coffee entrepreneurship story on the stall.
The smell of fireworks on earth is the most comforting to ordinary people. The stall not only gives the world the most authentic flavor of fireworks, but also is the most common entrepreneurial form chosen by many low-cost entrepreneurs. What will be the story of the restaurant stall in the Jianghu?
In the next period of time, catering o2o will present a series of catering stall entrepreneurship stories in the form of a column series, unveiling the most authentic stall entrepreneurship insider.
Opening a coffee shop is a dream of many people. For this dream, someone has spent more than ten years’ savings to build a boutique coffee shop; Some people take advantage of the hot wind of the stall economy, take simple tools, ride a bike or their private car, bring a coffee machine and coffee beans, and turn themselves into mobile coffee stalls
Ground coffee, with low cost and low threshold, is considered to be the most suitable entrepreneurial form for coffee entrepreneurs. What is the profit of this low-cost business? Is there development potential in the future? Is it really suitable for entrepreneurship? Maybe we can find some answers from the following story.
He cycled back and forth for 40 kilometers
If you often walk around the shicuo Church in Fuzhou, you probably will encounter such a man with a mustache, an English cap, pointed leather shoes, a retro look, and a wooden box on the back seat with the word coffee written on it with a marker.
This man, surnamed Liu and known as brother Liu, used to be the owner of two coffee shops. He has always cherished the dream of a coffee shop in his heart. In 2010, because of operational problems, my brother’s two coffee shops were forced to close. He was very painful, but in order to survive, he had to turn to other industries.
In 2018, brother Liu, who still loves coffee, began his bicycle coffee career. He bought a bicycle, customized a small wooden box, and loaded it with a set of appliances to rebuild his coffee shop in a mobile and low-cost form.
When the guest placed an order, the little brother was like magic. He took out five bags of coffee beans from the small wooden box, a professional coffee electronic scale, and a hand brew pot. Then he began to grind beans skillfully by hand, slowly infuse water, and soon a cup of hand brew coffee was made.
Liu Xiaoge’s mobile coffee shop may be small, but it costs a lot of time. It takes 1.5 hours to ride a bike from his hometown Minhou Nanyu to his fixed stall every day. The stall is opened at 2:00 p.m. and closed at 6:00 p.m., and it is nearly 40 kilometers to ride back and forth every day.
In terms of daily food preparation, my brother also spends nearly two hours every day, insisting on 98% pure handmade. I am also very particular about the selection of other ingredients. Fresh milk, honey and maltose are all from local farmers’ brands in Fuzhou, and I choose them myself.
“The daily sales volume is about 10 cups, the price of each cup is set at about 30 yuan, and the daily turnover is about 300 yuan. Although it is less than half of that of ordinary coffee shops, it is fortunately that there is no store rent pressure, and you can survive.” Said brother Liu. “But if there is a chance, coffee shops will still be opened in the future.”
Similarly, he carried his coffee dream to his bicycle, as well as Xi’an Adong. Affected by the epidemic, the stall economy is booming, and a Dong also has the idea of setting up a stall. “Since there are motorcycle coffee shops abroad, why can’t there be bicycle coffee shops in China?” With this in mind, Adong created his own bicycle coffee brand, Adong coffee.
About the future of bicycle coffee, a Dong also said frankly, “because it is hand brewed, the quantity is limited, and the maximum number of cups a day is 20. Moreover, this form of bicycle also limits the coffee brands sold. It can only make hand brewed coffee, creative coffee and other series of drinks that do not need a coffee machine, and the possibility of truly expanding and making a brand is too small.”
A trunk coffee road for up owners
In the trunk market at night, countless car owners are equipping their trunk into a new trading place. The roof and windows are decorated in all colors. The dining table and seats are placed behind the car. The goods sold range from hand accessories to cakes, coffee, wine, clothing, food, housing and transportation.
Although there are many stalls, people can see Arco’s trunk coffee shop at once. It was a unique military green off-road vehicle, with coffee machines and all kinds of containers neatly placed in the carriage, simple brand slogans printed on the off white curtain, and various characteristic small items collected by Arco tourism next to it.
Arco is a traveler and a senior up owner. His SUV is his car in all places. With it, Arco has been to many places. In 2022, due to the epidemic and some personal factors, he stopped and began to take root locally and wanted to open his own coffee shop.
“I just met with the economic boom of the stall, and when I traveled, I also accumulated a lot of experience in setting up a stall, and I wanted to try to start a business in the current popular coffee track. Naturally, an idea about the trunk coffee shop came out like this.” Ako said.
What he didn’t expect was that his first venture would be so successful. “The stall has been set up for nearly a month, and the average daily flow is about 1000 yuan. 60 cups were sold on the first night of the stall, and the average can reach about 45 cups at other times. This is a business that can be done continuously.” Huge profits gave him great confidence.
