Deep Haowen | I always want to quit and open a coffee shop, but do they all make money?

Have you ever had a literary dream of opening a cafe?

Axin often has such friends who are fed up with nine-to-five life and the daily infighting in the office, and don't want to look at the boss's face all day.

They were so excited by the sentence "Life is not only the present, but also poetry and distance" that they decisively threw the resignation letter on the boss's desk and began to imagine what the ideal cafe looked like.

At three o'clock in the afternoon the sun shone through the large glass windows on the dining table, the air was filled with the smell of books and coffee, the soothing piano music was relaxing, and the old photos on the white walls were slightly yellowed. A clean and gentle girl leaned on the rattan chair next to the bookshelf, holding a quiet folding cat in her arms. She read an English novel intently, as if she had completely forgotten the noisy world outside the window.

Suit, high heels, boss, never see again!

So they can't wait to inspect, learn the arts, do everything themselves, invest 100% passion, for a good store, but run all over the streets of the city, either dissatisfied with the rent or location, more than half a year later still did not find a suitable storefront.

At this time, the commercial attributes behind the literary dream of opening a cafe are realized that raw materials, rent, decoration, staff and so on are all issues to be considered.

When the economic gain is out of proportion to the investment, the loss for a month or two can still be supported by the passion to realize the dream. What about the loss for six months? What about eight months?

You can say that it doesn't matter if your dream is shattered, it's just starting all over again. But have you ever considered the gory reality of grafting on your dream: do you want to pay back the hundreds of thousands of yuan you borrowed from your parents? How to settle the final payment of the design and construction team? Where does the money owed to suppliers come from? If personal credit is gone, can we start all over again?

If you haven't thought about these questions clearly, you are not a qualified entrepreneur yet. A qualified entrepreneur should consider whether he can bear the result of failure before taking the first step. So, before you make up your mind to open a coffee shop, I want to talk to you about what it's like to really open a coffee shop.

"

To be a cafe requires several times the effort to be a Lanzhou ramen restaurant.

But the economic return may be even less.

In reality, it is far less poetic than imagined to take care of a cafe. Opening a coffee shop is different from opening a "Lanzhou ramen restaurant". Its management is quite complex and cumbersome, and it costs several times more than being a ramen restaurant, but the economic return may be less.

In China (or Asia), cafes represent a relatively refined way of life. Although it costs 40 yuan per capita, you generally don't ask for elegant tables and chairs, exquisite dishes, warm music, and the smile and patience of the service staff in a Lanzhou noodle restaurant, while in a cafe, these are all "basic configurations." If you are an aspiring curator and want to build a caf é above average, you have to worry about more details. Small to napkin folding, oil-absorbing paper shape, service staff's standing posture, to catering style, shop culture and so on.

Compared with other industries, cafes can not offer employees too high salaries, so how to make employees do things with a "boss mentality"? In addition to providing a salary, you must care about their lives. You can say it's none of my business, but you're sure to lose an employee. This is not something out of nothing, but the real situation I have faced.

You still need to keep learning. To be a cafe, it is far from enough to know coffee.

To be able to choose a location, you need a basic understanding of the real estate industry

To understand design, you need to understand the decoration industry

You need to know how to register a company, as well as the financial problems related to the company

You need to understand "social insurance and house fund" thoroughly from the point of view of the boss, not the employee.

You need to know what to do with water, electricity and natural gas.

You need to keep track of the vegetable and fruit markets.

You need to understand all the laws and regulations of the catering industry.

……

I am not scaremongering, because if any of the above links are not handled properly, you may fall into a "pit" and allow months of hard work-it may be a fine for industry and commerce or fire fighting, a sudden change of heart from the landlord, a POS (Point of Sale Intelligence Management system) fraud, or a premeditated encounter.

Opening a coffee shop is a pleasure, and it brings you more spiritual enjoyment than opening a Lanzhou ramen restaurant, but at the same time, opening a coffee shop is also painful, it will bring you more hard work and frustration: this is the real experience of opening a coffee shop.

"

Need feelings, but also need to understand business

There is no doubt that it takes emotion to open a coffee shop.

When financial gains are out of proportion to your investment, and when you feel frustrated and depressed, the ideal and passion that transcends business is what motivates you to keep going.

However, feelings do not solve all problems.

Feelings work when you lose money for 10 days, but can you hold on when you lose money for a month, two months, or three months? According to my limited observation of the industry, many small owners can't bear it after losing money for two months. They may not close the shop, but their mindset has changed, and they have become worried and anxious, and this anxiety will also be passed on to employees and guests, leading to a decline in the level of service in the cafe, which leads to a further decline in turnover-this is a vicious circle.

Therefore, to open a good cafe, in addition to transcending commercial feelings, but also needs scientific strategies and methods. It is wrong for many people not to learn the basics and skills of opening a restaurant and want to open a cafe with a little spare money-which is why there are fewer and fewer well-run cafes.

Please don't get me wrong-I'm not saying that running a coffee shop doesn't make money. I can tell you responsibly that with the right methods, cafes can achieve the goal of starting a business and achieve financial success.

More importantly, because of the unique atmosphere and heritage of the cafe, this kind of entrepreneurship has a sense of spiritual pleasure that the average startup project does not have-but only if you are professional enough.