The cost of opening a coffee shop, how to run a coffee shop

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

Money making? The first step: let more people come; the second step, let people go quickly.

In the last class of the Engraving time Coffee College, Zhuang Yili always emphasized one thing to all the students: if you want to open a coffee shop, you must think about how to make money.

Opening a coffee shop is often mistaken for a literary thing. Chuang Kuang-li is the founder of carving time. When he first set up carving time, he not only wanted to find a "place to stay" for himself and his wife, but also wanted people who came to drink coffee to regard it as their "second living room." Sculpture time is also considered to be the brand that is currently developing a second coffee shop model outside of business cafes like Starbucks, but those who take pictures of Vintage chandeliers during carving time will not know that Chuang 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 kind of coffee shop is usually opened near the school, creative park and other areas; you like the storefront on the second floor; the ideal single store covers an area of about 250 square meters; the style of hardened log furniture and literary soft outfits enlightened many people who later aspired to open a coffee shop; in addition to coffee and light meals, they also sell stationery, creative products and a series of "fun things".

Sculpture time is a place where people can sit. Their chairs are large and comfortable, and the music played in the store is very relaxing. But the simple "sit still" is not what they want most. At the carving time in Beijing normal University South Road store, you can see the sign "30% discount on take-out coffee" at the bar. Ideally, when you come to sculpture time, first order a 28-yuan cup of coffee to sit for a while, and then order snacks or light meals.

"few people will order a cup of coffee and sit all afternoon. Chinese people have a good habit of going to dinner at dinnertime." Zhuang Yinglie said. Non-coffee products now account for 50% of the revenue from carving time. Coupled with Taobao shops, activity companies and coffee colleges, if you rely solely on selling coffee to make money, I am afraid the carving time brand will be very difficult to maintain today.

The competition of coffee industry in China is becoming increasingly fierce. Starbucks has just announced plans to expand the number of stores in China to 1500 in 2015, where you can always find Costa and Pacific Coffee; carving time has opened its own chain of stores to 40, covering almost all provincial capitals in the country; and a brand called Man Coffee, which claims to be located between Starbucks and Engraving time, has also opened 40 stores within two years, with plans to expand to 200 nationwide in the next two years.

But from the perspective of Chinese consumers, it doesn't make much sense to locate a coffee shop. "what they care about is quality and convenience," Matthew Crabbe, Asia-Pacific Research Director of Mintel, a market information consultancy, told China Business Weekly. "for Western consumers, coffee is coffee, and they even want to have traditional small cafes, close to the community culture they are familiar with."

"Chinese consumers want to have a place for leisure, social activities or relaxed business conversations, not necessarily drinking coffee," said Zhuang Jia, vice president of Nielsen China Consumer Research. "so they want to do a good job of the coffee chain. We can learn from the successful experience of the retail industry."

"if the coffee you ordered is 200 yuan, then the person who ordered a cup of coffee for 50 yuan has come four times, but the consumer price for most people is between 30 yuan and 40 yuan." The person who said this was Sun Yu, founder of Beijing Fish Eye Cafe. His coffee shop in Sanlitun in Beijing has a monthly turnover of 150000 yuan at its best.

Location is considered to be the most critical factor in attracting traffic ─ you have to make sure that enough people pay attention to the existence of your coffee shop, which is a prerequisite for them to come in.

Three years ago, Sun Yu opened a fish's eye out of interest. Before opening his business, in order to figure out his profit and loss, he once used the simplest method to calculate the passenger flow of Sanlitun Village. "I'll find someone to stand with me at the east and west entrances of Village at the same time to count the number of people, just like when you check in when you get on the plane."

He soon became aware of the changes in the flow of people in several areas of Village. ─ people usually come in from Uniqlo and spread around when they get to the middle square area. Among the many stores, Starbucks occupies the best position. "there are ten times more people on Starbucks than on our side." Sun Yu said. You may not have thought of this huge gap. Fisheye Coffee and Starbucks are at the opposite ends of a diagonal line of Sanlitun Village.

