How to open your brand new cafe

If you're asking yourself how can I open my own cafe? you came to the right place. There is nothing more exciting than the idea of creating your own business. Cafe can be a great idea for a business, but there are a lot of details you need to pay attention to. If you want to have a successful cafe you first need a plan on how to set things in motion. Key factors you need to plan before starting a cafe business are vision and expectations, business plan and financing, location, regulations, equipment and interior, menu and suppliers, hiring, marketing and final testing.

Vision and expectations


Let's start with your vision and expectations, if you plan on starting any project you need a good vision and realistic expectations. Before deciding on how you want your cafe to look, what features should it have and how much profit will it bring try to visit and research other cafes in your area. By visiting and researching you will be able to experience different designs, atmospheres, offers, features and services. When you finish this process your vision will hopefully be more clear on what you want and what you don't want for your cafe. Naturally, you will want the best features and design in your cafe, but you need to take finances into consideration and decide what features are most important for a successful beginning.


Business plan and financing


Remember, opening a cafe won't happen overnight, building your strategy and planning is crucial so take your time and create a business plan. Business plan is there to help you stan on track, by writing it you will never forget what your short and long term goals are. Sometimes we are so excited to start the project that we forget to do preparations. Some of the key questions that your business plan should have while starting a new cafe are:
 
How big are your fundings? (are you going to use your own money or loan? How and in what time will you be able to repay it?)
What is going to make your cafe unique?
Who is your target customer? (demographics, age, interests...)
Who is your competition?
How much and how fast will you profit?
What will be your costs?
What will make your business grow?
What will you offer to your customers?
How big of a team you need? (Employees, advisers and accountant)
Who are your suppliers?
Are you following all the regulations?

And those are just some of the questions you need to ask. So before starting any action, first create a good business plan that will answer all your questions.

Location

Now that you created a business plan to stick to, you need a good location for your cafe. This is one of the most important decisions when you have a business depending on visitors. By this time you should already know who your target customers are and based on that you should make plans for location. You need to pay attention to details when choosing location, does your location have parking lot? is it accessible and visible for people in the street? Is your design going to stand out or blend in with the neighborhood?. Before deciding for any location try and think about your customers, their needs and your vision.
 

Regulations

You know your customers, you picked out the best location and you are almost ready to design your interior and exterior. But there is one more thing to keep in mind before flor plan, and that is regulations. When designing a floor plan you need to first check all possible regulations that may affect your design. Check hygiene, food, business conduct, music and other regulations that can affect you and your customers.

Equipment and design

With regulations in mind start planning your interior and exterior. When designing your floor plan, you should first check the list of equipment from your business plan and put it in place. Also keep in mind to leave enough space for your employees to reach all the customers in the shortest time. Other than that everything else is on you or your interior designer. Again keep in mind your target customers, you first need to create an exterior that will attract them and then interior that will create an atmosphere they will enjoy and happily come back to.

Here is a choice of restaurant supply for your cafe:

cafe bain marie

cafe catering equipment

cafe refrigerated display

Menu and suppliers

When creating menu make sure you don't overdo it. Don't focus on as many items you can come up with but rather a couple of items that will attract your customers. Remember, it is about quality and not quantity in this case. When coming up with the menu you should also think of supplies and suppliers that you can work with. When you decide what are all the supplies that you need and where to buy, you should also check the quality of supplies you are getting.

Hiring

Sometimes hiring your brand new employees can be very hard. You need to find people who will represent your cafe and work with you in the best possible and effective way. Don't always go for the most experienced, in some cases you will work better with people who want to learn and prove themselves.

Marketing

Marketing is very important especially in today's world of social media. It has never been simpler to market your product or service because of the wide variety of platforms. You should choose the platform where most of your target customers are and present them with exciting work in progress and of course the grand opening.

Final testing

Never forget to final test your service, when your cafe is ready, call your friends and family to test you and your employees. By doing this you will know what your strengths and weaknesses are so you can be ready for the grand opening. And since you are presenting all this to the people you know, you can get great feedback.
 
I hope this helped you to understand the process of starting your own cafe. Now that you have all the tools ready you can start planning and executing one by one task until you have a cafe of your dreams.