Opening your open cafe continued (what to do first)

Ok we've got the site for our new cafe - now what do we do? First thing we need to do is prioritise. What are the most important things to do before we open and what can wait? We want to open our cafe as soon as possible because we are already paying rent, we might be paying wages.. besides, we just want to get started. But it is important not to rush in, and even more important not to be seen to be rushing. In a job interview, the employer makes up his mind in the first 30 seconds. Forget about your well-crafted CV - if he doesnt like what he sees the moment you walk into the room, you're out. the same goes for a cafe. Who hasn't been to cafe where everything goes wrong, and the owner, by the way of an excuse, says that it's his first day, or his staff's first day, or the chef's new, or it's a new menu? And you, as a paying customer, do you care? No you just want a coffee or a quiet meal - you don;t need to hear these stories. You might probably never go back. Yes, it's a fickle world. we very rarely give a cafe a second chance. So eugenius, says to you, your cafe must be perfect from the day it opens. The lesson from this blog is - don't rush to open!

On the other hand, you can't sit on your hands waiting for the stars to come into alignment or the editor of the local newspaper to walk through the door and say this place is just fabulous, I love you, your front page of the Food section this week. Opening your cafe is going to involve a lot of trials. It will involve you covering the front window of the joint so that nobody can see in and dishing out a whole lot of food to friends and assorted free-loaders while you are testing out your menu, your flow in the kitchen, your appliances, your ability to stay awake for fourteen hours in a day etc etc. Remember also that soft openings generate a lot of interest. people walking by wonder what all the fuss is about and they will be the first customers to run through the doors once you do finally open, so be a little savvy about the soft openings and you might have a PR coup on your hands. More about this later.

The point of the last paragraph was to get you to aim at the soft opening not the actual opening. if you feel safe with this then the real opening will be a piece of cake. Hmm, let's say a nice moist cheesecake.

Aiming for the soft opening will help you to focus your mind on what you can do and what you can't do. We haven't discussed this yet but say you want to open a  mexican restaurant. You need to work backwards from the menu to how you make what's on the menu. It would be great to smoke your own meat for instance, but you don't have a smoker, so you might decide to roast instead. Storage of raw materials and dishes-in-progress is also a major consideration. You might want to keep a range of tacos in a display fridge to tempt walk-in customers, but how to keep them looking fresh? You might decide to wrap them in cling film for this reason but then how do they look? Where do you keep them if they are not on display? Where do you keep the ingredients that go inside them if you need to make some more up in a hurry/ The logistics of what you make, how you make it, and where you keep it is what makes one place fire and another fail. All this must be ironed out in the soft opening.

Now why do you think you want to open a Mexican restaurant? It may help for credibility that you are Mexican but more often than not these days, it matters not. The most important thing is that you are passionate about Mexican food. If you don't like the stuff, and even though there is no Mexican restaurant around for miles, and Mexican food is 'in' right now, it won't work. Not because you can't fake it - of course, you can - but because you'll get sick of doing something you don't like after a while. Isn't that the reason you got into cafes in the first place - because you wanted to do something you wanted to do after all these years?

Okay, you love Mexican food, but there are three pl;aces already down the street - do you still go ahead? Personally I'd advise you to think about it. I know you think your food will be different to theirs, better than theirs, cheaper than theirs - but have you actually checked them out? Eat in these other places, get your friends to go there independently from you. It may turn out that they are pretty good, even great. Okay now you know. I'm not advising you to give up. It may even be a good thing that a little Mexican precinct may form. It's just good to gauge your competitors. Don't put tickets on yourself. As an aside, let me tell you, it's always good to get on with your fellow eateries - so introduce yourself, and wish them well.

I'm getting hungry so let's finish this here. next episode we'll talk more about what you need to do before you open. As usual please send me any queries or comments you may have. happy eating!

Buying an exiting cafe

So you've decided to open a cafe. Are you taking over an existing venue or starting from scratch? Both options have their pluses and minuses. If you would like to take over an existing cafe whoever you buy it from will be wont to talk it up. If it is currently successful the price will reflect that; if it is not there will be all sorst of excuses as to why. An owner will have all sorts of reasons for selling but you can bet that he won't say that business has been going bad. He will tell you that the books only tell you part of the story, of that I'm sure. Of course, there is cash in the business but in these days of credit cards cash is not what it was. He will most likely tell you that he has charged many more expenses to the business than the cafe has spent from groceries to feed the family, internet, telephone, perhaps even car. All that sounds good and it may or may not be true but as regards you, the purchaser, is concerned it is irrelevant, You can only work on what is in his books.  The rule of thumb is a cafe is worth five times the net profit. Rent cannot be more than a fifth of turnover. Don't look at projections - graphs showing sales going through the roof in the future are all well and good, but are you buying a business or a fairytale?
Ask the owner how much coffee he sells a week then check the invoices from his coffee supplier. Well, you are not going to say to his face that you don't trust him. He may not even know. When you work in a plce and are busy all the time it may seem to you that you are making more coffee than you actually are. In any case, if he is using less than 7kg a week of beans then he doesnt have a business he has a hobby, a lifestyle that might be fun and all, but there's no money there. There's no money to be made in food as a general observation. Money is in coffee and alcohol, if the cafe has a liquor licence.
All this calls into question your motives. Have you asked yourself why you want to open a cafe? Have you realised you may not break even until the third year? Are you prepared to have no time off, no holidays, no life. Anyway I stray. of course, you have otherwise you wouldnt have got this far.