Opening a coffee shop? Have you encountered these problems?

Who would be opening a coffee shop without a plan?

Nobody would be opening a coffee shop without a plan, I am sure of that. But, many would open with a plan that is probably not as good.

So, who am I to say that YOUR plan is not good right? Let me ask you this question, is your plan:

1. Involves finding a choice location

2. Communicating that "story" a certain theme

3. Have the best service possible

Well, that looks to me like Starbucks, and the first point are what Singapore coffee shops such as Yakun, Killiney or Coffee & Toast is doing.

So, if all of them are so successful -why wouldn't you be too? After all, there are Yakun, Killiney, Wang, Toast box, there should be place for one more right?

Office Coffee Survey | Sample Size: More than 1000 office workers | Location: Singapore Business District

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Do you want to take the chance?

And even if you succeed, can you scale it up, grow the brand?

And that is the "bad plan" I am talking about when folks open a coffee shop.

Here, we are talking about coffee shop business, but it applies to all F&B business. You want to be unique, you want to give people a reason to visit the coffee shop that you have open.

When you look at existing coffee shop business and try to be better than them in subtle ways, you lose your own identity.

1. Consumers cannot differentiate You from them, and why would they want to pay for the "me too" when a few steps down they can get the real Starbucks or Yakun.

2. How are you going to scale it up? How big can you grow versus the big chains?

3. To start with, without a brand, it is very difficult for a "better than existing" business plan to get you into shopping mall.

This is the problem, for the solution, do check out our follow up article to opening a coffee shop.

About US | OCM Profile

OCM (OnCoffeeMakers.com) was started in 2007 with the first webpage about coffee machines. And for a number of years, we focused on helping people find their desired coffee machine (we still are helping folks with that! So, if you are looking for coffee machines for office or restaurants - check out the link).

In 2010, we started getting enquiries on restaurant marketing and we start to help food and beverage brands with their marketing. Below are campaigns and events that we have done over the years:

OCM's campaigns: F&B Marketing Ideas by OCM

OCM's Events: F&B Industry events by or with OCM

Check out this restaurant marketing guide to learn more about the many campaigns and companies we have worked with.

Since then, we have also created many marketing workshops and classes for the F&B industry. Many of these modules are still running in tertiary institutions such as Temasek Polytechnic Skillsfuture Academy and also ITE College East COC classes, below are some snippets of our lectures and workshops:

OCM’s F&B workshops: Food and Beverage Marketing Lectures | Workshops - click to watch classes on customer journey map, JTBD and more.

So, if you are looking for industry practitioners to help you scale your coffee or F&B businesses, do drop us a message or book an appointment. Do also check out our various social media platforms on regular F&B and coffee market updates:

For regular coffee (F&B) related videos: OCM Youtube

For Daily Coffee Inspiration (fun coffee content): OCM IG

For insights into the coffee (F&B) industry: OCM LinkedIN

PS: For the coffee lovers, we continue to share coffee articles (and videos) and have also started a free coffee class section (with free online coffee training supported by coffee partners).