How to Successfully Launch Your Cafe or Coffee Shop?
The food business is one of the most common businesses in the world. If we see 100 startups coming up in a year, we can assume 40% of the startups launching in the food industry alone. Thus, the power of the food industry is exponential because it delivers a good return. Food business includes various types of business including restaurant, banquet, coffee shop, food delivery, cloud kitchen, food and library, catering, etc.
The success of the food business is incomplete without POS billing software. A Point of Sale system has helped the retail and restaurant businesses with great aid in back-end and billing management. Likewise, if you are thinking of launching your dream cafe, it is incomplete without a POS system for a cafe.
Cafe Industry and Its Growth
The cafe industry is one of the booming food industries in the current times. It includes standalone coffee shops, multi-chain cafes, instant coffee and tea outlets, cafes with reading stores, work from cafe outlets, and much more. All these coffee shops run successfully by integrating their customer data with the best cafe POS system.
Before we move ahead with a step-by-step discussion on launching your next coffee shop business, let us have a quick overview of the cafe industry growth insights.
Here is an image from Grand View Research depicting the Indian Coffee Retail Chain Market size by type, 2014–2025.
Considering both dine-in and takeaway, we can conclude that the coffee shop business has a great future ahead. The next five years of growth is foreseen as amazing and fortunate for those who wish to launch their dream cafe. A free cafe POS system can add more feathers to your business by helping you manage all the business operations via a single dashboard.
So, let’s start with a step-by-step guide on how to launch your next coffee shop business!
How to start a coffee shop business in 2021?
Before launching your dream into reality, there is a lot of homework that needs to be done. Yes, it includes proper research and analysis before purchasing or leasing the land for your upcoming cafe business.
Let’s focus on the 8 important steps for launching your new cafe business.
1. Take a visit to other cafes around your city
I am sure walking down your city lane will make you familiar with a lot of existing cafes. When you visit these cafes, you will get an idea about the everyday cafe owner’s life. Notice each little thing, including the POS system for a cafe used for order taking, inventory, and billing purposes.
Check their cafe menu and list out the items that are common in each cafe. These items are the staple cafe items, which are crucial for running a coffee shop business successfully. Also, look at the cafe’s interior- it will help you understand the basic infrastructure you might need to have at your coffee shop. It includes music, free wi-fi, contactless order management (considering the current pandemic situation), and lighting.
Tip: Try visiting coffee shops that are new in your city as well as the old and popular ones. Also, don’t forget to sip their cup of coffee!
2. Plan out the type of venture that you wish to invest in
There are two types of coffee shops that you can launch! The first one is your independent cafe that is solely your baby brand. The other type of coffee shop is a franchise, where you pay existing brand goodwill for renting their brand name and USP. In both types of coffee shops, you need to invest a good amount of money.
So, after taking a dig at the existing cafes around your city, you need to plan out an approximate capital for launching your coffee shop.
Tip: Franchise coffee shop models always use POS billing software to keep their data in sync. Even if you are launching your new coffee brand, it is essential to have a POS system for a cafe.
3. Location matters
110%, the location matters!
The food business is one of the most common businesses in the world. But, do you know- every food outlet doesn’t run successfully. Some are lacking good taste, while some are off the prime location.
Location does matter in determining the success of your new coffee shop. Select a location by identifying your right audience. Your customers or visitors are students, commercial foodies, working people, young couples, and yes, even residents living around. Hence, select the location considering who will be visiting your cafe regularly.
Tip: Always choose a location that is crowded. Don’t go to a deserted location for cafes. A coffee shop near a shopping mall or inside a shopping mall also runs well!
4. Define your cafe products, plan a USP
So, here is something exclusive to think about and act on. When you visit different coffee shops around your city, you come across different coffee drink variants, including hot, sizzling, and cold coffee. A modern cafe house has both hot and cold coffee drinks to serve its customers. Considering the most popular ones, those people love but can’t find around your city must be on your coffee shop menu.
