Okay, so you want to open a cafe? Excellent. Is it because you love making coffee, or love making food, or love serving customers? Is it because you want to be your own boss? Is it because you think it’s a great way to make loads of money and a great sexy lifestyle?
Well here is a tip. You probably will not be making coffee, or making food, or serving customers all day every day. You will probably also take a long time to make loads of money. And in many many cases, it is not very sexy. Because when you open a cafe, you open a business. So therefore, quite logically, you will be RUNNING A BUSINESS.
Even if it is very, very small, you will still have to do all the other things that running a business entails. Or, you will have to spend a lot of money on getting experts to do them for you. Now, I know of a very reputable place that offers a two day, how to open a cafe workshop and this is probably one of the best types of courses you could possibly do in London, facilitated by some top experts in the field. But what I also recommend you do are courses in:
How to be an electrician
How to be an accountant
How to be a plumber
How to be a leader
How to do marketing
How to do human resources
How to be a painter
In the past three weeks alone we have done all this ourselves:
- Found a leaking pipe under the floorboards that was dripping into the kitchen. But we had the get the experts in to fix this and it cost £216.
- Fixed a broken flush button on one toilet
- Fixed a broken toilet seat on another toilet
- Unblocked the sewer (twice now)
- Found the reason water was coming under our back wall so had to climb out the back to unblock a gully trap drain, down a man hole, after scaring away the nesting pigeons
- Freshened up high wear areas by re-painting them
- Installed a new lock on a door to the staff area
And that is just a small example. Imagine if we had the experts in to fix all these problems, it would have cost a fortune!
If you want to open a business, that is great, but please do be aware that is does entail a lot of other things that you have to do as well, not just making coffee, and you need to be a little bit of an expert in everything. DIY.
Peter Dore-Smith
Director
Kaffeine Ltd
66 Great Titchfield st.
15 Eastcastle st.