Starbucks tends to have an advantage in location. They usually open stores in shopping malls with high traffic or near office buildings with high recognition of coffee, and are often invited by developers, which means that in order for the Starbucks brand to appear in their buildings, developers will lower rents or give other discounts. Since its first store in China in January 1999, Starbucks has opened 700 stores in mainland China.

According to Starbucks' latest financial results, Starbucks' revenue grew 14% in fiscal 2012, and its profit margin increased to 15% from 14.8% in 2011. Starbucks does not separately list revenue in China, but CEO Howard Howard Schultz plans to open at least 300 stores in China, a market he has been bullish on.

You might think that Starbucks' quick spending, which encourages consumers to leave as soon as they buy coffee, and carving time to keep people in the store are two different things. But don't forget that Howard Schultz was the first to put forward the concept of Third Place (the third living space in the urban office complex). It is hoped that through the smell and environment of coffee, people will regard Starbucks as the third place to go after starting a family and a company.

"the reason why Starbucks is successful, which is also where it continues to face challenges, is whether it can meet the needs of consumers: one kind of consumers come here and order coffee to take away, and they want to be here as soon as possible. The other kind of consumers want to stay here, or bring their laptops to work, or sit down and chat with friends. But in many cases, these two kinds of consumers are actually the same group of people, but they have different needs at different times. " Stanley Hainzworth, who joined Starbucks in 2004 as vice president of global creativity, said that because of this, Starbucks stores are designed to meet the needs of these two types of people (actually the same kind of people). ─ provides a clear queuing area for customers who take out coffee, and seats are different from sofas and wooden tables.

"Revenue is the product of the unit price and frequency of customers and the number of visitors," Jiang Meilan, CEO of Shanghai Firui Network Technology Co., Ltd., told China Business Weekly. "what Starbucks is doing now, such as providing wooden tables and chairs and encouraging take-out consumption, is strengthening the index of frequency." The frequency here is similar to that of the catering industry, and the simplest way to calculate the rate is to divide the total number of visitors by the table.

Starbucks also uses some default rules. For example, when you order, 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 take a look at the cost composition of Starbucks and see why Starbucks is doing this. According to figures disclosed in Starbucks' earnings report, the net profit of a 28-yuan cup of coffee accounts for 9.5% (2.7 yuan), which is obviously lower than that of carving time, that is, the longer you stay at Starbucks, the greater the impact on Starbucks' revenue. For Starbucks, it must find a way to get guests to buy coffee as quickly as possible and get out of here.

Starbucks used to be a more upscale place when it first opened, but now it is more civilian. We observe that at Starbucks, young people are concentrated at noon and afternoon, and there are basically long queues at noon and ─. Some people even buy 20 cups to go back to the office. This is the result of Starbucks' guidance over the past few years. " Matthew Crabbe says the purchase of 20 cups is usually due to meetings or company events.

Starbucks has been trying to enter second-tier cities in China since 2005, although the process has not been smooth, but according to Starbucks' previously publicly disclosed data, relying on strong brand effect and low replication costs, Starbucks' first store in Jinan once set a record for selling 3000 cups of coffee a day. If we use the price of 28 yuan, the Starbucks' daily income is 84000 yuan, and the net profit is 7980 yuan, which is equivalent to the total income of a carving time of 250square meters.

Now if we look at the location and decoration strategy of the carving time, we can find the cleverness of Zhuangli. He did not compete with Starbucks for the location of the gold store, so he could transfer the high rent to the renovation of the store.

"carving time each store decoration is very characteristic, there are a lot of details, but the reproduction is not too high." Jiang Meilan said. This makes the carving time shops in different regions have different attractions without losing the unity of the brand. The demand for shopping in stores is increasing, and the carving time has set up a marketing department to be responsible for soft purchases, so you can see similar small items in different stores.