A free cafe POS system also helps you showcase your menu digitally and via scan code. You can also take the help of interactive pictures and videos to display your coffee shop menu. Define your cafe menu with the list of popular coffee items, including the most ethnic drinks and the exclusive ones.
Tip: You can help the POS system for a cafe display your coffee menu items in an exciting format.
5. Focus on customer service
Have you ever determined the factors that make a particular food outlet your favorite? Well, I am sure a few outlets are your must-visit ones not because it has got incredible taste, but also because it has got incredible service to offer!
Focusing on customer service will enhance your outlet’s sales in a short time. People often love to visit places that greet them with courtesy. Your coffee shop’s staff must always wear a smile while serving the visitors. It will grow your outlet’s happiness to another extent!
To improve customer service, you also need to integrate the best order management system in your cafe. For example, POS billing software helps manage your cafe customer orders digitally by integrating it with a digital KOT system and billing interface.
Tip: A POS system for cafes speeds up the order management process and helps to improve your business operations.
6. Plan for delivery service
Take one step ahead by introducing your cafe with an online delivery service. During the pandemic, the food delivery apps have enhanced their business to 5x times. So, always look forward to integrating your cafe with the popular food delivery services in your city. You can enhance your coffee shop business sales by saying yes to home delivery service.
Many cafes also design their independent cafe delivery app to have a loyal customer base. It helps in saving the third-party commission. But on the other hand, investing in mobile app development is a bit costly for small cafe startups. In this case, integrating apps with Zomato, Swiggy, and UberEats is the best way to run your coffee shop with a home delivery service.
Tip: You can integrate your cafe outlet with the best cafe POS system to have an eye on your coffee shop’s online and offline sales from anywhere in the world.
7. Integrate a POS billing software
Have you ever tried reading the success stories of any restaurant or cafe entrepreneur? Well, you must understand how technology plays a vital role in uplifting the business of coffee and food outlets. A POS system for cafes helps the coffee shop owner integrate the primary business operations into the digital format. Be it order tracking, customer management, invoicing and billing, inventory and stock alerts, payment integrations, digital menu, or any other element- everything is managed online with the help of a free cafe POS system.
A POS billing software offers various benefits to the retail and restaurant business. You must read about it and acknowledge it after integrating it with your existing business.
Tip: You can integrate your cafe outlet with the best cafe POS system to have an eye on your coffee shop’s online and offline sales from anywhere in the world.
8. Go beyond what is possible!
Last but not least is doing extraordinary things. Offer your visitors undeniable deals. We have observed cafes offering free internet connections. Multiple cafe outlets in the world now provide this new approach. Just like this concept, you can go beyond what is possible to help your outlet with more traffic.
Few coffee shops have a scribbling wall, and some offer free books to read, whereas many coffee shops have switched to work from the cafe theme for helping work from home employees with free internet service during their working hours. These are some of the extraordinary things that coffee shops are trying to increase their regular visitors. You must also do research on some undeniable cafe store ideas to keep your business graph moving high.
Tip: Follow all the pandemic safety elements at your cafe to help your customers believe that your outlet is the safest in the town. Aware your customers of health and safety tips while you serve them their favorite drink!
Let’s brew it finally!
We all have dreams. We are born to make it turn true. Your coffee shop dream needs a boost to bring your dreams and goals to life. In the initial stage of your startup, having a big-sized cafe team might not work out, right? Hence, you can rent an affordable POS system for cafes to manage various business operations like order management, billing, stocks and inventory, order history, POS sales reports, business insights, customer management, tax management, etc.
POS billing software saves your business time and effort in the longer run. By paying a minimum rent on a monthly basis for utilizing the best Cafe POS system, you can save a million in the span of five to six years. Imagine the number of salaries you invest every month for an accountant, billing manager, stocks manager, and tax consultant. You can save it by paying a minimum rent on POS billing software.
Hope you are launching your coffee shop soon this year! Do not forget to follow our expert business tips to keep your business rolling with the waiting board outside your store!
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