I want to start an internet cafe near a university. What can you suggest to make the business work?
Firstly, if you have no experience in the internet cafe business, I’d advise that you work in one for the next six months or so doing everything from busing tables and washing dishes to waiting tables and cooking if they’ll allow you back there and if you have the skills. This will give you some of the work experience that you’ll need to understand and run an internet cafe profitably.
If this is your first business venture, I would strongly recommend that you talk to a business counselor before you do anything especially spend money. I’d call the local office of SCORE (go to http://www.score.org and input your zip code to find the chapter nearest you), the advice is FREE. Ask for someone who has a background in restaurants and internet cafes and they’ll try their best to match you with the right counselor.
The counselor at SCORE will most likely advise you to write a business plan which is very good advice because it will force you to dig out all of the start up details and the costs of starting an internet cafe and force you to also understand all of the aspects of this business including the customers you’ll concentrate on (your market ) and how you’ll get them to find out and want to come to your fabulous internet cafe.
The location is important but doesn’t make it successful. To prove that all you have to do is walk down a street in your town where there are several nice restaurants all in a row and you’ll find one or two that are empty while the others are very busy. It has to do with menu, ambiance, and your reputation at the beginning and over time.
You also have to have food handling licenses, the right zoning, the right city and county licenses and permits and you have to be skilled at negotiating with your landlord about who’ll stand the cost of the build-out or the changes to the premises to make it ready for your look and feel.
You also have to worry about the normal business planning and management issues related to starting up any business.
Take a look and read some of the articles at:
http://www.ychange.com/small-business-consulting-articles.html
especially the ones about a business plan and starting a business. Also try their Blog and their Bulletin Board.
Hope this helped.
February 7th, 2010 at 3:54 am
Since it’s near a university .. I think you will need to give some schooling techniques or tools, like selling some textbooks and pens, Offer some light breakfast meals, Offer Wireless connection, create a calm quiet mood specially if there are students that need to do some work or so …
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February 7th, 2010 at 4:16 am
Fist give away the fist cup ,and by the way were is this cafe??
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February 7th, 2010 at 4:23 am
Hi Bea,
University students love to play online games e.g. World Of War Craft, Counter Strike, etc. Ensure you have the latest games on hand.
Other than that, design your seats as comfortable as possible. I stumbled across some Internet Cafe that has free drinks for its guests and the seats are very comfortable, you know what the people do? instead of browsing for Internet and play games, they actually sleep there ^_^ wand wake up every couple of hours and continue on what they were doing.
Hope this helps,
Effendy Lie
http://www.EffendyLie.com
P.S. i forgot to mention, sell some foods e.g. instant noodles, and snacks as well. I’m sure the visitors will treat your Internet Cafe as their second home
References :
February 7th, 2010 at 4:38 am
Firstly, if you have no experience in the internet cafe business, I’d advise that you work in one for the next six months or so doing everything from busing tables and washing dishes to waiting tables and cooking if they’ll allow you back there and if you have the skills. This will give you some of the work experience that you’ll need to understand and run an internet cafe profitably.
If this is your first business venture, I would strongly recommend that you talk to a business counselor before you do anything especially spend money. I’d call the local office of SCORE (go to http://www.score.org and input your zip code to find the chapter nearest you), the advice is FREE. Ask for someone who has a background in restaurants and internet cafes and they’ll try their best to match you with the right counselor.
The counselor at SCORE will most likely advise you to write a business plan which is very good advice because it will force you to dig out all of the start up details and the costs of starting an internet cafe and force you to also understand all of the aspects of this business including the customers you’ll concentrate on (your market ) and how you’ll get them to find out and want to come to your fabulous internet cafe.
The location is important but doesn’t make it successful. To prove that all you have to do is walk down a street in your town where there are several nice restaurants all in a row and you’ll find one or two that are empty while the others are very busy. It has to do with menu, ambiance, and your reputation at the beginning and over time.
You also have to have food handling licenses, the right zoning, the right city and county licenses and permits and you have to be skilled at negotiating with your landlord about who’ll stand the cost of the build-out or the changes to the premises to make it ready for your look and feel.
You also have to worry about the normal business planning and management issues related to starting up any business.
Take a look and read some of the articles at:
http://www.ychange.com/small-business-consulting-articles.html
especially the ones about a business plan and starting a business. Also try their Blog and their Bulletin Board.
Hope this helped.
References :