Cafes have replaced fast food restaurants as the first choice for gathering or spending time. And every year in the big business franchise show, the cafe is always voted as the top ten entrepreneurial industries, which shows that opening a cafe has a fatal attraction to many entrepreneurs. How wonderful it is to be able to smell the coffee every day, chat with the guests, and still have money to make!
While enjoying coffee is a basic condition for becoming a cafe owner, after all, drinking coffee and opening a cafe are two completely different things, "drinking coffee is very romantic, but opening a cafe is realistic,"
Cafe Lesson 1: Positioning-Dreaming, but also a sense of direction
Deciding on the positioning of the cafe is the first step to opening a successful cafe. The first step.
For example, should it be a deluxe café, a take-away café, or an in-house café? Will the store sell only coffee, or "coffee + pastry", or "coffee + pastry + light meal"? In addition, will it be a single-store operation, or will it be a composite café (e.g., combined with a bookstore) that operates in alliance with other businesses? These are all things that need to be thought through from the beginning.
The positioning of the café determines the capital, personnel, menu, location, and even the design and decoration of the store; it is necessary to determine the direction of the business before planning other details. But many shopkeepers, on the contrary, tend to decide on the design and decoration and location selection, and then consider what type of cafe to open, for example, "I would like to open a cafe full of Provencal style," the brain all around how to decorate the Provencal style, which is the most common and fatal error of the cafe shopkeepers.
Coffee store lesson 2: financial planning - store, the calculator to play smart
A cafe requires hardware and software as follows:
1. menu (menu, including coffee, pastries and light meals)
2. equipment (coffee machine, oven, microwave, gas stove, smoothie maker, refrigerators, freezers, etc.)
3. equipment (coffee machine, oven, microwave, gas stove, smoothie machine, refrigerator, freezers, etc.)
3. Hardware (air-conditioning, lighting, etc.)
4. Utensils
5. Design and Decoration (bar design, cafe style and color palette, tables, chairs and furniture, etc.)
Of these five elements, the menu is the most basic, and it determines what kind of equipment and hardware need to be purchased, and it also affects the bar design. If at the beginning only want to open a "coffee + pastry" cafe, the bar design is relatively simple; but if after opening found that this alone can not sustain operations, want to increase the smoothie products, will find that the bar may not have the space to place the smoothie machine; in case you want to increase the simple food, and did not plan the kitchen in the beginning, the problem will be even greater, and even need to be re-decorated partially, which is a large sum of money spent. Therefore, at the beginning of the business, we need to think clearly about the cafe's trafficking program.
Decorating budget is the easiest way to lose control
Café capital planning must include the following expenditures:
1. equipment
2. hardware equipment
3. utensils
4. design and decoration
5. rent (the first month's rent + 3-month deposit = 4 months rent)
6. p>6. Raw materials
7. Personnel expenses (such as hourly staff salaries)
8. Miscellaneous expenses (utilities)
9. At least to maintain the cafe's deficit operation for five months of the reserve (rent + raw materials + personnel expenses + miscellaneous expenses) x 5
Suggested budgets of the three items of financial equipment, hardware equipment, utensils can not be moved, the only change is the cost of design and decoration; as for the design and decoration costs; as for the design and decoration costs, the only change is the cost of the equipment. The only thing that can change is the cost of design and decoration; as for rent, it involves the choice of location, which is more variable.
"Why do we keep telling entrepreneurs not to start with the design and decoration when opening a business?
Why do we keep warning entrepreneurs not to start with the design and decoration when opening a business? Because experience tells us that when many entrepreneurs have a million dollars in cash in hand, the first thing they do is to look for a design and decoration company, and at that time, when they have plenty of money in hand, they tend to add to the decorating budget in order to build the café of their dreams, which is as little as 200,000 dollars. The rest of the money, used to purchase raw materials and hardware equipment, and then deducted to pay the landlord four months of rent and deposit, has very little left, as long as some of the wind blowing, the cafe is likely to be unsustainable, either to close the store or the top to let.
Every cent spent on the knife's edge
"Some people are willing to buy a 500 yuan chair to set up the cafe, but some people buy a 50 yuan second-hand chairs, plus the chair cover, the effect is just as good,
Coffee-making equipment and the bar is the core of the entire cafe, "In fact, a good two- or three-hole espresso machine, the price of from a few tens of thousands of dollars to several hundred thousand yuan, will be sufficient to cope with 150 square meters of large cafe," he said.
Never ignore the after-sales service of the coffee machine. His experience is that if the espresso machine breaks down and the supplier can't come and fix the machine within four hours, it's useless even if the machine is good, because you don't have to do business for the whole day!
Decorating and designing for flexibility
In fact, there is a lot of flexibility in designing and decorating, so it's better to adapt to local conditions and not invest too much
As for the purely take-away cafes, the decorating is even easier, as long as the bar is well designed, and very little else is spent.
The third lesson of the coffee shop: professionalism - technology is not in place, everything is exempt
Since the opening of the cafe, the quality of coffee beans and the technology of the coffee brewing, is the key to determine the rate of return of customers.
The people of China on the restaurant décor like new and old fast, a store's décor may be out of date after 3 years, if you only want to win with the décor and atmosphere, maybe at first the media effect will bring people, but after the fever, a hard to drink cafe can rely on what support?
