Opening a coffee shop depends not only on feelings, but also on process planning.

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According to statistics, one in four people in the city has had the dream of opening a coffee shop. In the eyes of countless entrepreneurs, opening a coffee shop is a literary and artistic thing, and even some entrepreneurs do not open a coffee shop for the purpose of starting a business. it's just a feeling. However, no matter how emotional it is, it will bow in the face of a coffee shop that is losing money or even going bankrupt. It takes skill to run a coffee shop. Cao Jing, the founder of Heymilk Coffee, has 12 years of experience in the coffee industry, is familiar with and understands the whole coffee industry chain, and has rich industry resources. Let's hear what she has to say about how to open a coffee shop.

The newly brewed rice wine is green and fragrant with small red mud. At dusk it threatens snow. Won't you come for a cup. One Wednesday afternoon, the editor and his colleagues arrived as promised and conducted an exclusive interview with teacher Cao Jing. When I arrived at Mr. Cao's coffee shop, I saw Miss Cao. She was busy, so the two of us sat in the chairs next to us and waited. There was only one girl on the counter, bringing up two cappuccinos, filled with smoke. Chatting with teacher Cao, she spoke in a soft voice, but she had a point of view. It was the Jane Austen temperament that the editor liked, simple and beautiful, just sitting there quietly, it was a scenery. She dresses simply because she doesn't like shopping and even thinks that shopping is a waste of life. If she needs to buy clothes and shoes, she must go to several brands she is familiar with, and those who buy clothes and shoes don't stay too much. Perhaps, holding a book, spending half a day in a coffee shop and going home contentedly in the setting sun is a kind of stealing half a day of leisure. Perhaps, in an antique coffee shop, looking at the glistening coffee cups on the quaint shelves and listening to the stories behind them, fresh and vivid, this should also be a kind of stealing half a day of leisure. When the editor and his colleagues went back to the company, they were speechless. Knowing that your adoption of the new business model can avoid the disadvantages of high rent and high labor costs in traditional coffee shops, can you give us a specific introduction? Traditional coffee shops mainly sell products and environment, generally speaking, many users go to coffee shops for social needs, so they will pay great attention to the added value of coffee shops, such as atmosphere, environment and so on. But at present, the profit model of the domestic coffee industry is not clear, except for large-scale chain coffee shops, such as Starbucks, Costa, after five to eight years accumulated economies of scale, in fact, the profitability of individual stores is actually relatively weak. Even for well-known enterprises like Starbucks, rental and labor costs are very high, and only by getting a large number of passengers can they make a profit. If you do not have the high popularity of Starbucks, do not have sufficient resources to get developed commercial areas, and do not get a large number of passengers, then what do you do? Coffee is very cheap abroad, similar to the price of a bottle of mineral water, but it is very different in China. Most coffee costs 30 yuan per cup because it carries a high additional cost. I have worked in the coffee industry for many years, and there are only two options for opening a coffee shop, either large-scale or individual, and find ways to reduce rental costs and labor costs. We use the world's first APP intelligent coffee machine to make coffee completely intelligent, so there is no need to train professional baristas. We also do not have the service link, the customer first visit, we will explain the use of the coffee machine, and then the customer can operate directly, so basically one person per shift is enough. Second, we do not make any goods ourselves, the whole business process is very simple, does not involve a complex product chain, that is, shift the focus of customers from the added value of the coffee shop to the coffee itself. The main purpose of our current project is to guide public consumers to understand coffee, and we have also set up coffee classes once a week to teach users some knowledge about coffee.

Many people have made a mistake about the process of opening a coffee shop. The first thing that comes to mind for most entrepreneurs is to determine the location and then consider decoration. In fact, this process is wrong. To open a coffee shop, you first need to locate and set a tone: what kind of coffee shop do you open? Who are you selling the coffee to? What special features do you want to make? Why are so many individual coffee shops not making money now? What are the characteristics of your coffee shop? Open a coffee shop to have a clear process, later decoration, product sales are positioning as the starting point, not to your preferences, but to the preferences of target customers. Many individuals actually open coffee shops for a reason. For example, someone asked me about opening a coffee shop. She bought a house in Yizhuang, so she wanted to open a coffee shop in the commercial street of the community. If there is no personal reason, what kind of person an individual is will unconsciously consider opening a coffee shop for his own type, because there are no other levels of connections, and they do not understand the needs of other levels of customers. Generally speaking, everyone will combine their own resources and advantages. After determining the position, I didn't start decorating directly. I met a teacher at Peking University before. I wanted to open a cafe inside the school to provide students with an opportunity to start a business. I asked him where he was now, and he said that the place had been chosen and the equipment had been bought. But in fact, this is wrong, you need to buy equipment according to the product menu, not just the question of buying a coffee maker, what products you need to know what equipment you need. There are different specifications of equipment, according to the storefront, the number of customers to decide what kind of equipment to buy, such as ice machines have 25 kg specifications, there are also 50 kg. The menu should also be determined according to the location. Who is the potential customer group? What kind of coffee do they like? How to make their favorite coffee. Equipment planning can only be carried out after clear positioning, and design can only be carried out after equipment planning is clear, otherwise there will be great problems in equipment installation. In addition, the style of decoration is not determined by the designer, but according to your positioning, according to the preferences of your target customer base. Some entrepreneurs want to make cafes themed or platform, which are good ideas. For example, if you love sports and jazz, and if you have a group of such friends, you can bring these people together, making it easier to run a cafe without any theme. Now 3W and the garage are all platforms, not by opening a coffee shop to sell coffee, but to build a platform. When opening a coffee shop, only when the early planning is clear, the following series of operations will be smooth. In addition, if entrepreneurs want to make a sound time plan, some entrepreneurs may only need two or three months to open a coffee shop, while others may need half a year. If the time is not well planned and coordinated, a lot of time and money will be wasted, including the rent of the storefront. In fact, all these require professional knowledge. Therefore, the whole process and all aspects of opening a coffee shop need to communicate with professionals. If you do it blindly, you will basically lose one or two million, or even two or three million.

We did not do much promotion on the brand, at first only with the help of moments, the quality of my circle of friends is still relatively high. The second is the media, there are more than a dozen media, self-media, official accounts have interviewed us to help us promote, but basically they take the initiative to contact us. In addition, we also have an official account to promote the cultural knowledge of coffee, promote our products, run coffee classes and so on. We have only one store, so we don't have much budget for publicity. As for the difficulties, we do not encounter many, may be different from other entrepreneurs who open a single store, we more want to sort out a business model, and through practice to correct some of its links, such as product lines, product processes. What we design is full self-service, so we pay more attention to table design and think more about it. Could you please briefly introduce what aspects you should pay attention to when you choose to join the brand? Most shopkeepers choose to join because they do not know the industry. If they do, they will not choose to join, but do it themselves. Generally speaking, entrepreneurs worry that the headquarters will not send professional guidance after joining, because it is very difficult for individuals to plan and design posters to launch a product, but if the headquarters does these things for you directly, it will be very convenient. To choose a joining brand, we should consider whether its whole system is unique and whether it can sort out a set of standardized model, because if there is no such standardized model, there will be no point at all when promoting the brand. So the joining brand must have a set of standard model, and other businesses cannot do it, or it is very difficult to do it. If the brand's business project can not be extracted for replication model, such a brand will not be able to join. The master leads the door, the spiritual practice depends on the individual, the positioning of each city is different, the consumer population is also different, the headquarters can not be subdivided into how to operate in each city, joining shopkeepers must have their own ideas.