What You Will Need When Starting Your Own Café
There is no doubt that it is a big step from dreaming about owning and running your own café to actually finding premises and doing it. However, it is not a dream that is totally out of reach, especially if you have studied hard and gained all the right qualifications.
Of course, you are going to need financial backing in order to get your new business up and running, whether it is in the form of a business loan, partnering up with someone who has the funds that you require, or encouraging investors who will take more of a sleeping role within your business. Once you have this in place, you will need to think about other important factors.
#1 A Place to run your business from
Undoubtedly the first thing that you will need to think about is where you are going to run your café. You can, of course, opt for having a purpose-built café either somewhere that has already been used as such or a store that you will be able to change into a café. Or you could decide to go a more mobile route and price up the cost of the perfect food truck.
#2 Seating options for customers
Regardless of what you decide to do, you will have to think about seating options for your customers. Providing seating that is undercover is a must regardless of whether you have additional seating in the open air or not. You should make sure that there is plenty of room between tables so that all your customers, including those with disabilities, can move around freely without knocking into other customers, and if you are thinking of hiring a waitress or waiter, they, too, have room to move around.
#3 Takeaway services
To cater to as many customers as possible, you should make sure that you provide a takeaway service as well. Not all of your customers will want or will have the time to sit in a café sipping coffee and eating cakes; some will want to take their orders to a park or even back to their place of work – so you should make sure that you have the right packaging in order to provide this service. For instance, if you are serving milkshakes, it will look less than professional to serve it up in a takeaway coffee cup; instead, you would do far better to serve it in a proper takeaway milkshake cup.
#4 Enticing menu
No matter where you are showing your menu, whether it is on your website, in your café window, on your chalkboard board, or on an A board on the pavement, you need to make it as enticing and appetizing as possible.
Offering dishes that you know will sell well will help get your café full of customers and your till full of money. When it comes to your hot drinks you should also consider a wholesale supplier that is always reliable, as you’ll need to rely on their ingredients to make sure your café is always ready to serve everyone with the best coffee.
In order to receive table bookings when you first open, you could encourage people to place bookings by giving them a free drink or a percentage off of their bill. This will certainly give your business a kick start and give the individuals in your local area something to talk about.
