Five Critical Steps to Ensure Your Coffee Shop Success
By James Blake
The world is having a new romance experience with coffee. The drink has such a wide appeal
that many swear they cannot start their day without a mug of freshly brew coffee. The love
is so deeply ingrained that you have entertained the idea of starting a coffee shop. To open
a coffee shop has its own rewards. Among them you get to manage your own time, meet and talk
to a lot of different people and be your boss. However, before you open a coffee shop, there
are five critical steps you need to do to ensure your success.
Step 1: Understand your target market
This is the most under looked aspect of starting your coffee shop. Many people rush head
long into it only to regret it later when they are forced to close shop. Your clientele will
have different dining needs at different time of the day or even day of the year. When they
are rushing for time, they may settle for fast food or a quick cup of coffee. There are occasions
when the customers may want to find a nice place for dining but not too upscale. They may already
have a favorite restaurant to celebrate their birthdays or for special anniversaries.
You need to determine where you fit in this crowded marketplace. In may be determined
by a few factors. The first one is your personality. Do you like to interact with people or
do you like to work quietly in the background? Do you have the creative mind to change your
food and beverages to constantly changing consumer tastes or do you prefer to keep things the
same to maintain consistency?
The last step is to understand where the demands are. Every niche has its own market.
You need to understand how big it is by studying the consumer buying patterns. The easiest
way to do this is to study the competitors. If there are many competitors in the marketplace,
which means the product is selling and you need to determine whether there can be one more
player. To understand this, you need to study the demographics, income levels and taste preference.
Step 2: Come up with your USP (Unique Selling Proposition)
When you heard the phrase "When you absolutely positively has to be there overnight",
which company brand does it conjure in your mind? Like many people, you will think of FedEx.
This is an example of USP at work. USP is the essence of your products or services that you
are offering. It can be used as a compelling headline to attract your customers to what you
stand for.
There are two ways to find your USP. The first is to look at your customers to determine
what you are doing well that cannot be replicated by your competitors. Secondly, you have to
determine what your competitor is not doing and try to come out with a meaningful way to serve
your customers. Remember that your USP must mean something important to your customers and
not merely slogan like "Our customer is No. 1".
Step 3: Draft a coffee shop business plan
Close to 95 percent of new startups fail because of lack of planning. This is because
the coffee shop owners do not have a clear vision of where they want to take their business
to. When they face some difficulties, they do not know what to do and before long, they had
given up. That is the reason you need to draft a good coffee shop business plan very much like
what the big corporations do
In layman language, a business plan is a piece of paper stating where you want to go
and how you plan to go there. There are many more specific things you must incorporate together.
These include qualitative and quantitative factors. The qualitative factors to be covered include
your target market and your target market share, your USP, coffee shop equipment needs and
your marketing plans. The quantitative factors are your financial plan coffee shop. These are
the monthly cash flow forecasts for revenue and operating expenses.
A good business plan acts as your compass in your time of doubts. It is also an essential
document to show your banker and investors that you have given thought on your business direction.
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