Many coffee lovers dream of opening their own coffee shop. And, with just 15,000 speciality coffee bars in the U.S. and more than 290 million coffee drinkers in the U.S., there’s most likely plenty of room for your establishment.
But as with any business, there are pros and cons to opening a coffee shop or speciality coffee bar. We’ve listed a few of them below.
First, the pros:
- You’ll be joining a $32 billion industry. With one survey reporting that coffee drinkers on average consume 3.35 cups of coffee a day, you’ll certainly won’t have to look far for customers.
- As the economy improves, so does the amount of disposable income consumers have to spend — and they’re more willing to spend it on coffee. The coffee industry is expected to reach $46.2 billion in revenue annually in five years (2021).
- If your shop is successful financially, you needn’t worry about ever having to work for someone else again. You can even open another location – or another! – and create something of a coffee shop dynasty for your family.
- You control your schedule. Yes, you’ll be working more than 40 hours a week (at least in the beginning), but as the owner you get to decide which hours of the day you want to work. For example, if you’re just not a morning person, you could partner with (or hire) a manager who doesn’t mind the pre-dawn hours to open the shop in the morning for you.
- Coffee shops can be an incredibly important part of the local community. At minimum, you could offer a bulletin board for community events. You also could offer art gallery space, open-mic nights, offer a certain space in your shop for community groups, etc.
The cons:
- Opening any retail/restaurant establishment is WORK! More work than you could imagine. You possibly could expect to work as many as 50 hours or more each week.
- Coffee shops can cost a lot of money to open: a coffee shop (with seating) can cost between $80,000-$250,000 to open, while “just” a coffee kiosk can take $60,000 to $100,000 to start.
- Employees. They’re great to have and can free up your time, but payroll can take up to 25-35 percent of your shop’s revenue. You’re also going to have to hire – and fire – them, and watch out for theft and fraud. Employees often are the number one headache any business has due to the hiring/firing issues, workman’s compensation, healthcare benefits/regulations, and on and on and on and on.
So if you love coffee all things coffee and want to share its benefits with your community, there is another way. Ubean Coffee will be recruiting independent distributors nationwide beginning January 2nd 2017. Our organic, fair trade coffee isn’t available for sale in grocery stores (unless one of our independent distributors sells it to the store); only our distributors may sell it. It’s a perfect part-time or even – if you really hustle – full-time opportunity for lovers of great coffee as you sell it to your friends, neighbors and establishments in your area.
Becoming an independent distributor also won’t cost you anywhere near what opening even a small coffee kiosk would, let alone a full-blown coffee shop. Just a few hundred dollars gets you started on your dream of being an organic coffee entrepreneur!
We’ll be announcing our independent distributor recruitment soon. Continue to check back here at Ubean.com for updates.