Introduction with some hope for help of experienced cafe owners
Hello Everyone,
I have signed up with this site about a year ago with hopes of learning something and maybe even contributing something later on, when I have something to contribute. I have found out since that being cafe owner is rather demanding job and so I got to this now... better late than never I guess...
So, me and my girlfriend/soon-to-be-wife have opened a cafe almost a year ago in this small town called Roznov in Czech republic. We had some experience with the business, looking back it was nearly none actually. You can check out FB page over here (not best FB page by far, I know):
We have been operating for almost a year now, my girlfriend (guess her name:-)) is working there full time, I help when I can (I have my own job) and provide additional support (supplies, maintenance etc.), we had one employee but found out we cannot afford her, so now she helps out when necessary. We have 5 tables, 2x4, 1x3 and 2x2 chairs. The cafe is mostly able to sustain itself financially, however that is about it. I personally believe (but that might be subjective) that we provide best service in town for reasonable price (for the area), however we seem to fail to attract sufficient number of customers.
So this is mainly my purpose here now, I hope to pick up some ideas on improving our business because I am running out of them fast. I realize that those are mostly hard-earned and not to be shared, but if you feel like sharing some barista wisdom that would help us there is no way to describe how grateful I would be.
Well, it is late and I am spent, tomorrow I will try to describe our menu somewhat to give a better idea of what we do...
Have a nice day
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Jay Caragay on
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Hello.
One of the best things for you to do is to sit down and read through the many posts on this website. Go back and review the topics and read the ones relevant to you. Then you'll be in a better position to discuss.
That said, business is tough. I don't know your country or your locale so it's difficult to really give you helpful advice as there are so many factors involved. Location, ambience, product quality, vision, persistence and customer experience are all key factors to doing well in the cafe business. How are these components handled in your cafe? What is the vision you have for your cafe and are you staying true to that vision?
I also looked at your FB page. It's nice enough but I see lots of pics and attention given to food and dessert items, what about the coffee? Is there much focus on the coffee? What is your true mission for the cafe?
As a reference, here is the FB and website to my place:
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Permalink Reply by Zdeněk Hostaša on
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Hi,
I am in the process of going trough the discussions now, already found some terrific ideas (and some terrible, pig blood latte...I know it was a joke, but I can't get that picture out of my head:-)), I should be done by...next decade, judging from the numbers:-)
Anyway, you raise a good point, then again coffee culture over here is...wierd. Let me illustrate: The most traditional czech coffee is "Turkish coffee", which is however just grind coffee beans poured over with hot water in one cup, messy to clean, nasty to drink, but as much as I might despise this, it has to be on the menu. The czech name for Espresso (standard, 30ml, 7g, single shot if you will) is "piccollo" because when Italians started coming here for vacation after 1990 and ordered "Espresso" what they got was no less than 80ml of coffee (which was the czech idea of espresso at the time), so they shouted "Piccollo" (smaller!!!) at the staff. So these days when anyone orders Espresso, I have to ask "smaller or bigger?" and 90% of the time what they really want is lungo or bigger. This is why coffee is not what people over here look at first thing. Still, we have tried some special coffees with modest success and I am looking for some more ideas right now.
Also, most of our clientele is 30+ (no university in area) and most of them are not all that facebooky, so it is a bit neglected.
The original vision have changed somewhat over the year, originally we have opened at 7am, hoping to attract customers for breakfast, morning coffee etc., however that is obviously not local style, so we switched to 8. Also, I have some good experience mixing cocktails so initially we hoped for some sales in this area, especially since outside of hotels most local baristas couldn't make a good piňa colada to save their life, but that proved to be wrong idea as well, we sell at most 10 drinks a month in summer.
These days we place most focus on deserts and I think these became the main reason people choose us over competition, when they do that is. I will have to think some more on the other points you mentioned, ideally in the morning:-)
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