How to open a dream cafe? Ask yourself three questions first!

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What kind of store would you most like to open? The most common answer must be "coffee shop". Once upon a time, cafes have replaced milk tea shops as the first choice for many young people to get together or kill time. How wonderful it is to be able to smell coffee, chat with guests and make money every day!

Although like to drink coffee is the basic condition to become a cafe owner, but after all, drinking coffee and opening a coffee shop are two different things. Drinking coffee is romantic, but opening a coffee shop is realistic. In the over-saturated market, how to realize the dream of opening a store?

Lesson one: orientation-dreaming, but also a sense of direction

Determining the positioning of a coffee shop is the first step in opening a successful coffee shop.

For example, open a take-out cafe or an inner-seated cafe? Do you only sell coffee in the shop, or "coffee + pastry" or "coffee + pastry + light meal"? In addition, is it a single store or a compound cafe combined with other industries (for example, a bookstore)? All this has to be thought out from the very beginning.

The management orientation of the coffee shop determines the capital, personnel, menu, location, and even the design and decoration of the store; we must first determine the management direction, and then plan other details. But many shop owners, on the contrary, often decide to design and decorate and choose the location before thinking about what type of coffee shop to open. For example, "I really want to open a coffee shop full of Provence style," focusing on how to decorate Provence style, which is the most common and fatal mistake for coffee shop owners.

Lesson 2: Financial Planning_Open a Store, Make a Good Abacus

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 (cooling, lighting, etc.)

4. vessel

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

Among these five elements, the menu is the most basic, which will determine what kind of equipment and hardware equipment need to be purchased, and will also affect the 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 part, it is a large expense. Therefore, at the beginning of the business, we must think clearly about the coffee shop sales project.

Decoration budget is 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 device

3. vessel

4. design and decoration

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

6. raw materials

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

8. Miscellaneous (utilities)

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

The budget for the three items of equipment, hardware and utensils cannot be moved. The only thing that can be changed is the cost of design and decoration. As for rent, it involves the choice of location, and the variables are relatively large.

Every penny is spent on the knife

Some people are willing to buy a $3,000 chair to decorate the cafe, but others buy a $200 secondhand chair that works just as well with a seat cover. Coffee making equipment and bar is the core of the entire cafe, in fact, a good two or three Italian coffee machine, the price of about 20,000 or 30,000, enough to cope with the 50 square coffee shop guests.

In addition, the after-sales service of the coffee machine must not be ignored. If the espresso machine fails and the supplier cannot come and fix the machine within 3 hours, the coffee machine is useless, because it does not have to do business all day!

Decoration design remains flexible

In fact, the flexibility of design and decoration is very large, especially in pure takeaway cafes, decoration is even simpler, as long as the bar design is good, other almost no money.

Lesson 3: professional-- Technology is not in place, everything is out of the question.

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

With the speed that Chinese people like the new and hate the old, the decoration of a coffee shop may be out of date in three years' time. If you only want to win with the decoration atmosphere, maybe the media effect will bring a crowd at first, but after the fever goes down, how can a bad cafe be supported?

Since we are willing to open a coffee shop, it is best for the entrepreneur to take charge of the bar at the initial stage of opening the shop, and hiring 2 or 3 full-time or part-time employees in the outfield will be enough to cope with the daily operation of the cafe, which can not only save personnel costs, but also make coffee by hand. it can also avoid the situation of different quality of coffee caused by the departure of bar staff and inadequate manpower.

What do you know about the characteristics of coffee beans?

Many people don't even know how to make coffee before opening a shop. Before opening a shop, you must spend more time tasting coffee beans from other places. In addition to training your own sense of taste, you can also study the quality and taste of different coffee beans and find out which coffee beans you like. There are still many importers of domestic coffee beans, so you might as well surf the Internet or consult professionals, and raw bean merchants or coffee machine suppliers all offer relevant courses, so it is not difficult to understand coffee beans.

