Five ways to make coffee shop dreams die quickly: whether you want to open a shop or you already have one

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Over the past few years, I have devoted myself to helping others realize the dream of a coffee shop, and I have written a book called "the Commercial Soul of a Coffee Shop" to discuss with you how to open a coffee shop can realize your dream. Now, I'm talking about a way to break this dream as soon as possible.

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The first way is to believe that opening a coffee shop can be a quick success. We often hear stories about someone opening a coffee shop or a restaurant, a western restaurant. I got back to Ben in half a year, and then I was busy opening a branch, looking for venture capital, and going public. Yes, there are many such stories, and I know a lot about them, but not only do I know their rapid success, but I also know the stories behind their success. In these stories, the parties often ask me not to speak for outsiders. In a word, behind the success is a lot of bitterness beyond the bearing capacity of ordinary people. Some have been cheated, some have failed to open a store many times, some are heavily in debt, and so on. The reason behind success is persistence. This is what a successful operator in the catering industry said to me. What you see is the innovation and popularity of his new stores, but, "I have been in this industry for 30 years." A lot of people don't know about this. " He said.

The second way is to trust the so-called professionals. Opening a coffee shop involves a lot of professionals. These professionals are professionals because of their expertise and experience in a certain field. Unfortunately, a coffee shop is not a place where you can make a cup of coffee, prepare a cake, or decorate a place with a distinctive layout. In fact, the coffee shop is a commercial space, in which all elements need to be taken into account, integrated and promote each other in order to be invincible in the highly competitive environment.

There are numerous examples of having professionals in a certain field as helpers or shareholders or partners, but they do not have enough advantages to survive. The biggest advantage should be the entrepreneur himself, because only he or she is the final decision maker. And every decision must take into account the benefits of the coffee shop as a business entity to achieve business goals. No one can make a decision instead of you, because the coffee shop belongs to your life, and no one can make the best decision for you according to your life.

The third way is to trust your feelings.

I think there is no coffee shop near this place, so we should be able to open one.

I feel that the rent of this shop is so low that it should be profitable to open a coffee shop.

I feel that this type of coffee shop is so successful abroad, I think it should be possible to do it at home.

I feel that my coffee won the place in the competition. I open a coffee shop and a lot of people will come.

We should not blindly trust the so-called professionals, nor should we blindly follow our own feelings. Since I have been working as a marketing consultant, I have found that coffee shops are the most intuitive industries of all industries. Coffee shop is a place to enjoy life, operators are easy to project their own attitude and way of life into their own shop. And life itself is not business, life is most prone to intuitive bias. And business does not allow prejudice. Bias means inaccurate decisions and actions that lead to poor financial results.

This is an example of a sensory inaccuracy that I have encountered recently:

I think there is no coffee shop near this place, so we should be able to open one.

If you are not a resident of this place, how do you know that their radius of life needs a coffee shop? have you ever thought that the reason why there is no coffee shop in this place is that the residents here may be willing to drive to a coffee shop in the business district a few kilometers away. I don't want to patronize the coffee shop next to home.

I feel that the rent of this shop is so low that it should be profitable to open a coffee shop.

Low rent is just a low barrier to entry, maybe low rent is actually a high cost, which makes it less likely to make a profit.

I feel that this type of coffee shop is so successful abroad, I think it should be possible to do it at home.

The one you want to imitate is actually an image concept store of some big foreign food group. The aim is to promote the image of the enterprise and spare no expense, not for profit at all. In other words, this is not a business model worth imitating at all.

I feel that my coffee won the place in the competition, and many people will like it if I open a coffee shop.

The professional evaluation of the competition is coffee, and the experience of consumers going to a coffee shop is not only limited to a cup of coffee, but also far more than a cup of coffee.

The fourth way is to believe in your affordability and complacency

I have found that many operators in operation breed complacency when their first store is profitable, thinking that what needs to be done has been done, and that they have mastered the unique skills of opening a coffee shop. Then they put more money into setting up branches, taking more investment risks than they can afford. The founder of 7-Eleven said in his book: "if there are no competitors around a store, then customers may have no choice but to enter the store because of traffic restrictions. over time, store operators become muddled along, paralyzed and lax, and lose the motivation to change and innovate their products and services." When he said this, he noticed that the reason for the poor management of many small and medium-sized retail stores is not due to the rise of large supermarkets, but because the business model lags behind the times and is eliminated by customers. I often advise these operators that just because the first store is doing well doesn't mean you must have found a business model that can be replicated. It is possible that your store happens to be open in a blank spot in a market, and if competitors appear next to you, you will probably be defeated, while other branches of your store, because you do not have the geographical advantage of the old store, then mistakenly expand the business model that is already ineffective.

The fifth method, I believe that even if it fails, it is also a kind of training and experience, from which you can learn a lot.

That sounds inspirational, doesn't it? How can it be ironic to me?

Yes, failure is the mother of success. I have already mentioned in my first point that many successful people have experienced many lessons of failure before they succeed. But only if the lesson is learned. Failure with lessons, I think, is not failure, but a way to keep trial and error and to succeed. However, there are many cases of failure, and when I discuss the reasons for the failure with them, I find that they have not even learned a lesson. This is the most failed failure I have ever seen. Many people have found excuses for failure, such as external factors such as the economic environment has not improved, the market is not yet mature, the business area has not yet become prosperous, and so on. On the contrary, it did not properly summarize and evaluate these internal factors, such as business model, space setting, management system, marketing strategy, product structure, market positioning, and so on. As a result, on the day the store closed, it did not get the lessons and experience that it should have, and these valuable lessons and experiences did not form a wealth of knowledge so that he could invest in the next store.

The above five methods, whether you want to open a store or have already opened a store, can shatter your dreams.