How did I shut down a cafe

Benevolent advice

The open cafe is an ideal model room for every Wenqing, sacrosanct. Ideally, he would scold Fang at the bar in the morning and arrange a day's work. When dusk came, he would sit at the window table with a cup of coffee and think about life, or chat with regular customers (definitely beautiful women) about Chekov and Russell.

For Wenqing, the cafe is the ideal and the destination. It's a certificate of "doing really well".

According to statistics, only one out of every 101 Wenqing who opened a coffee shop was successful. However, it would be ridiculous if someone came to the conclusion that "Wen Qing has a hundred ways to close down the cafe."

Firmly against it. Seriously:

Really not all Wenqing

Can open a cafe.

This is a technical job.

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I talked for three hours with Liang Chen, the most famous coffee consultant in the capital, and extracted a sentence from the dozens of cases he mentioned:

"want to go out of business?

Then be sure to give your consumers the most comfortable experience!

Yes, you read it right. This is the core premise of opening and closing down a coffee shop. This is all the content of this article, anxious friends can close the article and quit.

On the road to bankruptcy, my friend Zhang Dahun walked steadily. We might as well follow in his footsteps and complete today's guide in a real-life way:

1. Good position and large space

"finally get away from the stupid boss and the mediocre life!" The clean life of white shirt, khakis, sunshine and coffee is waving to Zhang sledgehammer.

However, just like taking a shower before a dream, the first soul torture Zhang sledgehammer faces is: room.

Yes, Tao Yuanming also has a fence when he "picks wild flowers by the fence".

Where and how big is it? Sledgehammer thinking--

God forgives anyone.

He knew that it was impossible to compete with his father Xing to open an independent coffee shop, so he balanced the location and space, reason and emotion, dream and money, and finally found a prosperous shop of nearly 100 square meters on the first floor of a small office building on the East fourth Ring Road.

"this is it!" The sledgehammer said to himself. "Ka Xiang is not afraid of the depth of the alley."

However, in such a large space, Zhang sledgehammer only placed seven seats, large and small. "this is not a ramen restaurant! Is it coffee to rub your elbows? " In terms of his consumer experience of focusing on consumption for 30 years, the requirements for going to a coffee shop and a ramen shop are not the same for 40 yuan.

"do you understand the mood and experience? This cannot be solved by adding a single serving of meat! "

Congratulations on our sledgehammer, it is only the first step, and it is very close to the goal of "bankruptcy". It's really more important to choose than to work hard.

2. Good decoration, delicious drink

There must be big windows, sunshine! Green plant, it's all over the house! Retro wooden floors, retro sofas, old eight-person wooden table with a glass vase of bird mountain history, inside a lot of calla lilies …...

I want a log bookshelf, every painting and decoration I choose, Chekhov, Russell, Adam Smith. I picked out every book, and Haruki Murakami won't enter my cafe. It's not possible.

Does Starbucks order coffee? Starbucks really doesn't have good beans, by the way, as well as good machines and cups. Just ask, have you ever drunk Blue Mountain at Starbucks?

Do you think people are born to know what is the most comfortable? I don't know about it. " Zhang Dawei said confidently, "as Jobs said, don't ask your customer what they want, just give him the best."

Zhang sledgehammer decorated recklessly for nine months. Exquisite, literary and artistic, spacious and comfortable sofa, among the green plants is the agile figure of Dyson humidifier. That's the most upscale art cafe I've ever seen.

"I have 45 cups of coffee. "I almost spit it out, but the second half of his sentence was even stronger." I don't make money at all-beans alone cost 10 yuan, and Starbucks beans are not as good as my scraps. "

3. Appearance, of course, is appearance

Zhang sledgehammer spent a lot of money poaching baristas and desserts, who were poached by the hotel and spent a lot of money. But he can not only make heavy cheese and black forest, but also dream about Brown and the opera house. Sledgehammer satisfied.

As for the barista, it costs 15,000 yuan a month, and the job is good and handsome. "you can't imagine walking into a cafe and ordering coffee with a little Shenyang, can you?" These are all necessary expenses.

When it opened, Zhang Dahuo invited a bunch of self-media, and the shop was full of friends. On the opening day, customers took money, praised the United States, posted moments, and disappeared into the night.

"it was the most glorious day!" Sledgehammer took a sip of the wine and said, "the collapse began at that moment."

