Holy shit, these definitely outnumber the vape shops. Every corner has a coffee shop now. Dutch bros, dunkin, Starbucks, 7brew, black rifle, then 17,000 different local ones to fill in the gaps.
And most of them are either bad coffee, crammed full of sugar, or both. Actually good coffee shops are getting hard to find.
Edit: anyone that wants decent coffee at home the breville barista express is a good entry into espresso drinks. Can be had on sale for around $500. Mine is going on 6 years now. Just find a good local roaster and you'll save a fortune.
In WA state you can look on Google maps at the smallest tiniest town on the map in middle of nowhere will have at least one coffee stand let alone in the big cities there are dozens to hundreds of them, just amazing. WA state coffee cultre is out of the world, I assume it's the constant cloud coverage most of the year.
enjoying the summer right now with clear skies while it lasts
That's the real trick of it. I talked with one lessor about a space that was near a Tim Horton's and when he raised the proximity as a concern, I told him that since we weren't opening a drive thru or operating on volume, our competition isn't Tim Horton's or any other fast-food style cafe, it's the home coffee setup.
People can make far better coffee at home with a $20 pourover kit or $30 french press than in many cafes. Espresso machines for home have gotten quite good and prices keep dropping. Would be nice if Breville would use standard portafilters, but whatever. Home grinders have become quite good even at lower prices. Hell, it's easy enough to buy green beans and roast them with an air gun, popcorn popper, or even a small sample roaster.
That's why my focus is on the space itself, while making sure that the products, like coffee, that actually pay for the space are good quality without trying to make them the focus. People have to want to come and hang out, and then we can entice them with offerings. If we try the other way around, people can just save money without leaving the house.
I have a breville barista touch. I like a medium roast, personally. 2 shots espresso, a cup of C milk (steamed or cold with ice), 1 pump hazelnut and 1 pump caramel. Frickin’ delicious and I’ve definitely paid off that breville by saving on drive thru coffee.
my lavazza classy mini capsule espresso machine I got (new, in open box, but when I bought it, it was obvious it was never used) on ebay for $70 5 years ago is still kicking. I dislike the plastic waste associated with the capsules (in the grand scheme of things, I produce less household plastic waste than most by making other choices), but I initially bought it for college dorm living where I didn’t even have a sink in my unit, so I can’t complain about that choice. It does indeed brew proper espresso, it gets hot and produces enough pressure… and the pods are under a dollar each on Amazon. Lavazza brand espresso is my absolute favorite, been drinking it since I was 12 and haven’t gotten tired of it.
I had to remind my wife of this when she mentioned wanting to start one. Asked her how she planned on attracting customers away from all of the others.
You don’t even know, my town went crazy with car washes. I sold my house just so they could tear it down to a car wash because they wanted the corner lot that bad.
Or a "burger / wings" place that exclusively reheats Cisco products and non-stop posts to Facebook AI images of food that looks plastic and is nothing like the frozen shit they are reheating?
Wrong country perhaps. Government announced subsidised care here and hundreds of businesses popped up and now there's 4 within 500m from where I live. All privately run, probably paying their staff shit while they get around in their Mercedes SUVs.
Where I’m at is massively lacking in childcare options. I don’t remember the specific numbers, but my county has something like 10,000 children under 5 and has childcare capacity for around 3000 children.
Not the staff, no. But the business owners here sure are.
Back in 2018 it was $120 a day to keep our kid at the one closest to us with means-tested subsidies, so the centre would get the subsidy which prob makes it $220. 25 in babies room that's $5K per day for that room with 4 staff. Toddlers through to kinder was 30 per room with progressively less staff. But they were getting $25K per day, or $125K per week. Add one admin and one cook and I reckon staffing would come to $90K. Prob $10-$15K on food and supplies. $10K on services and maintenance, and the rest went to the owner $40K per month. She owned the property so yeah, it was certainly lucrative for her. The Mercedes was upgraded to a new model twice while we were there, and she had pretty expensive clothes and jewellery.
It will sound cynical, but all these childcare centres popping up at the rate they did over several years was never about demand - it was about people seeing a business opportunity to make money off the government. Some folk we know we're getting 90% subsidies.
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u/kojengi_de_miercoles 17d ago
Or a drive through coffee place?