A novice runs a coffee shop, how to run a coffee shop

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

Make money? Step 1: Get people to come more often; Step 2: Get people to go faster.

At the last class of the Carving Time Coffee Academy, Zhuang Songlie always emphasizes one thing to all students: if you want to open a cafe, you must think about how to make money.

Opening a cafe is often mistaken for something artistic. Zhuang Songlie was the founder of Carving Time. When he first founded Carving Time, he wanted to find a place for himself and his wife to stay, and also wanted people who came to drink coffee to regard it as their "second living room." Carving Time is also considered to be the brand that has developed a second coffee shop model outside of business cafes such as Starbucks, but those who take photos of Vintage green chandeliers in Carving Time will not know that Zhuang Songlie sees these as "enemies and friends".

If you don't know so much about carving time, the following facts are for your quick reference: this coffee shop is generally opened near schools, creative parks, etc.; like the second floor store; the ideal single store area is about 250 square meters; the style of hard wood furniture plus literary soft clothing enlightens many people who later want to open a coffee shop; in addition to coffee and simple meals, it also sells stationery, creative products and a series of "fun things".

Carving Time is a place to sit, with large comfortable chairs and relaxing music. But simple "sitting" is not what they want most. At Carving Time Beijing North Normal University South Road Store, you can see a sign at the bar that says "30% off takeaway coffee." Ideally, this would be the case: you come to Carving Time, order a $28 coffee and sit for a while, then order a snack or light meal.

"Very few people order a cup of coffee and sit all afternoon. Chinese people have a good habit of going to dinner at mealtime." Zhuang Songlie said. Non-coffee products now account for 50% of Carving Time's revenue. With Taobao shops, event companies and coffee colleges, if you rely solely on selling coffee to make money, I'm afraid it's hard to maintain the brand of Carving Time today.

China's coffee industry is increasingly competitive. Starbucks has just announced plans to expand the number of stores in China to 1500 by 2015, near which you can always find Costa and Pacific Coffee; Carving Time's own chain has opened 40 stores, covering almost all provincial capitals in China; And a brand called Man Coffee, which claims to be positioned between Starbucks and Carving Time, will open 40 stores within two years and plans to expand to 200 nationwide in the next two years.

But from the Chinese consumer's point of view, positioning a coffee shop doesn't mean much. "They care about quality and convenience," Matthew Crabbe, Asia-Pacific research director at Mintel, a market information consulting firm, told CBN."For Western consumers, coffee is coffee, and they even want to have traditional small cafes that are close to the community culture they are familiar with."

"Chinese consumers want a place to relax, socialize or have a casual business conversation, not necessarily drink coffee," said Zhong Jiao, vice president of consumer research at Nielsen China."So if you want to do a good job of chain coffee shops, you can learn from the successful experience of retail."

"If you order coffee for 200 yuan, that's equivalent to four people ordering a cup of coffee for 50 yuan, but most people's consumption price is between 30 yuan and 40 yuan." The person who said this is Sun Yu, founder of Beijing Fish Eye Coffee Shop. His coffee shop in Sanlitun, Beijing, had a monthly turnover of 150,000 yuan at its peak.

Location is considered to be the most critical factor in attracting traffic-you have to make sure that enough people notice your coffee shop's existence, which is a prerequisite for them to walk in.

Sun Yu opened his eyes three years ago out of interest. Before opening, in order to figure out his profit and loss geometry, he once used the simplest method to calculate the flow of people in Sanlitun Village."I'll find someone to stand with me at the east and west entrances of the Village at the same time to calculate the flow of people, just like counting people when you get on the plane."

He quickly understood the flow of people in several areas of the Village-usually people would come in from Uniqlo and disperse around the center square area. Among the many shops, Starbucks occupies the best position. "Starbucks has ten times more people than us." Sun Yu said. You may not have thought of this huge drop. Fish Eye Coffee and Starbucks are right at the opposite ends of a diagonal line in Sanlitun Village.

