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How to Find A Good Location for Opening Café in 2022
From the year 2021 to 2022, it has been increasingly challenging to stay open for cafes. The main reason is because of the global pandemic COVID-19 and people have to stay home and fight against the deadly disease. On the other hand however, many people still wish to open cafes, as one of their ultimate dream. Finding a good location is half of the success for opening a great and well known café. It has been so important that you cannot make a second choice once a decision has been made, and there are so many important factors that would affect your decision.
Major Types of Café Location
We usually separate the ideas of location into two main categories, opening in a local area, or in a shopping centre, and there are also many sub categories, e.g. different suburbs, special scenic sites, space of that location, etc.
Cafes In Local Residential Areas
This is one of the most common place when people to choose when considering opening a café. Your neighbors know you well, and have committed to support your business on a daily basis.
There Are So Many Benefits of Opening Cafes Locally.
- Stable traffic. In local area, your customers are usually the people living surrounding by. It is very convenient for them to come downstairs and grab a coffee from you in 5 mins. It is also easier to
- Flexible hours. Unlike opening cafes in shopping centres, owners usually have much more flexible trading hours. In case you need to close earlier for a party, or open till late for a busy day, there are not much restrictions in opening hours locally.
- Renovation requirements. The landlord of a local café is usually less picky than those in giant shopping centres. As long as it is compliant to legal requirements, you will have the freedom to renovate the shop as you like.
What About The Pros of Opening The Café In Shopping Centers?
The main reason for people considering opening the café in shopping centers is because of the high traffic. This is true to many of the big giants like Westfield, Local Plazas, Courts, etc. A recent report shows that an average Westfield traffic could have around 200,000 on a normal day.
Another great thing is about branding. Just because of such high footage traffic, it would be easier to achieve higher exposure of your brand to people. Most shopping centers would have minimum requirement to enter, such as your background, experiences of trading, financial capacity, etc. Being able to open a café in shopping centers also show customers that you a professional and could deliver excellent services to them.
Things That Add Points to Your Location
Aside from the major differences to open cafes locally or in shopping centres, there are also many other factors that would determine your success:
Any Local Point of Interests?
Local point of interests usually refer to seaside, beaches, mountains, local famous architectures, etc. Such point of interests would significantly drive popular through to your shop.
Let us take beaches for example. On a sunny summer afternoon, you will see a lot of people hanging around the beach, enjoying the sunshine and looking for coffee and food. If you are the only café near that beach, congratulations, you will be too busy to handle.
However, that is not a guarantee. Customers are like wave tides that have high and low points. The traffic would also be significantly impacted by severe weather, holidays, and weekends, etc.
Cafes At Corners
A study has shown that a corner café would attract 30% more people than a normal street café. The reason behind is that a corner café would have at least two streets exposure than one, thus attract more people attention to stop by and enter into the shop.
If you are lucky enough to get lease from a corner café, make sure both sides confronting the road are with giant windows so that people could look into the shop from outside, thus giving you more opportunities to attract customers.
Things To Take Care Before Taking On A Lease
Given so many factors that would affect the succuss of the café business, there are still some of the important thinss to take care before signing your lease contract:
- Duration of the lease and any options to extend.
You have invested so much money into the café business, and this is your life. If the lease is too short and no chances of doing extension, you are putting your life at risk. Most landlords would offer options
- Renovation requirements.
Each landlord would have different requirements in refreshing the shop renovations. Usually the term is every 5 years, however some renovations would be pricy. Take care of those renovation terms in the contract would help you losing too much from it.
- Outgoings.
Some rent are charged as gross rent, which includes all outgoing expenses. Some however, are bare rents and outgoings are added on top of your current rent.