So those Taiwan's original books, movie posters, typewriters and old globes have become the reasons to attract customers. You can even see coffee colleges having classes in some stores, which has become part of the atmosphere.

The coffee that claims to be located between the sculpture time and Starbucks also takes the "atmosphere" as the selling point. They emphasize the original ecology, and set up their own decoration design team to this end. Coffee requires that the decoration materials must contain five elements: old elm, untreated steel, glass, lime walls and trees.

When introducing the furniture of the coffee shop, founder Xin Zi pointed to the chairs made of old elm in the coffee shop and said, "you see, although there are some scratches and grooves in the wood, it doesn't matter. You don't have to grind it out. Only in this way can you have the feeling of original ecology."

But low profit margin is an unavoidable problem. The investment return cycle of a store for carving time is about two to two and a half years. At first, in order to subsidize the cost of the first sculpture time, Zhuang even worked as an location reporter. Now he divides the cost of carving time into three: rent, decoration, manpower, taxes and other costs. "suppose a cup of coffee costs 10 yuan, our profit is about 2 yuan to 3 yuan."

According to Zhuang Yueli, "the daily income of a carving time store is about 8000 to 10, 000 yuan." According to the standard of "50% income from coffee and 50% from non-coffee" and 28 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 to 900 yuan. This is a far cry from Starbucks. To increase the income 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 off hours or weekends. Take the industrial sports store of Man Coffee as an example, the rent for stores with more than 1000 square meters is about 6 yuan per square meter per day. They are reluctant to disclose their cost structure, but according to the rent cost rule of 20 to 30 per cent of Starbucks and carving time, assuming that the daily rent of diffuse coffee is 6000 yuan, and the daily income of diffuse coffee is between 20, 000 yuan and 30, 000 yuan, to ensure normal operation, it has to sell at least 7 to 1000 cups of 28 yuan coffee a day.

"although we don't rush our guests and ask not to disturb them too much, we actually want to increase the turnover rate," the manager of a branch of Man Coffee told China Business Weekly. "it's just that we haven't thought of a good way yet. you can think of us as a restaurant, pursuing small profits and quick turnover, not a cafe."

These coffee shop chains, which are attractive to the atmosphere, do not have a good way to improve the turnaround rate. Sun Yu does have her own understanding of this. He says this is due to his experience working in Apple's online store and after-sales service team. "cutting off Wi-Fi is a simple and rough way, and you can have a better choice." His experience is that it is clear to play faster-paced music when the store is busy, to let customers choose the size of the paper package when they order, or to wait for people who "order a cup of coffee to sit all afternoon" to pour them a cup of water after ten minutes of coffee before leaving.

But this can not fundamentally solve the problem, to make coffee shops to make money, "first of all, you have to find a way to attract people into the store; second, you need to know how to get them to spend, and then repeat spending." Sun Yu said.

Diffuse coffee uses a points-like approach, selling "Waffle&Toast" (waffles and toast) and giving a discount card to customers who order coffee. ─ buys nine cups of coffee in the same store and gives away a free cup of coffee, but not other foods.

Carving time has a membership card system. This is a way to directly increase the frequency of visitors. The membership card of carving time uses the method of recharging and sending fees. "its problem is that there is no follow-up action after selling the card to you. It assumes that consumers will certainly run out of money when they are filled with money. But the way to increase the frequency of visitors should be to encourage you to spend as soon as possible after recharging, rather than waiting for consumers to spend voluntarily after selling the stored value card." Jiang Meilan said.

Zhuang remembers that 15 years ago in Beijing, there was only a slightly more decent cafe called Johnny's Coffee, and a short American closed down after only two years of operation. It was two years after Starbucks showed up near the office building.

Starbucks has always 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 more or less an impact," says Chuang, "but the most important thing is their cost structure."

Coffee is only a small part of this cost structure. For these coffee chains, choosing locations, decorating, designing, stimulating consumption and opening branches, they go to great lengths to keep your time. The next question is how to get you to leave as soon as possible.