Footfall (can you rely on this alone to turn a profit?)
“Location, location, location”, a phrase we are all familiar with. Many cafe owners would have spent countless hours searching for just the right location, near a bus stop, opposite a pedestrian crossing, at a junction, opposite a hospital (and the list goes on), but not everyone seems to have that mindset.
I have visited a small number of cafes recently who on the face of it do not seem to have given the aforementioned concept much thought, but seem to have adopted the ‘build it and they will come’ approach.
I must confess to not having had the time to sit at some of these cafes for any extended period of time - over days, weeks or months - and it very well may be that when I visited it was an unnaturally quiet period. However, that said, it must be very difficult to break even or turn a profit when consistently selling less than 10 coffees per hour.
When you consider that the wages bill, rent, electricity, insurance etc would dramatically eat into the already tight, and ever shrinking profit margins (as the cost of consumables increases but the price of a cup often stays static for many years, or may be dictated by what those in the immediate vicinity are charging for a ‘cup’) you start to question the economic viability of the venture. However, bubbling just under the surface is optimism, and more often than not, a strong belief that the quality of the product being crafted in their premises will bring in repeat business and referrals.
Those in the know (or have acquired the taste for a decent cup of coffee) will often take short detours to get their fix, but when starting out, a new cafe owner cannot be sure just how far people will come from to drink their beverages. Therefore, the obvious choice would be to pay a little more for a guaranteed footfall past, to, or through the main entrance of the shop or stall.
Can you rely on footfall alone to turn a profit?
In the next article I will explore demographics, and show that you cannot rely on footfall alone to draw in the customers.
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