Jim Business Facts

In general, the language in the coffee shop business plan should be factual and business like. You can use any prospectus of a listed company as a reference. You may say that you are not going for listing! You must realize that the investors are really looking for good deals and there is no better way to show them you mean business by having a world class business plan. Use graphs and government statistics to back up your research and this will give you instant credibility. A good business plan will basically cover two things, your business strategy and execution.

A. Strategy
A strategy is the goal you want to achieve in your business in the short run, which is the first one year and for the long run, which is 5 year. As this is a big topic by itself, I shall cover the few critical components briefly.

i) Target market
The first thing you must cover is your target market. This includes the demographics, where they eat and how affluent they are. Then you need to estimate the market size. This will depend on how big an area you think you can realistically cover.

ii) Competitions
No business exists by itself. If there really is none, that is a sign of no demand in the market. You must list down your nearest competitor in your chosen niche and their strengths and weaknesses. If you can, list down their revenue per month and estimated market share as well.

B. Operations
This part covers the detailed aspects of the day to day running of your coffee shop business. This is where the rubber meets the road and you must successfully execute to get your business off the ground.

i) Startup costs
These are the costs to get your business off the ground. These include renovation, coffee shop layout, cost of buying or leasing equipments and legal costs like license and permits. How much you need to spend depends on your USP you have targeted.

ii) Monthly revenue and expenses
After estimating the market size in your niche, you can estimate how many customers you can have as you monthly revenue. You can then estimate the monthly operating costs, which includes leasing, staff salaries and utilities. You must estimate how much cash you need to sustain for the slow months, especially in the early months of operations.

Conclusion:
After finishing the first draft, you may want to get someone experienced such as a lawyer or accountant to give a second opinion. It may take you a few more draft before it is ready to be presentable to the investors. You are advised to revise this at least yearly to see if it is still applicable.

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