Cafe Shops
Dreaming to own a café can be a rewarding experience not only for the café owner but also for hundreds of customers who will be visiting the café shop for a peaceful environment, great conversations with friends and colleagues, a relaxing ambience and much more. A great café offers a relaxing place; making morning coffee time more serene and calm, filling your stressful afternoons with peace and tranquility.
Apart from business planning and finances, setting up a café has its own unique prerequisites that must be met for a successful startup and flawless running of a café shop.
Top 10 Tips to Run a Successful Cafe Shop
Here we have top 10 tips that help you in opening and running a cafe shop successfully.
1. Define Your Vision For Café Shop
Cafés are more than just eating and drinking places. Your vision will define what kind of atmosphere your café will have. Your dreams, ideas and passion will shape up the overall environment of your café. Define a clear vision and come up with a unique concept for your café shop in order to stand out. Your concept needs to clearly state that you are offering a rewarding experience to your customers.
2. Develop A Well Chalked-Out Business Plan
A well laid out business plan is the backbone of every business. A properly planned detailed business plan will guide you through each stage of starting, developing, establishing and managing your café business. A well defined business plan covers following areas:
- A summary of the business; what it stands for.
- Analysis of local market cafes and coffee shops
- A clear marketing and promotional plan
- Financial estimation for setting up the café
- Well-defined expectations from the team and staff
3. Select Best Café Location
Selecting the right location for your café can maximize the potential of your café shop. Choose a location with high foot traffic where you expect a lot of customers on daily basis. Considering demographics of that area, local community life style, number of other cafes in a nearby location, and business hubs at walking distance can offer great profitability chances. While selecting the location one must consider the lease and licensing rules and regulations of that area where you want to setup your café shop.
4.Find Best Food and Drink Supplier
Looking for the best food and drink supplier is mostly a crucial step in setting up a café. The food and drink suppliers for cafes mostly deal in supplying coffee, milk, bread, buns, drinks and other groceries. A reliable supplier plays a key role in your cafe’s success rate by providing a seamless supply of food and drink items.
5. Create Trendy and Relaxing Atmosphere
Café shops are meant for relaxing conversations, friendly atmosphere and comforting sitting places. The interior of a café should be designed keeping your targeted customer base in mind. The paintings, lighting, signage, furniture, interior designing, wall color scheming; all should go with the overall theme of your café setup. Amongst the various options available you can decide the conceptual design of your café according to your wish and customer base:
- Modern
- Retro
- Family-friendly
- Health focused
- Vegan
- The old house
- Grab-n-go café
- Vintage classic
- Indoor garden style
- Boho Style
- Café with Literary Corners
6. Consistently Serve High Quality Product
Customer loyalty and satisfaction can be earned with only one thing; high quality products. Always invest your resources and staffs’ efforts to offer the best coffee, drink and food items to your customers. Customers’ experience with the food and drink they will have in café reatly affect the success of your café shop.
Check Also: Top 10 Tips To Make your Restaurant Successful
7. Abide by Local Laws, Regulations and Licensing
In addition to planning menus, employing staff and doing all creative work for a café, some legal regulations need to be met for setting up a café shop. The local council or authority requires some legalization and licensing formalities to be met in order to keep your café running successfully. Some of these licenses could include:
- Food business registration – if you plan to get food cooked and sell at your café this license is a must.
- Alcohol license – if you intend selling alcohol at your café you will require this license.
- Entertainment license – this will permit you to play any kind of music in your cafe.
- Health and safety Certificate– Food Standards Agency carry out a health and safety inspection on cafe premises and issue food hygiene rating certificate.
- Environmental Health Service – Before opening your café you need to get registered with Environmental health service sector.
- Insurance – Some insurance is also required based on your business type.
8. Network with Café Product Supplier
Explore various café products suppliers in the market, evaluate them on basis of their rates and services and then develop a close network with the most reliable ones. In addition to food and drink suppliers, you need to have a regular and continuous supply of coffee cups, disposable utensils, napkins, teapots, pastry holders, sugar sachets, coffee stirrers etc. A trusted café product supplier will take care of each small thing, saving you from all the hassle of running around for nitty-gritty items. Selecting the right café product supplier who harmonizes best with your business philosophy can bring lucrative results for your café business.
9. Design an Attractive Exterior
While the interior defines the overall ambience of a café shop, its exterior should be equally welcoming and attractive. The exterior is the first thing your potential customer will see; make sure you make a mark with your exterior. Create an attractive and unique exterior that’s appealing and inviting. Your exterior can be an important marketing tool if you plan wisely.
10. Offer a Great Customer Service
Happy customers means more business and that is how a successful business should be. Offering seamless services to customers demand proficiency, skills, welcoming environment and quality products. In addition to supplying great food and drinks in your café you can improvise many small things that will make your customers feel valued and welcomed.
- A unique welcoming note or gesture
- Special offers on ‘Deal of the Day’
- Offer free trial of new drinks and food items
- Free WiFi
- Loyalty Cards
- Marked down prices
- Customer Feed Back Cards
Related: 10 Tips for Running a Successful Fast Food Restaurant
End Up:
These detailed tips will help you in starting, opening and running a successful café. Those of you who are already into café business and are looking to improve their business can also make the best use out of these suggestions and make a tangible difference in their café shop success.
