What do you care about first when you pool the money to open a coffee shop?

When you chip in to open a coffee shop, what do you care first?

When I attended a salon, I talked about a case of egg pain, but I thought about it. Maybe I could share it to commemorate the first production after opening a column for half a year.

A coffee shop with a large number of people in a third-tier city, with a per capita contribution of 2000, gathered about 80 people and raised a total of 16w. With an area of 200 square meters, it is located on the third floor of the residential building next to the computer city, and the fourth floor can also be used, undeveloped. The upfront investment is probably in 8w-10w.

The problem is that after three months of operation, apart from the shareholders' own customers, the other natural customers are 0.

According to the price between 18-28 per customer price of the coffee shop, the daily operating cost is 1w rent, 4k for a bar, and the rest are part-time zero salary, water and electricity 1k2 for a month. Coffee and other raw materials are accounted for according to 25%. I can't believe that I can't keep the capital. The turnover is not enough 2w5. And because shareholders bring friends over, some customers sign the bill directly in the name of shareholders.

Current status: after 3 months of operation, liquidity has entered the pace of drying up.

At present, team analysis: because many people's cafes have many shareholders and high communication costs, many decisions are difficult to implement. Then, according to the cafe's shareholders, the sponsors only talk, do nothing, have a veto, and miss a lot of choices.

The team's current solution is to reintroduce 2 major shareholders and 2 new shareholders to set up a company for management. The original investment of 80 people has shrunk by 2% by 3%. The newly introduced investment is then used to renovate the development of a new venue on the fourth floor of the cafe (scheduled for a buffet barbecue and chess room), leaving the coffee on the third floor intact. And the new mode of operation of the cafe will be carried out by the new shareholders, forming a new mode based on pull activities, salons, matchmaking and gathering places, which is different from the traditional door-to-door consumption mode of natural customers.

After listening to the introduction of my friends, I began to wonder what their problems were.

Do they know what their gross profit margin is? Do you know the turnover? Do you do a category analysis?

Have you checked all the items in the cafe? How to manage the daily operating cash and fixed expenses? Should new partners be introduced? Why is there no one? Why bring losses?

= gorgeous dividing line =

The following is my personal opinion

Question1: why is there a loss?-the turnover is not enough to cover the daily costs.

Why can't you pay the daily cost? because the number of customers is very low, the number of customers who come to the door is 0, the customers who visit the door are all shareholders or their friends have to give a discount, and the gross profit margin is low. In addition, most customers are concentrated on holidays (Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays to visit, activities are also weekends, usually there are too few customers.)

Question2: with fewer customers, what should they do?-how to attract more natural customers on the third floor near a computer city + school?

The rough and powerful way is to do group buying first-first to attract customers, as is the case with experiential consumption.

The unparalleled advantage over the coffee shop on the first floor facing the street is that the environment here is really OK and the sofa is very comfortable. Wifi is good, too, but it takes you three flights of stairs. If you consume a product like coffee at the same price, you need to give the customer an experience first.

Question 3: with customers, will the problem be solved?-in fact, most entrepreneurs will encounter problems of one kind or another, and whether the business is good or not is the same thing. The choice of location is also a lot of last resort. But in the face of multi-shareholder communication problems, in fact, this store is the most troublesome thing, why? Today, it may be because of the location problem, there is no traffic, but is a coffee shop sure to make money if it has a good location? It doesn't seem to be, so, after that, there are a lot of problems that need to be communicated by this entrepreneurial team. And this communication should not be 80 people exchanging needed goods. Right?

Question4: even if they later improve the passenger flow problem, does that mean there is no problem?-if the passenger flow and team problems are solved, what's the next step? Maintain customer viscosity, develop new products, carve sirloin every quarter to change new dishes, for coffee shops, a quarter to add one or two new drinks, it is also appropriate to get some? Guide customers to create content in sns, such as forwarding Weibo for 10 yuan free on the spot.

Question5: if you were the two new partners, would you choose to join? What is the reason for joining? What to do after joining?-- look at the possibility of continuous operation of this project from another angle.

-split it up again-

The solution comes from the advice of a boss who is about to open and close down (typing is really a painful thing.) :

What ① should make sure is that building data, business does not happen overnight, you must start to analyze your business, why do you say so? In the early days of a business, all you can see every day is turnover, but no matter what store you are, you can't leave behind this data from the first day. What does it contain? I've already revealed the title... Buying a store operation form template on Taobao may be very helpful for you to open a store.

Why do this, because once I have more than a year of data, I can compare, how about last year's Valentine's Day? Is the turnover good? how many people were arranged at that time? Blah, blah...