Yes, 10 months later, Zhang Dahuo achieved the small goal of this article: his coffee shop closed down.

It has been open for 10 months, which is only one month longer than his decoration time.

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For our theme today, Zhang Dawei's progress can be said to be excellent. How did he do it?

Let's make an account:

The office building on the East fourth Ring Road in Beijing belongs to the second class office building. The rent per square meter will not be less than 10 yuan per day. The rent for 100 yuan per day is 1000 yuan.

How to balance the income and expenditure, hidden in every seat.

Let's do the math on the basis of a table of two.

Two seats with two chairs and a table are generally three square meters, and the rent is 30 yuan; but the income from the kitchen, bar and aisle should be shared equally with the seats, according to the usual practice of renting units in double locations in the industry, which means that the two people actually have to bear the rent of 60 yuan a day.

Then according to the industry standard of "land rent: manpower: water and electricity miscellaneous" at 1:1:1, including the manpower of water and electricity, it will reach 180 yuan. And then share the cost of ingredients, which means that the actual cost of cover for two people is more than 300 yuan a day.

This is not a loss.

What does that mean? Even when the seats are full, it is necessary to order a large order of 80 yuan per table per day and turn the stage four times in order not to lose money. However, it is a fact that more than 300 yuan is the total income of many independent cafes in Beijing in a day.

This is not the most tragic moment. It is tearless that 45 of the 365 days a year in Beijing belong to extreme weather. Strong wind, heavy rain, heavy snow, haze. These real mothers will not come to your store days, Beijing has 1.5 months, abandoned.

Don't worry.

Let's take a look at Zhang sledgehammer renting office space. He is actually very smart: office workers and white-collar workers are indeed the audience of coffee. However, what he did not take into account is that these audiences only come five days a week. The turnover of the coffee shop stationed in the office building will drop so sharply on Saturday and Sunday that my own mother will not recognize it. According to the calculation, for nearly five months, rent, water, electricity and manpower. Everything is like spring water flowing away.

Have you ever seen a cafe that has been empty for four or five months? I've seen Zhang Dahun.

In fact, sledgehammer at the beginning of the road is to close down the road: re-decoration, large space. This will only lead to a decline in the turnaround rate: who hasn't ordered a cup of coffee for an afternoon in a cafe?

In fact, the sledgehammer of every hardcover cafe is the driving force that deviates Chinese cafes: towards feelings, the environment, not the coffee itself.

Do you remember the surprise when Man Coffee first opened? "what a tune!" That's what people said at that time. It's just that after a few years, it's "average". Consumers' aesthetic appetite is extremely high, and their feelings are decaying quickly.

You would say that if the highland rent and the good environment make it difficult for people to ride a tiger, is it possible to use good coffee to encircle a high-end audience and make a brand partition? One reality is that the coffee market is still in its infancy-people may be able to drink "bad" but there is still a gap between "good" and "good". Even in a city like Beijing, to be exact, the percentage of "people who know coffee" is only 1%.

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Independent cafes are dying fast. Statistics show that the 3-year survival rate of independent cafes is less than 10%. Tens of thousands of Zhang sledgehammer poured in with feelings, burned out feelings and money and left the field sadly.

Why is it so difficult to open a coffee shop? What is the difference between the coffee shop business and other forms of business?

The answer is: precisely because there is no difference.

Its core is not feelings, not aesthetics, but business, which requires businessman thinking. In the sunshine and coffee fragrance, it is a plan that needs to be calculated, step by step, and live within the limits of income. This is a living, not a literary dream.

"I will give everyone who comes to consult with me a test paper," Liang Chen told me. "the first question is: imagine a picture, what are you doing in your coffee shop? Fill in 'drink coffee, read a book, be in a daze', I advise them to reconsider. "

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The cafe may be destined to be a disaster in Wenqing's life.

The fledgling Wenqing needs a cafe, which is the one they want to sign and ask for. As soon as he opened the door with his laptop, Chekhov and Russell, he poured in. He didn't have any money at that time. It didn't matter. He ordered a latte and a book. After posting it in moments, he stayed all day.

After a few years, the young men and women in their thirties became more dependent on cafes. That is their living room, study and studio, whether it is to ask people to talk or fall in love, stay day after day.

Finally, Wen Qing, who worked hard to accumulate wealth, began to make up their mind to be cafe owners. What they failed to notice is that the door of fate has been quietly opened.