5 Tips for Joining the Melbourne Coffee Game

Melbourne is known the world-over as one of the best coffee cities in the world.

In the 1950’s, an influx of European immigrants lead to the beginning of Melbourne’s love affair with coffee, a passion that continues to this day. It is one of the best cities to visit as a coffee drinker, and one of the most challenging places to succeed as a cafe owner, as there are coffee shops almost everywhere.

Even the far-reaching suburbs of the west have small nooks and crannies in which one can get a long macchiato, although the city is the obvious candidate for the best coffee in Melbourne. A coffee van business for sale won’t last long in the listings, as portable coffee businesses in Melbourne are on the rise again, and more and more static cafes are opening in the suburbs. To help you break into the Melbourne coffee game, we have prepared this written piece for you.

 
Quality is Key
This is a mantra of many cafe owners around Melbourne, but not just in regards to their coffee. Food and soft drinks sold also have to be of a higher quality, because with the cafe culture comes a culture of gourmet food and interesting drink pairings that someone new to the market might not be familiar with. It goes without saying that anything less than high quality coffee will likely not survive for long in Melbourne, and if you don’t intend on paying top dollar for your beans, a different city might be the better option for you.

Stupendous Staff
Your staff will be the face of your business.

Good manners, relaxed personalities and the ability to have casual conversations with customers all day are all key things for a cafe worker in Melbourne, but a strong work ethic must be second to none in your hiring policies, as a successful cafe will find itself inundated with orders very regularly.

Location Location
Finding a good location for your cafe is very important, because it will be the place everyone knows to go to get your unique cafe experience. You want to aim for a location that isn’t too far from a main road or city center, but not on the actual strip of shops itself, if you can help it.

The proximity will allow for more foot traffic, but a cafe is rarely an impulse destination in Melbourne, and people will regularly travel great distances to get the best coffee around.

A Noticeable Difference
Make your business stand out against the grain.

The other shops, businesses, cafes and restaurants will all have uniqueness, and yours must have it’s own feature too. A cafe that is a carbon copy of a bunch of other cafes is usually one that is avoided, or frequented by those who don’t care for coffee quality, which is a very small market in Melbourne.

 
Be Ready
Being ready for what Melbourne’s coffee shops have to deal with as direct competitors of each other is a big part of surviving the Melbourne coffee scene. Often if you open in a new location where there aren’t any other cafes, you will enjoy a period of around 6 months of high business before another cafe opens, sometimes even right next door to you. Competition breeds business though, and if handled right both you and the other cafe can make more money than either of you was making before.

Melbourne is a city full of people ready to go out and find new places to have coffee, and your business can be one of those places if you know how to handle yourself in this vicious and picky market.