place BY PAN DEMETRAKAKES
Learning your
The best location for a coffeehouse depends in large part on what kind of shop it will be—and what kind of people will visit.
I
t's oſt en said that the three most important things for a retail business are location, location, location. Which raises the question: Where, where, where? Of all the decisions that go into establishing a coff eehouse,
the fi rst signifi cant one, and one of the most daunting, is where to put it. It's a decision that can't be reversed (at least, not without a lot of trouble and expense) and that can overshadow pretty much every other aspect of the business. It doesn't matter if you sell the world's greatest coff ee if no one can get to your shop. A surprising number of coff eehouse owners and other
foodservice entrepreneurs make location a low priority, says John Melaniphy, president of Chicago-based Melaniphy & Associates and author of "Th e Restaurant Location Guidebook." Th ey get into a situation where they consider price alone, which is a recipe for disaster. "What happens in the restaurant business is, people spend
a lot of money on designing their restaurant, fi xtures, furniture and all the goodies, and they get to the end and they haven't got any money," Melaniphy says. "Th ey then look for cheap rent, and oſt en that's a suicide mission. You need certain characteristics to do a targeted volume of sales, and when you start compromising, you're going to end up being a loser. In the coff ee business, we've seen a lot of that." What are those "certain characteristics"? Th at's a daunting question, with many variables and
multiple potential sources of information. But in the end, it comes down to: • Who's going to come into your shop? • Where will they come from? • How will they get there? Who's going to come in? Th is question goes to the core of
a coff eehouse's identity. Owners must ask themselves what their shop will be about and what kind of customers they intend to serve. "You need to be thinking about, does your concept of coff ee,
and what you're going to be doing, fi t within the area?" says Bruce Milletto, head of coff ee consulting fi rm Bellissimo Coff ee InfoGroup. "If you're in a very unsophisticated coff ee area, and you're doing something very sophisticated and upscale, will that fi t in that area?" Demographics and "psychographics" can help gauge the receptivity of population near a potential location. (See "Demographics: Th e raw material of retail" on page 16.) If there's not a fi t between concept and location, one or the
other needs changing, Milletto says: "Oſt entimes you have to either tweak your idea to fi t the area, or you have to fi nd an area that fi ts the exact concept of what you're looking for." Perhaps the most basic question is how long customers will
A good location can go a long way toward ensuring the success of a
coffeehouse. Photo courtesy of Biggby Coff ee
14 | December 2011 • www.specialty-coffee.com
be expected to stay in the shop. A high-volume coff eehouse set up to serve commuters has very diff erent location needs than a place that seeks to give customers a café experience. Grant Ian Th rall, a business consultant and professor