Starbucks often has an advantage in location. They often set up shop near high-traffic malls or office buildings with high coffee recognition, and are often invited by developers, which means that developers will reduce rents or give other concessions in order to make Starbucks appear in their buildings. Starbucks has opened 700 stores in mainland China since its first store in January 1999.

According to Starbucks 'latest earnings report, Starbucks revenue grew 14% in fiscal 2012 and profit margins improved to 15% from 14.8% in fiscal 2011. Starbucks doesn't break out revenue for China separately, but CEO Howard Schultz plans to open at least 300 stores in the country, a market he has been bullish on.

You might think that Starbucks 'quick fix, which encourages customers to leave right after buying coffee, is a different thing from carving time to keep people in the store. But remember, Howard Schultz was the one who first came up with the concept of Third Place. The hope is that the smell and environment of coffee will make people think of Starbucks as a third place outside of home and company.

"Starbucks 'success, and the challenge it continues to face, lies in meeting two consumer needs: those who come in and order coffee to go and want it as soon as possible, and those who want to stay here, or bring their laptops to work, or sit down and chat with friends. But in many cases, these two types of consumers are actually the same people, but they have different needs at different times." Stanley Hainzworth, who joined Starbucks in 2004 as vice president of global creativity, says that's why Starbucks stores are designed to meet the needs of both types of people--the same kind of people--by providing clear lines for customers who take coffee to go, and seating that separates sofas from wooden tables.

"Revenue is the product of customer unit price and frequency and number of visitors," Jiang Meilan, CEO of Shanghai Feirui Network Technology Co., Ltd., told China Business Weekly."Starbucks 'current practices, such as providing wooden tables and chairs and encouraging takeaway consumption, are all strengthening the frequency index." The frequency here is similar to the turnover rate in the restaurant industry, which is most easily calculated by dividing the total number of guests by the number of tables.

Starbucks also uses some default rules. For example, when you order food, Starbucks employees will directly give you coffee in paper cups. Mugs make you want to finish your coffee, but paper cups can be taken away at any time.

Let's look at Starbucks 'cost structure to see why Starbucks is doing this. According to the figures disclosed in Starbucks 'earnings report, a cup of coffee of 28 yuan accounts for 9.5% of net profit (RMB 2.7 yuan), which is obviously lower than carving time, that is, the longer you stay in Starbucks, the greater the impact on Starbucks' revenue. Starbucks, for its part, has to figure out how to get customers to finish their coffee and leave as quickly as possible.

"Starbucks used to be a high-end place when it first opened, but now it is more civilian. We have observed that young people are concentrated in Starbucks at noon and afternoon, and there are basically long queues at noon-some even buy 20 cups to go back to the office. This cannot be said to be the result of Starbucks 'guidance over the past few years." Matthew Crabbe says that 20-cup purchases are typically made for meetings or corporate events.

Since 2005, Starbucks has tried to enter China's second-tier cities. Although the process has not been smooth, Starbucks 'first store in Jinan once set a record of selling 3000 cups of coffee a day, relying on strong brand effect and low replication costs, according to Starbucks' previously publicly disclosed data. If we use the price of 28 yuan to convert, the daily income of this Starbucks is 84,000 yuan, and the net profit is 7980 yuan, which is equivalent to the total income of a 250 square meter carving time day.

Now look at the location and decoration strategy of carving time, you can find Zhuang Songlie's cleverness. Instead of competing with Starbucks for prime store space, he can shift expensive rents to store renovations.

"Every shop in Carving Time has its own characteristics. There are many details, and the reproducibility is not very high." Jiang Meilan said. This allows different regions of the carved time shop with different attractions, without losing the unity of the brand. As store purchases became more and more demanding, Carving Time set up a marketing department responsible for soft clothing purchases, so you could see similar small items in different stores.

Original Taiwanese books, movie posters, typewriters, and old globes are reasons to attract customers. You can even see coffee academies in some stores, which is part of the atmosphere.

The diffuse coffee, which claims to be positioned between Carving Time and Starbucks, also sells "atmosphere". They emphasize the original ecology and set up their own decoration design team for this purpose. Diffuse coffee requires that the materials used for decoration must contain five elements: old elm wood, untreated steel, glass, lime walls and trees.