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

Lesson 4: location-you don't have to believe in prime locations

Many people believe that the key to success in opening a store is "location,location,location". As long as you open a shop in a prime location, it is a safe bet. In fact, this sentence is only half true.

Usually we distinguish commercial areas by Class A, Class B and Class C. for prime lots of Class A, the rent is either frighteningly high, or there is no market, which is why shops in prime locations usually sell high unit price products.

In many gold stores in the first-tier war zone, the rent is at least NT $50,000 to NT $60,000 a month. how many cups a day do you have to sell to make the rent even? This does not include personnel costs and equipment depreciation. In fact, as long as it is managed properly, class B lots can also have the spring of cafes.

There is a great disparity in rent.

Divide the area into department store, office area, business district, cultural and educational district, entertainment area, residential area, traffic transfer area, etc., deeply observe the daily activities and the flow of people in the area, and analyze the success rate of running cafes in the area.

Each location has a different way of work and rest, and the crowds gather at different times. If the cafe is in the office area, the noon from Monday to Friday is the most important business time, and you can take advantage of Sunday rest; on the other hand, if you open a shop in the entertainment area or shopping area, the weekend break is obviously against money.

The tide of people is not equal to the tide of money.

However, the "crowd" is not necessarily equal to the "flow of money". Some commercial areas do have a high flow of people, but the consumption pattern is fast. Many people are used to walking into the store while eating, simply walking into the store and sitting down to taste the coffee slowly. They can only watch the crowd go through the door. on the contrary, the clerks and office workers in many stores nearby may become regular customers of the cafe.

On-the-spot investigation of the consumption pattern of crowd

When choosing a location, entrepreneurs need to spend at least a week observing the nature of local crowds and consumption patterns. Focus on the scheduled location of the store, investigate how many competitors (including chain or single-store cafes, fast food restaurants, and milk tea shops) are within 500 meters around, and record the number of people these competitors spend in the store every day and their estimated turnover. At the same time, assess how much cake you can share or make bigger if you enter the war.

Lesson 5: cost Control-how much does a cup of coffee cost?

Of course, you can't lose money when opening a shop. But many people only know how much a cup of coffee costs, but do not know how much a cup of coffee costs.

It usually takes 15 to 20 grams of beans to make a cup of coffee, and 25 to 30 cups of coffee for a pound of coffee, while the cost of milk and sugar for a cup of coffee is about 1 to 3 yuan, as well as paper cups, tissue paper, mixing sticks and other materials. In this way, the raw material cost of a cup of coffee is roughly between 2 and 5 yuan. In addition, don't forget to add the cost of rent, water, electricity, personnel and equipment depreciation, plus a certain percentage of the profit is the price of a cup of coffee.

Many shopkeepers don't know how to set the price, and they follow suit depending on how much their competitors order. However, this practice of laziness is very dangerous. Later, when we find that we cannot make ends meet and do not dare to raise prices, we have no choice but to switch to cheaper coffee beans. This is the beginning of the vicious circle. This is the beginning of preparing to close the shop.

Lesson 6: customer training-- A long stream of water to build a reputation

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

Opening a cafe is a long-running business, usually in the stage of burning money in the first three months, many people hope to make a name for themselves through various marketing and advertising activities before opening the shop, but don't be full of friends on the first day of the opening! The newly opened store may not be familiar with the moving line of coffee brewing and the customer service process, and some of them are not even good at using coffee machines. The more people come, the more customers complain.

At the beginning, as long as there are two or three kittens, you can gradually familiarize yourself with various skills and work flow, and as long as one is not a dumb cat, you will gradually have a reputation.

Ask yourself three questions

To open a coffee shop, you can not only realize your entrepreneurial dream, but also make some like-minded friends. However, be sure to ask yourself three questions: is the rent in the store reasonable? Is the capital for starting a business mostly self-owned? Is it your lifelong interest to open a coffee shop?

If the answer to all three questions is "Yes!" "then owning your own Fantasy Cafe will no longer be a distant dream.

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