It is recommended that since you are interested in opening a cafe, it is best for the entrepreneur to be in charge of the bar at the beginning of the business, and then hire 2 to 3 full-time or part-time work-study students in the outside part of the shop, which is enough to cope with the daily operation of the cafe, so that you can save on personnel costs, and also avoid the problem of varying quality of the coffee in case of departure of the bar staff and the shortage of manpower.
How much do you know about the characteristics of coffee beans?
Many people don't even know how to make coffee before they open a store. Before you open a store, you must spend more time tasting coffee beans from other places, in addition to training your sense of taste, you can also study the quality and taste of different coffee beans, find out what you like about the coffee beans, or roast your own beans, all of which take time to develop experience.
There are many importers and distributors of coffee beans in China, so it is worthwhile to go online or ask people in the industry for advice, as well as bean dealers or coffee machine suppliers who provide relevant courses, so it is not difficult to recognize coffee beans.
In addition to this, you should read more coffee books and listen to related activities, because the threshold of the café is not high and the competition is becoming increasingly fierce, and the only way to make the quality of coffee is to make it.
The fourth lesson of the coffee shop: location - there is no need to be superstitious about the prime location
Many people believe that the key to the success of the store is "location, location, location", and as long as you open a store in the prime location, you will be assured of a win, but in fact, this sentence is only half right.
Usually, we distinguish commercial locations by grade A, B and C. In the case of grade A prime locations, the rent is either too high or there is no market for them, which is why the stores in prime locations usually sell high unit price products.
Many of the prime stores in the Tier 1 war zones have a monthly rent of at least tens of thousands of dollars, counting how many cups a day you have to sell in order to break even on the rent? This does not include personnel costs and equipment depreciation. In fact, as long as the operation of the right way, B-class C-class location can also have the spring of the cafe. A stone's throw away, the rent difference
Every cent of the entrepreneurial family must be used on the knife's edge, the rent of the store on the main road, a month will be tens of thousands of dollars, but if it is only a dozen meters away from the road in the alley, the customer will not mind walking a few steps, the rent may be quite a bit different.
Can be divided into department store area, office area, commercial area, cultural and educational area, entertainment area, residential area, traffic transit area, etc., in-depth observation of the daily activities of the district and the flow of people, analyze the success rate of operating a cafe in the district.
Each location has a different way of working and resting, and people gather at different times. If the cafe is located in an office area, the noon hour from Monday to Friday is the most important business hour, and you can take advantage of the Sunday breaks; on the contrary, if you open a store in an entertainment area or a shopping area, the weekend breaks will be clearly a problem with the money.
Crowd does not equal money
However, "crowd" does not necessarily equal "money", and entrepreneurs are advised to spend at least a week observing the attributes of the local crowd and consumption patterns when choosing a location. Take the intended location as the center, investigate how many competitors (including chain or single-store cafes, fast-food restaurants and bubble tea stores) are within 500 meters, record the number of people who enter the store every day and the estimated turnover of these competitors, and also assess how sure they are that they will be able to share the pie or make it bigger if they are involved in this battle.
Coffee Shop Lesson 5: Cost Control - How much does a cup of coffee cost?
Opening a store, of course, can not lose money. But many people only know how much a cup of coffee to sell, but do not know how much a cup of coffee costs.
Usually, 15 to 20 grams of coffee beans are used to make a cup of coffee, and a pound of coffee can usually make 25 to 30 cups of coffee, and a cup of coffee creamer (or milk) and sugar, the cost of about 1 yuan, in addition to the paper cups, tissue paper, stirring sticks and other materials. This makes the cost of raw materials for a cup of coffee roughly between 2 and 4 dollars. Don't forget to add the cost of rent, utilities, personnel, equipment depreciation, etc., plus a certain percentage of the profit is the price of a cup of coffee.
Many shopkeepers don't know how to price their coffee, so they look at how much their competitors are charging, and then they follow suit. But this kind of laziness is very dangerous, later found that the income is not enough to make ends meet, and do not dare to raise prices, so they have to switch to cheaper coffee beans, and the vicious cycle begins, "This is the beginning of the preparations for the closure of the store!
Coffee Shop Lesson 6: Customer Cultivation - Building Word of Mouth
Opening a coffee shop is like chasing a girlfriend, it takes time to brew.
A few years ago, it was quite profitable to open a café, but with the increasing number of competitors and the strong involvement of café chains, it has become more and more difficult to open a fantastic café with its own style. "
Opening a café is a long and slow stream of entrepreneurship, and usually the first three months are in the money-burning stage, with many people hoping to make a name for themselves through a variety of marketing and advertising campaigns before they open their doors, but the first day of opening should not be a full house! But don't get a full house on the first day of opening," Zhou said seriously.
His reasoning is that on the first day of opening, you may not be familiar with the coffee-making and customer service processes, and some people may not even know how to use the coffee machine, so the more people that come, the more customers will complain.
"On the first day, only two or three kittens are needed to familiarize themselves with the various techniques and procedures, and as long as one of them isn't a dumb cat, they'll gradually gain a reputation," said the company, adding that since the expected flow of people won't be too high in the beginning, it will have to rely on lower operating costs (of which lower rent is the most important) in exchange for the time to cultivate its customers.
Ask yourself three questions
Opening a cafe is a great way to realize your entrepreneurial dreams and make friends with like-minded people. However, be sure to ask yourself three questions: Is the rent for the store reasonable? Is the capital for the business mostly owned? Is opening a cafe a lifelong interest?
If the answer to all three questions is "Yes!", then owning your own dream cafe will no longer be a distant dream
.