② combs the core management-what does the core management look like? Especially for such a store, I personally think that one or two people take a salary to do things full-time (reconciliation, cashier, savings, daily email report turnover, weekly business comparative analysis, gross profit analysis [although there is not much business, but it will not cost a few kilowatt-hours of electricity to play excel]), and several other enthusiastic shareholders can only supervise it. But you can never participate in specific management matters on a daily basis. This is the better mode of operation.

How does ③ solve the human problem?-- Group buying, home signing, changing tricks, handing out more flyers, more discounts, and letting customers create content in moments and Weibo.

No one comes up to the hard wound, absolutely does not rely on the shareholders have been pulling to do, what is more, there should be spontaneous door-to-door consumption, in the absence of time, then experience more …...

Discount won't kill you. Group buying doesn't have the atmosphere of our cafe. It loses the soul of our cafe. Let a businessman tell you that the turnover is 0. None of you have ever been on the street with a turnover of 68 yuan a day. I have, and then I don't want to spend it any more.

How should the consumption of ④ shareholders with friends be calculated?-if 80 people invest, someone will come to spend, right? Everyone has a discount by swiping their membership card number and record their consumption behavior. What? How do you think you can do that? Taobao 20 yuan of food and beverage management software to buy a minute to do, the seller also remotely assist you to do everything, if you also ask him to buy a membership card absolutely package mail membership card to you ah dear! Through the accumulation of consumption records, when there is a profit, according to the proportion, withdraw part of the profit, carry on the extra dividend reward. After all, only 10 of the 80 shareholders may be eager to bring friends home to spend, but the contribution to the business of the store may be more than 40%. (of course, the proportion is arranged according to the business situation.)

⑤, as a new shareholder, do you want to do it? How do you do that?

From a financial point of view, it is about N (less than 100) million investment, which can account for 33.33% of the caf é s. My point of view is that you have to ask to see their daily operating statements first. How is the daily business? How much stock do you have? How much cash is left and how much is the monthly expense? If you want to pay for it, you have to know it first. Because someone else has already opened the store for you, all you have to do now is to join in and turn losses into profits (although not every coffee shop can do it), so don't be cheap, just like a lot of investors do due diligence. This is achievable.

When you find that, ah, the turnover of this store is actually close to breaking even, in fact, there is still a lot of raw material inventory, and the lease agreement is relatively cheap and takes a long time. Cash flow can still support this store for 1-2 quarters. Then you can actually make a decision.

So what do you do when you come in? Is it "take out the money and squander it as much as you want"? Are you going to do an open-air barbecue + chess room? My advice is: no! If new business categories are added, will the turnover increase? You don't just have to decorate part of it, okay? the cleaning and daily care of the second floor cannot be solved by hiring a full-time bartender. Barbecue needs raw materials, raw materials should be pickled, which takes time and manpower. And after pickling, you have to store it in a special independent refrigerator, right? You have to sell fresh vegetables every day. Your shopping is much more complicated than opening a coffee shop. After a barbecue every day, you have to take care of the garbage, right? This is more troublesome than making coffee, and there is a chess and card room, how simple it is. As soon as people go in, they can collect money according to the head of the person. But how many of them can be understood by yourself?)

In fact, as a person who wants to take the offer, what you should do is to first turn the store from deficit to profit under the condition of reducing investment, instead of continuing to invest heavily. If the store starts to improve a little bit because of the natural customers of the cafe without particularly increasing the large investment, we will consider increasing the category (such as ice cream or pizza noodles and transforming it into a western restaurant). Or reinvest (use the cash after the partnership to raise money to open a new store.) This is a new model of sustainable development and value-added. Unlike the coffee shop in Beijing where many people run out of money, then raise funds to continue to burn money, do the dream of literary and artistic youth, and then watch the coffee shop close down. In other words, entering this fund can also enable the shareholders involved in the investment in this cafe to lose as little as possible. If it does not improve, everyone decides to close down, at least when they exit. Right?

--

We are rough people, do not talk big reason, to pick up a store, we are certainly not holding this is a coffee dream of the literary ideal, you should know something more rough, powerful and connotative.

What should you do when you join? I really can't elaborate on the content at the executive level. I can only mention one direction. At the executive level, I will do it in accordance with the points I said above. If you encounter problems, please comment and discuss again.

There is also the catering industry, in fact, it is really tired, not easy, everyone is the accumulation of experience, found that the first shop has been dead can not be brought back to life. It is impractical to get rich immediately and turn losses into profits immediately, but life is happy and conservative for 2 quarters, if you really close down, don't be discouraged, what is trial and error is wealth, as long as you have a plan to open a shop after that, this wealth will not depreciate.

Source: Sina Weibo @ Zheng Xinlong