If you are planning to open a coffee shop, you need to take a close look at your competition before doing anything else. Examine coffee shops that are thriving in the marketplace and the reasons for their success. The more you can learn about your competition, the better prepared you will be to start your coffee shop business.
Start by personally going to other coffee shops as a customer. You can learn a lot just by looking around. See how their operations are set up and who drinks coffee there. Who are they appealing to?
Seeing the way other shops in the area promote themselves can be very revealing. A coffee shop's promotional efforts will give you vital information about how they see their own unique selling propostion. Usually their marketing will have three key areas that you can use as a starting point your own shop's positioning. These are quality of the coffee and food they serve, the atmosphere of the shop and the how mush they charge.
The quality of the coffeedepends on the type of customer you want to cater for. Some will insist on the highest quality of coffee, while some may only be wanting somewhere to relax for a while.
The character of your coffee shop needs to be targeted to your market.. Different market segments prefer different things. Some will prefer sedate relaxed surroundings, others buzzing and fashionable. The environment and level of service needs to reflect your clienteles' expectations.
One more thing to consider is your pricing. Some customersare happy to spend over $2 for a cup of coffee. However others wouldn't even contemplate paying more than 50 cents.
To open a coffee shop, you should know who your potential customer is likely to be and by visiting your other coffee shops in the area where you are planning to locate your shop first hand you will learn a lot. Once you recognize what your customer wants, you just need to figure out how to give it to them. Then the difficult work begins.
Tuesday, 2 February 2010
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