Everyone who works in an office needs to eat lunch or stop what they are doing for a coffee break, but not all of these people pack their own lunches or have the time to make their own coffee. If you have a strong business mind, you have likely seen the chance to cash in on these facts by wanting to open an office building cafe. You will need to purchase industrial catering equipment for your office building café to ensure that you can provide food and beverages at any time of day.
You will also need to ensure that your café meets the fire and safety standards of the building and that your menu has been created with busy office workers in mind. Confused about where to start? Below we look at how you can start a successful office building café.
Clarify Your Vision
An important step in opening any café or eatery is to clarify the vision you have for it. If you are focusing on serving those in an office building, your vision should be to provide these people with fast, healthy, and tasty food rather than offering a long and drawn out sit-down experience. However, you should not feel as though you should limit yourself and your ideas.
Knowing what you want to do with your café will help you to make more business decisions, such as which industrial catering equipment to choose for your establishment and what sort of menu to create. Office staff generally prefer food that they can eat on the go or that does not take too long to prepare, but if you offer an exciting lunch-time dining experience, they might be more inclined to linger for longer.
Find The Right Equipment
Before you start painting the walls of your café and decorating the interior, you will need to find the right industrial catering equipment for your needs. If you will be selling coffee and other hot drinks, you will need to invest in a coffee machine and an urn or two to provide hot water to your customers.
A café should also serve food to customers, which means that you will need some form of cooking equipment, based on what you will be selling. For those who would like to bake their own pastries for the lunch-time rush, a deck oven and dough mixer are essential, as is a food warmer or too to ensure the freshness of your food. The industrial catering equipment you purchase will rely on the type of food and drinks you want to serve.
Build A Business Plan
If you have secured a space in an office building then the chances are that you have financing as well, but if you are still looking for a space and for funds, then having a business plan will help to move this process along. And the process of writing and improving on your business plan will help you to keep your original vision in mind.
Your business plan should have a summary of your business including what industrial catering equipment you might need, who your customers and competition might be, who you will be hiring, and what your marketing plan is. You will also need to provide a plan on how you intend on earning profit to repay any loans. Be sure to follow your business plan carefully when starting any eatery or café so it is a success.
Look At Your Location
It is important to spend a significant amount of time at your chosen location before you break ground, so to speak, and open your café. This is especially true of an office building café, as you will need to see how much foot traffic you might receive at any given hour and whether or not there are other cafés in the vicinity that might be competition to your own.
You should also consider the type of decor and furnishings to use based on your location. A more corporate office building is better suited to a clean, modern aesthetic whereas a more casual office atmosphere is better for a relaxed and eclectic café. Be sure that your eatery can easily be found by people working in the office and is not hard to access during the busy lunch hour of the day.
Your location will also have an impact on the type of industrial catering equipment that you use, especially the size of your kitchen. If you are interested in opening your own office building café and need the right equipment for the job, contact Caterwize for more about our products.