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Permalink Reply by MarkW on October 9, 2016 at 12:59pm

Off the top of my head

1. Utililities, deposits for such

2. Internet, will your POS run off internet, credit/debit swipe ?

    Are you limiting access to internet or can anyone come in and sit for 10 hours and buy a cup of coffee ?

3. Labour ? your working 12 hours a day by yourself ?

4. how well capitalized are you ? do you have 3 plans ? best case, worst case and most likely ? Do you have the capital to carry your through 6  - 12 months of the worst case scenario ?

5 Marketing ? Normally coffee shops draw their business from people/businesses in a 3 block  radius, what is your 3 block radius like ?

6 ...or are you getting drive through/morning going to work traffice ?

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Permalink Reply by Jen Hurd on October 11, 2016 at 11:25am

Mark has some great input! I'd also address the following:

-Are you going to be doing any brewed coffee? I don't see any equipment for that.

-Will you be serving any food? Consider the inventory for that.

-Other starting inventory: disposables, retail items, etc.

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Permalink Reply by Eugene Cleland on October 12, 2016 at 9:19am

Some book resources for you. To check out. Even the contents pages give good clues as to what to look into for your start up

Start and run a coffee bar, by Tom Matzin

The Complete Idiot's Guide to Starting And Running A Coffeebar Paperback – Oct 4 2005
by Linda Formichelli.

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Permalink Reply by Alun Evans on October 16, 2016 at 7:36pm

I have done this so many times, and I always forget thing to add- no matter how hard i try not to leave anything out.

I see you have the security deposit- make sure you budget that for the utilities and also for the rent in advance (in some cases we have to pay 3 months in advance on rent). Also work out how much working capital you will need on top of the cost of setup. This is a difficult one to estimate- but you need to make some lowball assumptions on your customer number, not go with the estimates of best case numbers. Enough capital to pay rent at least two months more, plus the same to cover estimated staff costs. I would not include food costs as these should be built into revenue @ approximately 30% for food.

Remodeling or contractor work can be super difficult to estimate and can vary up to 25-30% more than you may initially think. A contractor will base his/her estimate on a build out based on your or your designers plans. However often there are things that come up that your designer or you may have missed. Make sure you put your contractor on a payment plan. I normally use 30% deposit then payment at stages of completion. Final payment should be 15% and based on successful completion of the build out to your and industry standards, with a 3 month free maintenance clause written in.

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