Don't underestimate local coffee shops, explains Darcy Millar
Fancy a better cup of coffee? Try running your own shop. Cafe owner Darcy Millar explains how...
With its consistent menu of lattes, flat whites and cappuccinos – not to mention pastries, cakes and toasties – the coffee shop is a familiar feature of modern life. From Kingston-upon-Thames to Kingston, Ontario, from Kyiv in Ukraine to Kyoto in Japan, the whirring chorus of machines rings out.
Along just one 400-metre stretch of the Upper Richmond Road, through East Sheen, a recent count revealed no fewer than 23 different cafes. All of this begs the question: Have we reached a peak coffee shop?
To which the short answer is no – absolutely not. Of course, not all the coffee shops we see will still be there two years from now, let alone five or ten. It’s a young, fast-changing, dynamic industry, and only the best or most stubborn are in it for the long haul.
Broadly, though, it is quite clear that we are only part of the way through an enormous shift in tastes, lifestyles and work patterns that, in the UK, is projected to see the number of coffee shops overtake that of pubs by 2030.
Young people everywhere, from North America to Europe to Japan and Australia, drink less alcohol than previous generations.
Last year, three UK pubs closed every day between July and December, and the figures for the first half of 2023 show closures accelerating. Many survivors have adapted as gastropubs, in effect, casual restaurants that make most of their money from food. But people still want to meet up informally – on neutral territory outside the home – to chat over something to drink and nibble on.
Communities still need to gather and exchange information or socialize, as they once did in the town square or marketplace. Moreover, a growing army of self-employed freelancers is looking for informal spaces to work and meet up, enabling each of them to escape from the home kitchen table – a trend accelerated by the pandemic, as so many office-based employees now work ‘hybrid’ hours, with a day or two every week at home.
There is also the craving for what may be regarded as a ‘little luxury’ – a tasty drink to be enjoyed daily for less than £5, supplemented by a snack, light breakfast or lunch costing not much more, in a convenient and comfortable spot.
So, the demand is there – and for those wishing to service it, the barrier to entry is comparatively low. There is no need to fit out a kitchen complete with heavy-duty extractor fans, no need for a brigade of highly trained specialist staff, and no need for an alcohol licence.
So, how difficult is it to open a coffee shop and does it require a big investment? I opened my first venue, with virtually no budget but boundless enthusiasm for all things coffee, in an unpromising basement site that I had spotted as empty – as a rule of thumb, don’t spend more than 10% of your projected turnover on rent.
It starts with a good cup
I knew how to make a decent cup of coffee, having worked as a barista during my master’s degree. So I took the plunge with a leased coffee machine backed up with equipment I had picked up for a couple hundred pounds. I didn’t have a proper business plan – which was a mistake – but I sourced the best possible coffee from a well-known roastery.
Within weeks, I had attracted a small band of regulars who lived or worked nearby and liked to sit down with a good cup of coffee at least once a day. About a year in, I noticed a shop nearby that was about to become vacant on a busy pedestrian corner, with large glass picture windows. I moved in before it came onto the market, and I haven’t looked back since.
Furnishing tips
You can, as many do, spend tens of thousands of pounds kitting out a shop with splendid décor, designer furniture and fancy equipment. But you don’t have to: your friends will rally around to help paint the premises, and you can pick up excellent second-hand furniture and light fittings very cheaply. A warning: decide on your overall decorative scheme and spend a few months slowly accumulating items from sites such as Gumtree or Facebook Marketplace.
Equipment matters
If you throw it all together on the cheap, then cheap is precisely how it will look. The one area in which you must invest is professional coffeemaking equipment. Your minimum aim is to serve a cup of coffee that is better than anyone can make at home. Hence, you need an espresso machine that can provide both the coffee and the textured (or ‘frothy’) milk that defines the artisan coffee shop – and enables the barista to create some signature ‘latte art’.
Some of the bigger coffee suppliers will often help towards the cost of your machine (and provide barista training) if you commit to buying their beans in the long term. For my part, I leased a portable Linea Mini from La Marzocco, a brand known for its simplicity and reliability. Still, a second-hand model from any reputable company will do the job. Search marketplaces such as United Baristas for used machines – just be careful of the condition.
The coffee grinder is one piece of equipment it pays to spend as much as you can afford. A busy coffee shop grinds a lot of beans every day, but on a cheap grinder, the burrs – the part that crushes the beans into a uniform size – will heat up, causing your shots to become increasingly erratic. Once I could afford a second-hand Mythos grinder from Nuova Simonelli, everything became more consistent.
The most surprising piece of necessary equipment – the coffee shop’s secret weapon in making better coffee than you can make at home using tap water – is a state-of-the-art reverse osmosis water system.
A good RO system from BWT or Pentair can cost up to £2,000, but you can also rent them. Before I could afford one, I used to buy purified water in 19-litre bottles from a commercial water supplier (aiming for a mineral balance of around 100 parts per million).
For the rest, I managed fine in the early days with a second-hand domestic fridge, and you would be amazed at the potential of the sort of grill toaster beloved of student accommodation: all kinds of toasties to keep your customers happy for breakfast or lunch.
Setting your prices
Pricing is a sensitive issue. Wherever you are, there will be a market rate for a cup of coffee – and, however good yours is, you really can’t overshoot that rate. People will notice and avoid you. You may have a little more leeway with croissants and sandwiches if yours are significantly better than your rivals, but don’t push it too far.
Don’t try to ‘buy’ market share by undercutting the opposition. That’s the billionaire’s tactic for long-term market dominance, but it won’t work for an individual shop – customers won’t cross town to save 30p on a coffee. Instead, aim to match your local rivals on price but beat them on quality and service – the intangibles that cost you nothing except constant effort and care. Last, but by no means least, put everything you have into looking after your customers.
Greet every new arrival; try to remember their names and preferences; say goodbye when they leave. And do enjoy yourself. You may have to work harder than ever before, but if your coffee shop is a happy place to work, it will be a happy place for your customers to visit again and again.
Darcy Millar grew up in southwest London, went to school in Barnes, and made his first cup of coffee during a summer job at Fulham Palace Cafe. He worked as a barista to support himself while studying for a master’s degree in urban planning in Copenhagen, where he opened his first Darcy’s Kaffe five years ago. He has just published his first book and is investigating coffee shop opportunities in London. The Instant Coffee Shop: How to Open a Café in a Week, by Darcy Millar, is published by Palazzo Editions at £14.99
