Does anyone own a small cafe?
 

Curious what sort of a buck it can make. Like a 2-3 table coffee shop that serves coffee and may be cakes / sandwiches.

One of my best friends owns a small restaurant that his wife runs. During the day it is a coffee place then at night they turn it into a wine bar and serve finger foods. On Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights they do a dinner service. They offer a couple of choices for each course and each course is paired with a wine. They can only hold about 20 guests, but they sell out about 85% of the time. They aren't getting rich, but they are making some decent money from it.

With any food business it is all about location and then getting a good word of mouth going. Most of them fail.

Great idea about having day / night time specs like coffee / winery indeed. Yeah, location matters. Sometimes I see empty bars around one that is always full.

In real life I've seen people start a coffee to go spot, and after 1 year they managed to hire someone to work part-time, they are saving to start a small place. But as you noticed, they started in a good tourist location and have exclusive coffee/tea agreement serving coffee in that area - it's a small place where food trucks stand but it's in the historical part of the town.

We run another business which also contains a cafe section.
The profit is really quite good but for us it's not the core of our business.

We only have space for about 10 seats.

My friend's place is located in a great place for a coffee shop. She actually started working there as a manager of the place when it was just a coffee shop, but then the owner got sick and my friend bought it from her then added the wine bar part because she has experience in the food industry. A few years ago they decided to do a dinner on Valentine's Day and offered good food and wine for one night only and they were fully booked pretty quickly. That led to the expansion into the weekend food which has been very good for them.

my friend owns a small donut shop and profits $200 a day on avg. People get addicted like crackheads. He doesn't even make the donuts some place delivers them every morning.

Damn you beat me to it!:thumbsup Here's the hook:

A bagel or donut shop next to a Starbucks/Pete's Coffee, or within 200 feet. Our friends own a bagel shop and they've been making a killing for a couple years now. Donuts/bagel super cheap to make and you can sell 1/3 to 1/4 the price of Starbucks bagels.

Good luck!

:2 cents::2 cents::2 cents::1orglaugh
http://blog.ricksteves.com/wp-conten...ill-walker.jpg

NO, but I do have 2 small dogs. Both are chihuahuas.

yea its a nice cash biz problems are the hours and homeless people that lurk around.

Marvelous.

Rinse and repeat

a small cafe with only a few tables would only make enough to give a living, pay your way in life. But...

if you bought a small cafe like you say, the money isn't in the shop, it would be business out of the shop, so deliveries to either businesses or house calls. You would want to want to be in a prime location for collection to, maybe foot traffic or a few local businesses where the employers can come to purchase sandwiches and cakes.

My partner Gary's father owned a sandwich bar, he made a successful turnover with the location he was in, the profit is usually 150% on rolls and sandwiches. Of course cans of drink is a lot less, but even passing trade walks in to buy a can of coke when it's on a high street :thumbsup

If you want any more info if you're interested in purchasing a business like this, Gary says, welcomed to email us anytime :thumbsup

Wait I didn't mean hookin by a donut shop :1orglaugh

a guy running a small coffee house café, exactly like you suggest, told me it was worth about 35K per. what sucks for him is a starbucks end of the block and not being on a visible corner.

visibility, access and parking along with correct products for the market...with the websutff running, this might be an a cool way to spend the day.

:2 cents:

yup and here in LA the homeless are treated like an endangered species... they want to shit in your doorway, get over it.

that's awesome...

My friend lost 70k with "small cafe".
Juice bar @ local gym. Protein shakes, coffee, food, snacks etc
All depends on your location. New hot spot gym opened up & bye bye customers.