When introducing the furniture of Man Coffee Store, founder Xin Zixiang pointed to the chair made of old elm wood in Man Coffee Shop and said: "Although there are some wood scratches and grooves on it, it doesn't matter. You don't have to grind it flat. Only in this way can you have the feeling of original ecology."

But low profit margins are an unavoidable problem. The investment return cycle of a carving time store is about two years to two and a half years. In order to subsidize the cost of the first carving time at the earliest, Zhuang Songlie even went to do a job as an exterior reporter. Now he divides the cost of carving time into three parts: rent, decoration, labor, taxes and other costs. "Assuming a cup of coffee costs 10 yuan, our profit is about 2 yuan to 3 yuan."

According to Zhuang Songlie,"the daily income of a carving time store is about 8000 yuan to 10,000 yuan." According to the standard of "coffee income and non-coffee income each account for half" and 28 yuan to 32 yuan per cup of coffee, an ordinary carving time will sell about 150 cups of coffee every day, and the gross profit brought by coffee every day is about 700 yuan to 900 yuan. This is a far cry from Starbucks. To increase the revenue of carving time, in addition to the supplement of high-margin products, increasing frequency is an important means.

The location of Man Coffee is "close to the park and large in area", which determines that the real business hours of this cafe are after work hours or weekends. Take Man Coffee Workshop as an example, the rent per square meter per day for stores over 1000 square meters is about 6 yuan. They are reluctant to disclose their cost structure, but according to Starbucks and carving time 20% to 30% of the rent cost law, assuming that the daily rent of Man Coffee is 6000 yuan, the daily income of Man Coffee is between 20,000 yuan and 30,000 yuan, to ensure normal operation, it needs to sell at least 700 cups to 1000 cups of coffee for 28 yuan a day.

"Although we don't rush customers, and we don't want to disturb them too much, we actually hope to increase the turnover rate," the manager of one of Man Coffee's branches told China Business Weekly."It's just that we haven't thought of a good way yet. You can treat us as a restaurant and pursue low profits and quick turnover instead of a coffee shop."

These ambience coffee shop chains don't have a great way to increase turnover rates. Sun Yu had his own understanding of this. He said he benefited from his experience working in Apple's online store and after-sales service team. "Turning off Wi-Fi is an easy and crude way to do it, and you can have better options." His experience has been to play faster music when the store is crowded, to ask customers to choose between paper sizes when they order food, or to pour a cup of water for people who "order a cup of coffee for the afternoon" when they haven't left for ten minutes-the subtext is clear.

But that doesn't solve the problem fundamentally. To make coffee shops profitable,"first you have to find ways to attract people into the store; second, you have to know how to get them to consume and repeat consumption." Sun Yu said.

Man Coffee uses a points-like approach, selling "Waffle&Toast" and giving customers a discount card for ordering coffee-nine cups of coffee bought in the same store get a free cup of coffee, but not for other foods.

Carving time has a membership card system. This is a direct way to increase the frequency of visitors. Carving time membership card uses the method of charging fees,"its problem is that after selling the card to you there is no follow-up action, it assumes that consumers will be full of money, but can increase the frequency of visitors should be to encourage you to charge money as soon as possible after consumption, rather than sell stored value card after waiting for consumers to voluntarily go to consumption." Jiang Meilan said.

Zhuang Songlie still remembers that 15 years ago there was only one slightly decent cafe in Beijing, called Johnny's Coffee, which closed after only two years of operation by a short American. Starbucks appeared near the office building two years later.

Starbucks has long been seen as a leader and educator in the coffee chain market. Its price has also become the pricing standard for other coffee chains."It has some influence," says Zhuang Songlie."But the most important thing is to look at each other's cost structure."

Coffee is only a small part of this cost structure. For these chain cafes, location, decoration, design, stimulation of consumption, opening branches, they go to great lengths to retain your time, the next question is, how to get you out as soon as possible.