“I always thought it was a wonderful thing to drink coffee late at night. The harder you work, the worse the effect will be.” Ako said. But after setting up a stall for a few days, he found that young people also have a strong social demand for coffee at night, and the sales of coffee at night are no worse than that during the day.
However, the success of Arco is also due in part to its creation of personal IP. As early as before the opening of the trunk coffee brand, Arco used its influence to release its own coffee shop information on many platforms, such as station B, xiaohongshu and Tiktok. On the day of opening, a number of relevant videos were released continuously.
“Being an up owner and taking videos have long become my daily life. I have extended this habit to coffee shop entrepreneurship. Every day, I will take daily videos of coffee shops to let my potential customers see them and create influence for my coffee brand.” Ako said. Now the label on his body has changed from a simple tourism up owner to a coffee shop manager.
However, Xiaoke also admitted that although traffic has brought him good business, there are also problems. Many fans criticized and commented on the Internet, saying that his three certificates were incomplete, food hygiene was difficult to guarantee, and even some private letters harassed him, causing him a lot of trouble.
However, not all tailgate coffee stall owners can play the traffic so thoroughly as Xiaoke, and they can make good results as soon as they go out. Sisi, a sister from Changsha, once learned the craft of making coffee in a cooking school. This year, after losing her job due to the epidemic, she also had the idea of making trunk coffee.
Just do it. Sisi bought a used car, carefully refitted it, bought a battery, and carefully selected a coffee machine. It cost more than 60000 yuan before and after. In April, the trunk coffee stall named “mobile coffee” by her opened.
But after nearly ten days of business, Sisi found that things were not as good as she thought. “A cup of coffee is about 20 yuan, which is much cheaper than Starbucks’ coffee. But there are not many people who buy it. They can sell more than 50 cups a day at their busiest time, but sometimes they sell a few cups a night, mostly relying on their friends.”
She has also tried to take videos and upload them to Tiktok and other websites to promote her brand influence, but there is basically not much browsing. “It’s not so easy to build a net red coffee. Without mature operation experience and team, you can’t make a splash by yourself.” Si Si said.
After tearing off the net red filter
He returned to the reality of products
Since the camping economy is booming, a coffee shop model combining RV and coffee has also become popular among young people. Traveling in an RV while selling coffee has become the ideal lifestyle pursued by many young people.
Dashu is the owner of one of the mobile coffee carts, but unlike most young people who just want to play, he regards the mobile coffee cart as his serious business. “At present, many well-known coffee brands, such as wheelys caf é, Dutch brothers and blue bottle, were just ground coffee at the beginning.” The tree said.
However, this business is not so easy to do, which is also a reality. “If you just run and play, it’s OK. If you do it as a serious business, you must be prepared to lose money.” The tree said.
In his opinion, the threshold of mobile coffee cart is indeed low, and compared with opening a coffee shop, the rent and labor costs are saved a lot. But the biggest problem with driving a coffee truck is that there are too many uncertainties.
Due to the non-standard industry and the lack of business license, it is easy to be affected by road traffic control problems, and it is common to have no fixed place. Without a stable coffee shop address, how to accumulate a stable source of customers has become the most difficult problem.
In order to cultivate regular customers, under the condition of stable passenger flow, Dashu will try to stay in one place for a long time and try to go out every day. The business hours are generally from 12 noon to 7 pm. I will post a preview of the business status on social software every day.
Moreover, whether the sale is good or not is really a matter of luck. “If you choose a lot with good traffic and encounter good weather, sometimes you can sell 100 cups a day. But once you encounter bad weather or the address is not selected, sometimes you can’t sell a cup a day.”
Moreover, too many people follow suit. Once you get a little famous, a lot of people imitate you. “This is the third time I have decorated my coffee cart. Many guests come here to buy coffee because they see my coffee cart, and punch in and take photos.” Dashu pointed to a beautiful Tiffany Blue Coffee cart and said, “it is not only a coffee cart, but also a drainage billboard in his coffee shop.”
After so many months of camping coffee truck career, Dashu’s coffee shop is also beginning to become a little famous online celebrity shop. However, in his view, online celebrity is just a short-term trend. To really run your own coffee shop well, products are the most important core. “If you can’t innovate in products and form greater competitiveness, the traffic brought by your appearance will be lost sooner or later.”
It is said that Dashu has now developed a new coffee, which has been tested in Laoke and will be launched around mid July.
Under the boom of stall, coffee entrepreneurship is becoming more low-cost and low threshold. However, a low threshold sometimes means a high threshold. After all, people are the most popular in making money. Many people mean fierce competition.
According to public data, the closure rate of the coffee service industry reached 83.3% in 2020. This is even true for regular coffee shops, not to mention those mobile floor stand cafes. It is not easy for catering entrepreneurs to do a good job in this mobile coffee business.
Author: Su Su; Source: Catering o2o (id:coffee o2o), reprint has been authorized. Reprint authorization and media business cooperation: Amy (wechat: 13701559246);
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