Pick a Location for an Internet Cafe

You know the saying: Location, location, location. If you want your internet cafe to succeed, getting the right location is as important as making sure the internet connection is fast. Pick the wrong location, and you'll probably end up with the 50% of businesses that fail in the first year.

Gloom and doom aside, finding a great location for your cafe is not hard, and actually can be a lot of fun. You just have to be really savvy about the whole process, and obey the one rule of finding a great location: Don't get too attached to it until the lease is signed and you're moving in. You always have to be ready to walk away.



So let's talk about what makes a location great. Namely, foot traffic. There are enough internet cafes and coffee shops around that your opening yet one more in town is not going to bring people clamoring to your door. Not even if you're a celebrity, or if you have the coolest decor in town. At the same time, you may not want to be at ground zero for rush hour, because people typically want some sort of quiet when they come into a cafe... enough to sit down, exhale, and comfortably check their email and other accounts.

A nice balance of these two poles (no traffic versus Grand Central station) is a location that's one block away from a busy street. A spot across from a subway station or within sight of a library or college or a nice park is ideal, too. You want a place that will have someone walking by every 2-3 minutes or so. It should be visible from across the street, and easy to find.

That said, we all know of cafe that are darn near hidden. They typically are nearly empty, or at worst have 3-4 people in them. That makes for a nice place for your customers to hide out and enjoy their solitude, but it makes for terrible cash flow for you. Turnover in computer usage is good -- you want people to come in, sit down for maybe 15 minutes to half an hour (just long enough to buy a coffee or a sandwich) and then leave. If some stay for 2 or even 3 hours, that's fine as long as its not more than 20% of your customers.

People who sit down and use up table space for 10 hours tend to be much less profitable for you. They use up a table almost 20 other customers could have used, and they rarely leave a big enough tip to make it worthwhile. Also, experience shows these people are often the ones who mess up computer settings, overuse the printer or otherwise make trouble.

The other major requirement of any location is the electrical capacity. This is especially important because your product is basically an internet connection. So it had better be good. Be 100% sure that your new location can support almost twice as many computers as you want to have before you sign the lease. Also be sure the phone company will be able to put in a high-speed internet connection.

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