Today, I visited a rather new place in town. The location of this place is just in front of one of my favorite coffee shops in town that serves creme brulee. By now, this coffee shop already has a competitor, just in front of them. This coffee shop location is underground, a literal basement of a book store just above it. The weather was awfully hot. When you think I live in Indonesia and am accustomed to the heat, that’s not always the case. I am fine with 16 to 29 C but that’s about it. This underground coffee shop has rather poor ventilation and even some AC is turned off; Compared to the other one that has functional AC and also proper ventilation. Maybe you could forgive it because it’s new but it’s actually a turn off. It means, this place isn’t well-thought. The layout of the AC wasn’t covering all the area which it should. This mundane thing is actually important when building a coffee shop/cafe especially these days. Poor ventilation is such a turn off and could hinder someone to spend more in the place. A happy customer could potentially lead to more spending.

Logically, when you first open a coffee shop, you want to show that you have the best barista and staff. They tend to leave a great impression on the customers unless you don’t have any standard and are okay with poor service and poor coffee. One of the things that coffee shop/cafe owners need to have is a bell. That would really help when there is nobody attending the order section. I had to wait for 25 minutes only to be met with someone who doesn’t seem to be the barista. I was right. That person took another 30 minutes just to make an iced caramel macchiato with fancy equipment that was on the table. The horror!

From the table I sat, I was observing her. She was on the call with another person who sounded to guide her making my coffee. I have to say, the coffee wasn’t bad but waiting for long in the heat was such a turn off.

Another thing with having a cafe in the basement would mean poor network reception. I could understand if the cafe is going to implement no gadget policy but looking from the building, they even have what seemed to be a meeting room. So, if you want to build an underground cafe/coffee shop, a meeting room/space wouldn’t really be suitable.

I remember having a conversation with my uncle whose friend own a coffee shop. Despite not making profit, he continued because of pride rather than actually enjoying being in the industry. Not just my uncle, I also talked to my sister who told me that her BF is going to open a coffee shop too. I had to call her and then ask her a lot of questions just in case she and her BF are only doing it because it’s trendy. Having a coffee business with a fancy place is surely trendy but it’s better to have a simple place that actually sells. A lot of people I know do that because they have money to drain but for those who don’t think twice before opening a fancy place.

Always know your market, the audience, and the kind of people who are going to visit your cafe. Who are you going to attract? Are you going to attract people like me, a digital nomad or artist, or just casual cafe hoppers? Or maybe a caffeine addict? For example, in Indonesia it all depends on the region. In some places you can simply set up a simple stall and it will be packed with youngsters. But in some regions, there’s the need for cafes with proper wifi and really good coffee, e.g. canggu, ubud, etc. in my hometown, people like to enjoy an outdoor setting, simple stalls where people could have some quality time and chit-chat. But thankfully, there are cafes that provide a comfortable place to work from. So it would not be ideal to have some sort of closed space. From what I gather, a lot of places in my hometown are empty, especially when the coffee is also above 1.5$.