Tell me the beautiful and the ugly please.
Coworker and I have an opportunity to open a cafe catering to high end clientele. I’ve never opened a cafe before, so I am clueless and naive when it comes to it. I want to know as much info as I can before making a final decision.
Thank you.
Edit: we’re both based in Tokyo, permanent residents, speak Japanese and such 🙂
11 comments
You will be there everyday. Your entire life will be consumed by trying to make enough money to stay afloat. You’ll be tired all the time. Being tired will be your new default setting. Every time you think you’ve made enough profit to put away, something will come up that sucks the profits away. You and your business partner will fight. It will suck. Your family relationships will suffer.
It will either get easier for you as you all adjust to your new normal, and it will become an amazing thing you can be proud to be a part of.
Or you’ll be broke and everything will go tits up.
Have fun!
Do you have experience in the restaurant / cafe industry?
I think people generally underestimate the level of skill and experience needed to open cafes/izakayas/etc.
If you are aiming to serve high end clientelle without the relevant experience, I don’t see it ending well. Experienced home cooks can open a snack/izakaya and cater to locals after retirement with not too much trouble (not a large customer volume, people know what they are getting), but I’m not sure “high end” customers will have the same patience or understanding.
The time commitment cannot be overstated. But there can be other consequences. I’ve known two gaijin who owned cafe/bars in Japan. Both did reasonably well financially with periodic strife. One wasn’t allowed to join Australian healthcare (after selling his place and returning to Oz) until he went dry for 9 months and the other died of liver failure not long after returning home, both were in their late 40’s. Good luck!
If you’ve never opened a cafe before do you have a background in cooking professionally or running restaurants?
The amount of work required is pretty vast, you need to be absolutely on the ball and you need a plan b/c/d for when things slow down or you hit rough patches if you want any chance of survival.
If you have an existing customer base then it’s a great start but remember that your neighborhood and competition are massive elements to consider as well.
If you are excited about losing money and being ‘married’ to the restaurant/cafe, go right ahead.
Success stories exist, but few and far between. Competition is brutal, the work is brutal (but addictive in more ways than one).
In my 20’s I managed a small diner/bar in Japan. Worked six days a week, 3pm-1am. My social life and health went downhill. Pay was terrible so I had to get a side job just to get by. I guess I could say it was a learning/formative experience….and oddly addictive.
I still sometimes day dream about opening a place, but a friend just shut down his restaurant after being open for less than a year and his advice was ‘restaurants are to eat at, not to own’.
I thought it would be fun to do IF, I didn’t have to prepare anything. If you could source everything from somewhere and actually just serve it, it sounds somewhat interesting.
After working in an izakaya, almost 50% of the job is food prep and clean up.
I was so tired waiting tables but I was too ashamed to complain since the owner worked 120hrs a week and just took power naps in the back.
My boss at the bar was always so tired and stressed, I have no idea how he kept the business afloat and was too afraid to ask, but he did and had zero life.
My other boss at the bar had some semblance of life but thanks to his underpaid and overworked employees that he would manage to find. Once the doormat bartender quit and of course no one wohld work those conditions he quickly went bankrupt tho.
Watch our for high end clientelle, this means yakuza might come. You and your employees will be afraid of them. Make poor quality drinks and food for them, let them raise a fuss and leave. Do your best to not have them like you. The tips are *not* worth it. Do not let clients leave with them, but never say it outright. Do not let them spend too much time woth other clients. Have a contigency plan for this. Some yakuzas liked my old bar for a few years and he is still traumatised from it even if realistically they kept his business afloat with the tips and recurring visits.
“My coworker and I”
I guess outside of the actual running a cafe and the business, Make sure you are 100% certain you want to go business with your coworker.
Coffee/espresso machines are your friend.
Better learn to maintain them, and clean them periodically.
It ain’t always sunshine at your door, it’s compromise, and sometimes you’ll feel like it’s a chore. Money will come, and money will go. Marketing is the only way to generate profit. But, you’re a tiny fish in a big, big metropolitan pond. Starbucks, mister donut, guess what? They eat your kind for breakfast.
Unless you can give your cafe a twist, like massage cafe, or pedicure cafe, you gotta be unique. English Manga cafe is no good since your main demographic can’t read it. Maybe use your ‘niche’ cafe. I would open a bondage domination cafe, hands down.
So much negativity in this thread
Try something else.