Is Opening a Coffee Shop Still a Viable Option in a Down Economy?
Image Credit: Costa
People are always looking for different opportunities and something that you have read here on several occasions is the possibility of opening up your own coffee shop. With such a push being to save money, it is actually amazing that people are not cutting their coffee shop coffee out of their budgets. It is now at a point that this is a very viable option if you can get yourself attached to the right chain.
To be honest, it may not be the best bet to open up a mom and pop shop. You would hope that any neighborhood would support a small business, but the reality of it is that name recognition goes a long way. You can have two places selling the same exact thing and if one of them is a known label, they are going to be the ones that are busy.
Costa, which is owned by Whitbred, has been crushing their annual numbers and continues to steam ahead in the coffee shop business. They currently have well over 900 stores in the UK and are looking at a 2.5% increase in sales for the first 6 months of the year. While that may not seem like a lot, it is being done at a time where company after company in every industry is losing money hand over fist and being forced to eliminate jobs, not add them.
Now while the opportunity does exist, you have to be careful with what brand you are going with. For instance, Starbucks is the one coffee label that everyone knows in the United States, but they are actually losing business (down about 4% this year) because of oversaturation and a tired product. They have started to address the issue and are beginning to introduce new products (see our article on their instant coffee), but they are still expected to reduce the overall number of stores that they have open over the next year.
brewed on Oct 18th, 2009
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