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Do you make money in coffee shops? It takes 2 to 3 years for the coffee shop to return to its original position. The coffee shop owner advises young people not to dream.

Published: 2026-07-13 Author: World Gafei

Last Updated: 2026/07/13, After experiencing the madness of capital, offline cafes have also been densely arranged. A week ago, Tim Hortons China, a well-known Canadian coffee chain, announced that it had opened 300 stores in China. In terms of store performance, Tims China said that so far this year

After the frenzied blessing of capital, offline cafes have also been densely laid out.

A week ago, Tim Hortons China, a well-known Canadian coffee chain, announced that it had opened 300 stores in the Chinese market. In terms of store performance, Tims China said that the number of Tim Hortons stores in China had doubled so far this year, and its plan to open 1500 cafes across the country remained unchanged in the next few years.

On June 17 this year, Tim Hortons announced that it had 200 stores, and it added 100 stores in a short period of more than three months, which shows the speed of expansion. MANNER, a new boutique coffee brand in Shanghai, which was founded in 2015, now has more than 200 stores and is expected to have 400-500 stores by the end of this year.

Seesaw Coffee, a new boutique coffee brand in Shanghai, which was founded in 2012, says it will open 100 stores by the end of this year, 200 next year and 500-1000 in the next five years.

That's not the craziest part. The boutique coffee brand "three and a half", which specializes in the online field, has also quickly seized the offline market and opened its first offline store, and it has been reported that Yongpu Coffee, a boutique coffee brand, will soon open its first offline test store.

According to the results for the fourth quarter of 2021, Starbucks, the world's largest coffee chain, had a net increase of 225stores in China in the fourth quarter of this year. So far, Starbucks has opened 5360 stores in China, including 900in Shanghai; by the first half of 2021, the total number of Luckin Coffee stores has reached 5259. This year, topics such as more than 8000 coffee shops in Shanghai and more than 6000 coffee shops in Chengdu have also appeared on Weibo.

Of course, such examples can be found everywhere, but I will not enumerate them here because of the length of the article. Here comes the core question: when it comes to opening cafes, people are strengthening their moats by seizing offline stores, so does this mean that opening cafes makes a lot of money? It's not! There are two topics on Weibo: one is # it takes 2 to 3 years for a coffee shop to get back to Ben #

The other is # the cafe owner advises young people not to dream #

These two topics tell the story of running a coffee shop, closing down and opening a coffee shop for two years without getting a payback. According to a report in time Weekly, a cafe opened in white-collar office buildings in Shanghai is facing bankruptcy under heavy pressure because of capital frantically burning money to layout the coffee market, as well as multiple blows such as rent, employee wages, raw material costs, and price war. The other one has been open for two years out of love of coffee, but it still can't get its money back. In fact, it seems nice to open a cafe, but goose! When I really opened it, I found that the business of opening a coffee shop was not as good as I thought. For example, if the cost is put in, it will not be recovered; for example, on the basis of ensuring that the cost of decoration and machinery is not high, and under normal business conditions, the return cycle of the coffee shop will take at least 3 years. According to a survey, the labor cost of a Beijing cafe is about 25% to 30%, the rent cost is about 25%, and the cost of operation, management, depreciation and attrition is about 15%. If you run such a cafe well, you will only barely make ends meet, and if you do not manage well, you will face the crisis of bankruptcy.

To put it more deeply, capital is pouring into the coffee track these days, and from the speed of expansion of coffee brands described above, it is not difficult to find that the competition in the coffee industry is very fierce. In this case, it is not easy to open an ordinary coffee shop to get back to the capital quickly. To sum up, stop thinking that opening a coffee shop makes a lot of money. If you are a person with a dream to open a coffee shop and hope to get a high return from it, there is no mine at home, then you must think twice before opening a coffee shop! * Photo Source: for more information about coffee beans on the Internet, please follow the coffee workshop (Wechat official account cafe_style) for professional coffee knowledge exchange. Please add Wechat account kaixinguoguo0925.

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