Start a coffee shop – 12 steps you need to prepare

You are planning to open a cafe and you are wondering how the order must be done. Answering the questions below will help you run a successful cafe business.

1. Are you really passionate about business?

Consider coffee not only as a business, but also as an art, service art, business art, to bring beauty, pure value to serve your customers.

With your passion for your business, cultivate your experience, get ideas, to make your cafe richer, more accessible to customers, so that customers really feel comfortable right from First steps into your shop.

In addition, really passionate about business will help you have the bravery to deal with business situations, when in trouble, you will not flinch and will quickly find a way to overcome it.

2. Do you have knowledge of administration?

No need to go through a formal, complicated and sometimes useless training process, you just need to equip yourself with basic management knowledge.

Management knowledge can come from reading books about governance, or simply asking people who have experience, but preferably both. This will help you make a clearer business plan, no longer have to step by step, better respond when faced with adverse situations.

You will easily answer but the difficult question regarding the cost of opening a café, how to manage staff, how to care about customers, what marketing is, how to conduct marketing, channels How should communication be used, personnel orientation and cost calculation in the short term (1 month), medium term (3-6 months) and long term (1 year or more)?

3. How will you handle with financial issues (capital, profits and costs)

Before starting a business, you must have some required capital. In the coffee business, depending on the type of coffee shop, shop scale … the initial capital is very different. The capital spent in sidewalk cafes is of course much less than that of luxury cafés.

You should balance using the highest cost calculation and the lowest profit margin to avoid unexpected situations.

4. Did you choose the appropriate location?

There are a lot of you wonder, what are the criteria for choosing a place for a café? In my opinion, there are some following criteria.

First, the selected location must match the budget you have. Before going to survey the place, pay attention to your money, don’t waste your time dreaming about a spectacular café while the budget is just that much.

Secondly, the café location must be suitable for the customers you target. Around the office café can not be less businesses and agencies.

Third, you must pay attention to the frequency, concentration and psychology of people who go through that location. High frequency, high concentration density is of course ideal. However, you must pay attention to the psychology of those who go through it. The bus stop is a place where the frequency of travel is high, it seems to be a place of high concentration, but in reality it is only suitable for sidewalk cafés, which allow quick service and Fast math & especially near the bus stop as possible. But this is completely different from the bus stations, the pier or the airport, because in these places, customers take the initiative, their psychology is more relaxed and ready to enter a café to wait for Now leave.

Those who carry in themselves the mind of disengagement, psychological play, stress-relieving psychology, psychological experience, psychology that is in need of connection … are your potential customers. The places where the psychologists gather will be the promised land for you to open a café. It is no coincidence that around Sword Lake, a café grows like mushrooms.

5. Have you identified your target customer?

Identifying customers is extremely important. It determines the form of a coffee shop, a bar, a menu, a marketing issue …

If your target is soccer enthusiasts, open a football café. If it is people who like listening to music, open a music café. If you’re a movie lover, you can open a 3D movie café.

If your target is a technology person, don’t hesitate to invest in a coffee management system with electronic software; Employees use cheap tablets to choose the menu according to their requirements, the order will be sent to the dispensing and payment department quickly, knowing the details of each table, both modern and modern. , both saving staff.

In addition, there are many types of cafés aimed at very different customers such as: coffee book shop, garden café, office café, small café, casual café, fastfood café, photo café, film café, coffee shisha …

6. Your space has brought comfort to customers?

The space in a café is paramount. Many people believe that the café business is not to bring coffee to customers to enjoy, but to bring space to them.

Cafe space includes: common space of the shop & private space of the customer. Common space design depends on the taste of the owner and the customer you are targeting.

In the common space, there are separate spaces created by the customers themselves. It may be a person sitting in deep contemplation on a coffee cup; a young couple said smiling lovingly; a group of friends playing games of wood; people holding smartphone check-in; people read books; There are also people who hold the piano on the small stage of the restaurant to sing … If the common space can create such a lively space, then your café is gradually entering the customers’ hearts!

In addition, you should also pay attention to the layout of tables and chairs to benefit the service activities of the restaurant, the movement of employees as well as customers. The arrangement of payment counters, or taking products for customers must be convenient, avoiding the situation that customers have to wait long due to unreasonable causes.

7. Your menu has been built in line with the interests of target customers?

The café must naturally serve coffee. But coffee is not all. A large number of customers come to the café to enjoy coffee, but a large part is equally come to enjoy the cafe’s space, or both.

Moreover, the café is often a place to gather friends, a meeting place, each with a hobby, so customers can be people who don’t like coffee. Therefore, the café should have other drinks, snacks, or fast food if possible; often called the “Café +” menu.

8. How to recruit staff?

People are always the determining factor of success. The staff are the first to connect customers to the café. The staff is also the right arm, the left arm helps the shopkeeper maintain and develop the café.

The most important thing in recruiting from management to staff is reliability. Next is the experience of communication, affection and friendliness. However, don’t pay too much attention to the experience. Young people who are not experienced often have the desire to learn, enthusiastically and sometimes have many creative ideas. The thing to do is to train them.

In addition to professional training, skills for employees, you should also train them to work together. The coordination between chefs, barista, waiters, cashiers will make your business much smoother, customers are served quickly, profession.

9. Do you have a list of suppliers?

To open a café, you have to contact a lot of suppliers. Designers, suppliers of furniture, equipment, machinery, suppliers of decorations, entertainment, even suppliers of electronic management systems. There will be times when you need these providers.

You want to change a bit in design, refresh the space of the shop? Or need more tables and chairs, equipment because the business is very positive? Or do you need to change layout accessories, update new entertainment, or software problems? These things can happen at any time, and it must be resolved quickly & quality.

10. Do you have reasonable marketing and communication plans?

If you want to open a cafe in your own style, you will have to prepare the necessary jobs for Marketing, such as designing Logo, Slogan, personal greeting card and advertising background. These things will be associated with the name of your café, which is also closely linked to the shop’s marketing strategies. After that, prepare the budget for Marketing.

There are many marketing methods; It can be traditional marketing such as distributing leaflets, organizing events, promotional banners or online marketing such as promoting on the website, facebook, fanpage of the shop, or using PR advice of available communication channels. and prestige. Of course they are just the channels that lead guests to you and the quality and keep the guests must be the answer from you right?

11. How to extend the shop?

When your business gets better, you also have a decent amount of money, want to invest in other coffee shops, then at this time, you should focus on investing in the depth of the shop. Do not turn the café into a small restaurant with the expansion of the menu. Or the restaurant scale opened too big, no longer suitable for the existing space of the shop.

You can refer to how to expand the triangle bar. That is, you estimate your customer radius for how many kilometers; then choose a café location outside of that radius to avoid conflicts with the old café; If you continue to expand, continue like this, forming a triangular triangle. Just add a shop again to create a new triangle. This model is quite successful in business, can gather customers in a large range.

12. Have you calculated legal issues?

Carefully calculate legal issues because you will avoid problems later. You need to do basic procedures such as registering a business license, food hygiene and safety, contracting with suppliers, with employees … or typically having to “be friends” with the police officers. ward to make business work smoothly.

Have you calculated legal issues?

I wish you a successful coffee shop business!

Source: kinhdoanhnhahang.vn