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From business plans to baristas: 5 crucial steps to launch your French coffee shop dream.
On the surface, one may suppose that it’s quite easy to open a coffee shop, thinking that you only have to find a location and buy the supplies needed. In reality, it’s much more complex than that, all in a context of high competition and the emergence of new trends. Recently, one of my acquaintances opened a coffee shop, and I started working there part-time. While I was not implicated in the project all the way since the beginning, I did see how it had evolved and what were the main aspects they had to pay attention to in order to open a successful coffee shop.
Step 1: Write your business plan
In order to smoothly run your business on the long run, a well-structured and complete business plan will ensure that you know where to go with your business. But what is a business plan? Well, it’s a written document that gives an outline of your business and the market in which it will operate, and how it aims to make money. Most of the times, banks and other financial institutions will want to see this document in order to grant loans. From what I could observe, there are more chances for your loan to be granted if you have business partners that are also investing in the project. On this website, you can find business plan templates as well as financial tables, that will help you write your business plan.
Step 2: Choose the perfect location
The perfect coffee shop location doesn’t really exist, and is often complicated to find. In order to settle for your perfect location, you need to understand what your budget is, and whether you want your shop to be in a frequented neighbourhood but with lots of competitors, or in a less frequented neighbourhood, but fear that there is not a lot of traffic. For instance, in Paris, the Pyramides neighbourhood has lots of foot traffic and coffee shops, leading to high rent and high competition. Whereas, the 11th district of Paris is a bit less frequented, with lower rent and less competition. This is why, whether you choose the first or the second option, having a powerful social media strategy will help you leveraging customer engagement while improving foot traffic. Once you have chosen your premise, you can familiarise yourself with the surrounding area as well as the space.
Step 3: Start the renovation work
Designing and renovating your coffee shop is no easy task: you must get the ball rolling by contacting your local city hall regarding renovation agreements, if you want for instance a terrace or just a building permit. If you’re a tenant, you must obtain the owner’s right to transform the premises. In your business plan, you may have listed all regulations coffee shops have to pay attention to, such as asking for a licence or the HACCP food hygiene training; don’t forget to respect them all. After the renovation is done and you’re ready to open, you must declare your activity to city hall, at least 15 days before the opening. Here, you will be able to find all requirements from the French government.
Step 4: Look for equipments and perfect your recipes
After you’re done renovating and decorating your premises, you obviously have to buy your coffee equipments, such as the coffee machine, grinders, displays but also point of sales (cash registers) or security systems. La Marzocco is a good brand to get your machines from, and is very famous among coffee shop owners.
If there is no recipes, there is no products to sell. Take your time to refine your menu, using the best, locally-sourced ingredients that will last on your customers.
Step 5: Recruit your first employees
A business cannot run alone. Recruiting and training your employees is just like achieving another milestone, as the team will help you maintain your shop clean and tidy, while creating the perfect mood for your shop. In order to recruit people, you can draft a job description and publish them on job boards such as Indeed. After choosing your candidates, conduct interviews so that you can find the right person.
There is a lot of other things to tend to, such as choosing the legal form of your company or even music distribution, but we will discuss this in another article.