A Practical Guide for Starting a Food Café Without Experience 

If you’re planning to start a food café, keep in mind that it isn’t always only about food. While starting your food café, you need to consider a lot of things such as customer services, management skills, as well as, marketing approaches. Moreover, a strong business plan, great location, useful equipment, and shop display counters also matter a lot. So, here we have a complete guide for you if you wish to start a food business without any previous experience:

Step 1: Create a Strong Business Strategy

The main task you should perform prior to investing your resources is to do thorough research. Invest at least several weeks if not months to get a more profound comprehension of the wide-ranging food or restaurant industry. Familiarize yourself with your target audience, potential competitors, and current trends. Then start writing a strong and actionable business strategy for your food café.

Step 2: Look for Resources to Finance Your Café

After creating a practical business strategy, look for funding options. It is a fact that not every person has the personal financing to start a food café or any other business. Fortunately, there are plenty of alternative approaches that can help you in supporting your food café. These include:

• Apply for a business loan.
• Ask your friends or family.
• Look for any external stakeholder or get a collaborator.
• Utilize crowdfunding.
• Get aid from government agencies.

Step 3: Pick the Café Location Carefully

The café location you pick will rely upon various factors. Some of the factors are mentioned below that you should think about while choosing the location:

• Ease of access to the target audience.
• Restrictive regulations.
• Distance from other businesses.
• Future plans.

Step 4: Choose A Unique Layout for Your Food Café

After selecting the location for your food café, begin working on its design and layout. Cafés usually dedicate around 45 – 60 percent of their space to the dining area and around 35 percent to the kitchen. The rest of the space is for storage as well as office. It is recommended to wisely consider the design of your dining area and kitchen, and ensure a smooth flow in between these areas.

Step 5: Choose the Suppliers Wisely 

While running a food café, you will be working with various suppliers from kitchen equipment to POS (point of sale) software and obviously, food. So, don’t forget to make a list of what you need, your budget, and then search for the suppliers. However, keep in mind that while you would prefer not to compromise on quality, over-priced suppliers can limit your margins and destroy your business. Thus, choose the suppliers carefully.

Step 6: Get your Authorizations and Certifications

Rules and regulations differ from country to country and from city to city. Therefore, ensure that you follow all your local health and safety measures and principles. Also, keep in mind that a few licenses can require a long time to obtain, thus, ensure to begin this process a long time prior to opening your café.

Step 7: Begin Recruiting Your Café Staff

First of all, consider what kind of employees you need to recruit for your food café. According to the level of your café, this might include:

• HR manager
• Accountants
• Sales and marketing managers
• Chefs
• Waiters
• Hosts
• Bartenders
• Cleaning and dish-washing staff

Try to recruit sufficient employees for different tasks, and consider back-ups and shift planning if someone gets sick or takes leaves.

Step 8: Publicize Your Food Café

Prior to opening your café, you must promote it and let your local community know about this new café in town. One simple approach is to use social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. Share important news, exclusive offers, and excellent pictures of your café on the social media pages to keep your audience updated.