Future Coffee shop owner - London

[Sahana]

Hello there!

I have just stumbled across this great forum whilst researching my business idea. It’s fantastic that such resources exist and people are willing to give up there time and knowledge for free to knew start-ups. I hope I'm able to give something back to this site.

Any initial info on starting a coffee shop in London would be very much appreciated. I’m in the initial stages of researching the market.

Many Thanks!

Sahana

[Peter Bowen]

Enormous generous portions of everything gets people talking about you.

Have a look at the Mugg&Bean franchise (search for their site I can't remember it) They're a great one to get ideas from

Get every client's details from day one and keep in touch with them

Print a newspaper (a3 folded in half) for people to read at your shop. Include local news, your advertorial and offset the costs by selling advertising to local businesses. Print up new news, funnies etc every day and it could become a feature

Have and advertise a hotspot

Put a few computers in for people who don't drag laptops around

Cheers

Pete

[Sahana]

Thanks very much Pete!

[Peter Bowen]

It's a pleasure.

I owned a tea garden/coffee shop which was part of a nursery garden center I owned. Hard work for the money. Part of the problem is that you have to pay rent for the place for the whole day but are not busy throughout the day.

I think you've got to pick up morning and lunch trade from business people in order to do alright

Cheers


Pete

[nigel]

Hey there

So why coffee? Love to know.

N

[SALGADO INVESTIGATIONS]

Have you thought about doing a "cafe con piernas"?

[Sahana]

Weirdly enough, I was thinking about that concept just a few days ago. I lived in Chile for a while where the concept was very popular... personally, I don't really agree with its "philosophy".

How do you know about Cafe con piernas?

[SALGADO INVESTIGATIONS]

[QUOTE=Sahana;30395]Weirdly enough, I was thinking about that concept just a few days ago. I lived in Chile for a while where the concept was very popular... personally, I don't really agree with its "philosophy".

How do you know about Cafe con piernas?[/QUOTE]
I was born in chile, i was there a couple of years ago and ythought that it could be a money spinner here as long as alcohol was not served so as not to have to worry about drinking liscences.