Café owners: 7 things you must do to grow your café business

If you’re having problems growing your café business, you may be making some simple, silly or unfortunate mistakes.

The good news is it’s probably easy to avoid making them again.

A lot of business problems are created by either:

• making the wrong decision
• taking the wrong action (or failing to take the right action).

Last week we looked at the seven errors in thinking that lead to three problems when growing your café business. So let’s now take a look at seven things you must do to grow your café business.

1. Meet with your business partners regularly

As we talked about in our previous blog post, if you own multiple sites then you probably have business partners. So when was the last time you got together with them to talk about current issues and future business plans?

For your business to succeed you need everyone to be on the same page. And that means getting together regularly (monthly at a minimum, but ideally weekly) to talk about both issues and your overall business strategy.

2. Embrace new technologies

If you’re still using paper dockets, manual staff rosters and paper invoices, how do you expect to grow your business? Manual systems such as these are impossible to scale. And while you can replicate these paper-based methods, who’d want to take on a business that uses them?

You need to start using the latest technology to streamline your systems and business processes. You can bet your competition is already doing it, and unless you do the same your business will be left in the dust while theirs continue to grow.

3. Start treating your team as an investment rather than a cost

Chances are your biggest expense is staff wages. But instead of thinking of your team as a cost, think of them as an investment. After all, without them you probably wouldn’t have a café business in the first place.

This shift in thinking will not only get you to think about training and other ways to develop your team, but also stop you grumbling every time you process a pay run.

4. Take the time to review your financial statements

Knowledge is power—especially when trying to grow a café business.

If you stick your head in the sand, and ignore your financial statements or accounts, both you and your business will have problems down the track.

So take the time to look at them regularly, and find out exactly how the money flows in and out of your business. They will give you the clarity and control you need to take your business to the next level.

5. Stop running up high debts and credits

Owing people money, and being owed money from late payments, is just bad business.

As a business owner, you need to pay your team and your suppliers on time. If you don’t, they may decide to work with another café business owner instead.

You also need to be on top of whoever’s late with their payments. You’re running a business, not a charity.

Fortunately, technology makes it easy to keep track of this information. It can even notify late payers automatically so you don’t have to waste time chasing them up.

6. Start adopting a ‘profit first’ approach

In a previous blog post we talked about the ‘profit first’ approach, where you regularly transfer money into separate accounts for future payments—including profit.

We don’t want to repeat ourselves here. But we do want to emphasise how important it is to transfer this money every week or fortnight (depending on the size of your business.)

And you need separate accounts. If you try doing it all with a single business account, you’ll never know who (or what) the money is for.

7. Discuss, document and review your exit strategy

This relates to our first point about catching up with your business partners regularly to talk about your business goals. In these meetings you should also discuss, document and review your business exit strategy—not at every meeting, but at least once a year.

After all, the best way for you to cash in on all your hard work is probably by selling your café business. And to make the most of that opportunity, you need a sound exit strategy.

Taking on these seven actions will give you a much better chance of not only growing your café business, but also getting the best financial return for all the hard work you’ve put into it.

In our next post we’ll be talking about why the mistakes you’re making are just that—mistakes.

In the meantime, if you’d like to talk about anything we’ve discussed here, or would like more information, don’t hesitate to get in touch with us.