Odesa is an ancient beautiful city with a unique atmosphere and traditions. One of them is the love for coffee, so opening a coffee shop here can be a good decision. However, implementing such a project requires a sober approach and a well-thought-out concept.
In this article, we offer to figure out how to choose a coffee shop concept, find your target audience, suppliers, and what documents to prepare. We will also discuss how having a website and social media affects the promotion of a startup and why a local domain ODESA.UA can help improve visibility among local coffee lovers.
Type of Coffee Shop
An important moment is the choice of the future business concept. Coffee shops are popular, so amidst competitors, it's essential to stand out. You need to understand who you want to be in the market:
- Coffee shop with seating
- Takeaway kiosk
- Coffee and pastry shop or bakery
A coffee shop with seating provides higher profits but requires more material expenses, a carefully thought-out assortment, and an interior that allows you to stand out against the general background of numerous cafes that already exist in Odesa. You need to plan the assortment, types of coffee offered, suppliers, and whom you will offer your services.
A café and patisserie or bakery is a great choice because people will gladly come in for delicious coffee with fresh appetizing pastries or desserts. However, you need to figure out whether you plan to produce additional products yourself, work with a partner, or buy ready-made sweets. All of these are issues of both investments and expenses, as well as choosing suppliers or the right partner. These principles and concepts must be thought through in advance, preferably before making the decision to open the business.
Everything has to attract visitors — from the offered products to the name, interior, and service quality.
Website and Social Media
Most coffee shops find their clients based on the principle of 'came, saw, bought coffee,' so they do not always see the need to have an online presence. However, there are several reasons why coffee shops need a website or social media pages:
- The coffee shop is beautifully decorated and has exquisite sweets or unusual dishes in its assortment. This provides opportunities for taking many photos and sharing them with users.
- The establishment has a unique feature in the concept that may attract not only users passing by but also people from other districts and even cities. For example, this could be a cat café with fluffy favorites or concerts by musicians in the evening.
- The coffee shop has additional products that can be sold online — for example, delivering ground coffee, custom sweets, or handmade coffee-drinking ceramics across Ukraine.
To create a website, we recommend using local Odesa domains. You can buy the domain ODESA.UA, which reflects the Ukrainian name of the city, or the shortened domain OD.UA. There is also a Russian-speaking domain ODESSA.UA, but this is not the best choice in times of full-scale war with the occupier.
Regional domains have many advantages — they are inexpensive, serviced by Ukrainian registrars (you can support Ukrainian businesses), have many available names, and rank better in local Google search results.
Target Audience
Calculating the target audience must be accurate, otherwise, the coffee shop will simply not generate income. For this, it is necessary to study two main factors: competitors and consumers, to find out what exactly people want to receive, how often, and in what assortment.
It is important to understand what types of cafes the market in Odesa is already saturated with and to choose the least filled niche. At the same time, the offered products and services must be in demand, as exclusivity can turn out to be too exotic, while standard offers may not attract enough attention from coffee lovers.
Necessary Documents
To open a coffee shop, you need to register as an individual entrepreneur of the second group if you do not plan to sell alcoholic beverages. At the same time, it is advisable to choose a KVED not only for coffee shops and cafes but also for stores. The experienced quarantine clearly demonstrated that a prudent choice of a store KVED allowed trading for takeaway, while ordinary cafes ended up being closed and causing only losses.
If you plan to open a kiosk without a private bathroom and running water, you will need to install a sink, a pump, and agree with the nearest facility so that employees can use the toilet, as well as purchase a fire extinguisher. If the coffee shop has a toilet and running water, the following documents will be necessary:
- Passport and TIN required for registration
- Sanitary and epidemiological station conclusion
- Fire declaration
Employees must have sanitary books, and the cafeteria must have an occupational safety and fire safety journal, a complaint book, and statutory documents. Music often sounds in such establishments — a contract with UAAASP will be required for its legal broadcasting.
Choosing a Supplier
This is a very important issue, as an unreliable supplier can cause the coffee shop's operations to fail, and such shortcomings the business does not forgive. Visitors who find that they cannot get their favorite coffee are unlikely to continue coming back. The reasons for this will not concern them.
Besides reliability, the supplier must provide high-quality products that come to the country through legal channels. The price of the products must be advantageous for coffee business owners, otherwise, profit will be a distant dream.
Pros and Cons of the Coffee Business
Thousands of people love coffee and drink it constantly, several times a day. This guarantees a steady demand for the coffee shop's products. The volume of coffee production worldwide is increasing, many varieties are entering the market, and new recipes for the delicious invigorating drink are developed every year. This provides a good future for the coffee business, provided that it is organized correctly and the concept and target audience are chosen accurately.
But there is a downside. The price of coffee beans is constantly rising, which affects the cost of the final product. However, the number of coffee lovers is not decreasing, so the price increase is unlikely to significantly affect sales. But it is necessary to also consider that competition in this business is extremely high.