Friday, July 15, 2011

Coffee House with a Hobby

Honestly, I think it’s really difficult for businesses that purely rely on selling coffee to survive nowadays. If you’re thinking about starting your own coffee shop, the first thing that pops up in your mind is competition. We have Starbucks, Coffee Bean, McD coffee and many other coffee houses all around us. Normally there will be at least couple of coffee house if the area has lots of coffee consumers.

So you can’t just simply open up a coffee shop without having any secret weapon to fight your competitors. You need to think of a secret weapon that you can use to win the competition. That means you need to find extra ways to attract or draw customers to your coffee house. One of the ways is to include a hobby to your coffee house. Some hobby can easily mix well and goes along with coffee, for example reading. Yes, you can add a mini library into your coffee house. Customers can have a cup of their favorite coffee while reading. Plus you actually create an environment which people who loves to read can get to gather and share their mutual interest. Customers can gather for a reading session, books discussion, exchanging books, book research and many other activities related to book.

A place where people can hang out for books other than just coffee will be nice. Some businesses even started out with hobby and later introduce a coffee section. That works too. People definitely need a drink while focusing on their hobby. Check out the blog post “Mule Over It” from Espresso Melbourne as it introduces a special coffee shop that includes bicycle into their business.

So what kind of hobby will you include to your coffee shop? How about computers, action figures, automobile, bikes, cameras, music, guitar or remote control models?

1 comment:

Hot Coffee said...

I totally agree with you it is very difficult to survive only by selling coffee in an office. That's why now every coffee shop usually serve breakfast with coffee and arranges meetings & party for many offices.