you open a store in a prime location, you will win. In fact, this sentence is only half right.

Usually we use A, B and C to distinguish commercial locations. For A-grade prime locations, rents are either too high or there is no market. This is why stores in prime locations usually sell high-priced products.

Many gold shops in the first-class war zone have a monthly rent of at least 200,000 to 300,000 yuan. How many cups do you have to sell a day to make up for the rent? This does not include personnel costs and depreciation of equipment. In fact, as long as the management is done properly, there can also be coffee shop spring in B-class lots.

Close by, rent disparity

Lin Ching-yi, who once opened a cafe in the office area of Songjiang Road in Taipei City, says that every penny of entrepreneurs must be spent on the knife-edge. The rent on the main road costs NT$60,000 or NT$70,000 a month, but if it is in an alley only ten meters away from the road, customers will not mind walking a few more steps, and the rent may differ by NT$20,000.

Lin Ching-yi suggests dividing the lot into department store areas, office areas, commercial areas, cultural and educational areas, entertainment areas, residential areas, traffic transfer areas, etc., observing the daily activities and crowd flow in the area in depth, and analyzing the success rate of operating cafes in the area.

Each location has a different way of rest, crowd gathering time is also different, if the cafe is open in the office area, Monday to Friday noon is the most important business hours, you can use Sunday rest; on the contrary, if it is in the entertainment area or shopping area, weekend rest is obviously not with money.

Crowd does not equal money tide

However,"crowds" do not necessarily mean "money tides." Yen Yun-ching knows this very well. When I first chose the location, I thought that the cafe would be diagonally opposite the Songshan Railway Station, and the famous Raohe Street Night Market would be behind it. There would be both traffic and the huge crowds of people at the night market, so it would not be an exaggeration to say that it was a "treasure bowl.""When the shop opened, I realized that it was not all like this!"

Yen Yun-ching says with a smile that the consumption pattern of night markets stresses speed, and many people are used to eating while strolling. They simply have no patience to enter the store and sit down to sip coffee slowly. They can only watch the crowds pass by, but the many shop assistants and office workers nearby have become frequent customers of the cafe.

On-site inspection of crowd consumption patterns

Lin Yingpei recommends that entrepreneurs spend at least a week when choosing a location, observing the local crowd characteristics and consumption patterns. Take the scheduled opening location as the center, investigate how many competitors there are within 500 meters (including chain or single-store cafes, fast food restaurants, bubble tea shops), record the number of people who enter the store every day and estimate the turnover, and evaluate how confident they are that they will be able to divide the pie or enlarge the pie if they participate in this battle.

Yen Yun-ching especially reminds us to pay attention to terrain and drainage facilities when choosing a location. Songshan District, where the Long Corridor Cafe is located, was hit hard by Typhoon Nari, and it took half a month just to clean, disinfect, and tidy up."Damage that wasn't assessed is often the most serious," she says with lingering fear.

Coffee Shop Lesson 5: Cost Control-How Much Does a Cup of Coffee Cost?

Of course, he couldn't afford to lose money when he opened a shop. But many people only know how much a cup of coffee costs, but they don't know how much a cup of coffee costs.

Usually boil a cup of coffee to use 15~20 grams of coffee beans, a pound of coffee can usually boil 25~30 cups of coffee, and a cup of coffee required creamer (or milk) and sugar, the cost is about 3~5 yuan, in addition to paper cups, tissues, stir bars and other materials. In this way, the raw material cost of a cup of coffee is roughly between 10 and 19 yuan. And don't forget, rent, utilities, personnel, equipment depreciation and other costs added, plus a certain percentage of profits is the price of a cup of coffee.

Lin Yingpei said that many shopkeepers don't know how to set prices, depending on how much their competitors order, and they also follow suit. But this lazy approach is dangerous, and when they find that they cannot make ends meet, they dare not raise prices, so they switch to cheaper coffee beans, and the vicious circle begins."This is the beginning of preparation for closing the shop!"

Coffee Shop Lesson 6: Customer Development-Building Word of Mouth

Opening a cafe is like chasing a girlfriend. It takes time to brew.

Ten years ago, coffee shops were profitable, but as competitors grew and chain cafes stepped in, it became harder to open a dream cafe with its own style. "Any conscientious coffee supplier will warn entrepreneurs not to try to make a fortune overnight by opening a coffee shop," says Chou.

Opening a cafe is a fine-flow long-term start-up, usually in the first three months are in the stage of burning money, many people in front of the store through various marketing advertising activities, hoping to make a name for themselves,"but the first day of the opening must not be full of friends!" Zhou Wenpei said seriously.

His reason is that once the opening may not be familiar with the coffee line and customer service process, some even coffee machines are not very good at using, the more people come, the more customers complain.

"On the first day, just two or three kittens will be fine, so you can gradually familiarize yourself with all kinds of techniques and procedures. Besides, as long as one cat isn't mute, you'll gradually gain a reputation," Chou says with a smile. Since the initial estimated crowd flow is not too high, it is necessary to rely on lower operating costs (of which lower rents are most important) in exchange for time to cultivate customers.

ask themselves three questions

Open a cafe, in addition to realizing your entrepreneurial dream, you can also make some like-minded friends. However, be sure to ask yourself three questions: Is the store rent reasonable? Do you own most of the funds? Is it a lifelong interest to open a cafe?

If the answer to all three questions is Yes! Then having your own dream cafe will no longer be an unreachable dream.