No experience opening a coffee shop? Novices should pay attention to site selection, scale, cost and positioning!

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The trend of China's coffee shop industry has grown year after year in recent years. According to the "China Caf é Survival data report" released by Jiamen and Meituan Dianping in 2017, the number of cafes in China exceeded 100000 in 2016. According to figures released by CCTV Finance, the number of cafes in China exceeded 140000 by the end of 2018. According to the data of the forward-looking Industrial Research Institute, China's coffee consumption is growing at an annual rate of 15% and 20%, all of which shows that the domestic coffee market is growing rapidly and has huge room for growth. But the threshold of coffee shop entrepreneurship is low, people open and close every day, reference to the experience of other coffee shop management, success can be used for reference, failure can be used as a warning.

The editor sorted out the mistakes often made by novice shopkeepers and the valuable experience and problems provided by entrepreneurial owners to novice shopkeepers. Are you afraid of opening a shop for the first time? If you want to reduce the probability of failure, read on!

🔺 business district location

Choosing the right business area and the right place is a super event to be prepared before opening a store. Whether you choose it in the vicinity of a school, an office building or a busy urban area, it has its own advantages and disadvantages. Students have plenty of leisure time and like to have fun together, so they can turn the store into a space suitable for parties; many office workers in the office area will collectively order takeout meals and drinks to the office, so if they want to open in the office area, it is suggested that they can be paired with some light meals suitable for takeout, so that takeout groups do not lose. As most of the people in downtown areas are passers-by, they come out for dinner and entertainment with relatives and friends, and most of them tend to choose more famous stores and more advanced decoration environments for gatherings, so they are not suitable to open self-operated shops with leisure and low prices, and can operate cafe types that have characteristics or are suitable for lovers' dating and family and friend gatherings.

At present, the two giants of selling platforms at home and abroad, ele.me and Meituan, are rowing the river, but the takeout market is getting bigger and bigger, which also brings a lot of extra income to many coffee shops. it has also given rise to many "virtual coffee shops" (virtual coffee shops refer to coffee shops that do not have physical shops but only exist on the electronic platform). These coffee shops do not have to be in the bustling golden storefront, they may be located in hidden alleys. Even private studios and family kitchens rely on takeout platforms and online reputation accumulation to bring them a large number of orders (such as a takeout specialty store in an Internet coffee brand).

⚠ these virtual coffee shops are a new type of coffee shop management, and also break the previous rules of location, but the disadvantage is that the source of customers is single, relying solely on the delivery platform for diversion, livelihood and delivery platform tied together, when the takeout platform closes down or the percentage increases, it will have a serious impact on the store owner.

🔺 storefront scale

The small size of the store is not enough to sit during the peak hours, and the size of the store is large enough to raise mosquitoes during the trough, and it is afraid that business looks bad. According to the experience of bosses, it is also better for customers to queue up or provide reservations or take-out services during peak hours than too much cost burden due to the excessive size of the store. Big stores are magnificent, and when business is good, they look very lively and popular, but the low and off-season costs are wasted and manpower is idle, which may lead to losses that cannot survive the off-season.

The size of ⚠ space depends on the estimated unit price and number of visitors. If you have no experience in opening a store for the first time, it is best not to open a big store as soon as you open it. You can wait until the first store is profitable and stable, and then open a larger store to expand slowly. Small shops or small independent stores with low unit prices can develop more flexibly. When opening a shop for the first time, don't think about opening a shop simply and too optimistically. Be prepared to avoid failure.

🔺 store opening cost

"Food + rent + personnel" does not exceed 70% of revenue

In the future, store rents are bound to become more and more expensive, and bosses must be more actuarial when shop rents cannot resist the rise. As far as coffee shops are concerned, the cost of rent, personnel, and food materials is the biggest, ingredients cannot be saved, and guests can drink them by cutting corners; they are afraid that shop assistants will be too busy and the quality of service will decline; the location with low rent is located in the remote, and there is not much flow of people. How on earth should these costs be handled?

It is suggested that the proportion of income and expenditure structure of catering industry: rent should be less than 20% of revenue, manpower is about 1520%, and food cost is about 40%.

⚠ store owners often encounter storefront-related problems: the landlord saw that the business was doing well and asked for an increase in rent; the landlord wanted to take the store back and run it on his own. It is difficult to avoid these situations, and bosses can only keep their eyes open before signing contracts, try to avoid short-term leases and agree on unchangeable rents for the duration of the contract.

🔺 brand image

Nowadays, many young entrepreneurs do not like to join chain coffee brands, but like to open independent stores and create their own brands, so it is very important to decide on business positioning and brand image before opening a store, including decoration, storefront, signboards, LOGO, store name, menu, product packaging and so on.

The brand image can be embedded in the mind after customers come to the store and leave before they don't know the brand. A new storefront can make consumers notice when they pass by, attract customers to spend in the door, accumulate word-of-mouth, and then promote buybacks and recommend them to relatives and friends. The benefits of word-of-mouth transmission will be very fast.

Many entrepreneurs in ⚠ will be tied up by brand positioning, making it difficult to do business. The brand image can be distinct, but don't position the customer group too narrow. Remember, consumers don't eat three meals a day, and most of them don't spend every day. You need a wider range of consumers to support your coffee shop.

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