Coffee Shop Floor Plans

[GeorgeW]

Hi everyone,

I'm finally about to sign a lease on a space and need to put pencil to paper and get the floorplan down. I believe I have the basic idea down (having looked at a lot of cafe arrangements including $tarbucks). I would love to see some exisiting examples of plans and ensure we settle on an efficient floor plan. Space is a premium in our location, we're just a hair over 800 square feet with a single bathroom (I can still decide where to locate it). Can anyone suggest a book or other resource that has multiple examples of coffee shop floor plans? I've spent some time searching around (including here) and haven't located anything yet.

Thanks all,

George

 

[GeorgeW]

BTW - I was hoping someone could recommend a book that has floorplans/designs. (hope people didn't think I was asking to be sent a bunch of plans directly).

 

[cafemakers]

Hello Geoge,

I do not believe that such a book has been published; you may wish to contact a professional designer and have them create something specifically for your space. I suggest that you contact Teresa at Design & Layout Services 800-471-8448 - they do outstanding work.

Generic templates of what others have produced may be interesting to view, but I find that some companies inappropriately apply these in many situations; what is a good design for someone else's business may not (and probably is not) a good design for you, your space and your business model.

Andrew

 

[GeorgeW]

Thanks for the tip Andrew, can you give me an idea a ballpark figure of how much a typical set of design plans cost with that group since you've worked with them? My wife and I have a pretty good idea of how we want our layout, my main concern was making sure we have the counter space efficiently setup so I had hoped to see a few plans and then was planning to ensure we had appropriate space in our shop.

We could use a local interior designer, but there wouldn't be many with coffee shop experience and quite frankly I doubt they could design something much better than we could. We only have a 50k setup budget that we do not want to exceed to begin with so we can't drop a large dollar figure on design work - it won't matter how good the design is if we don't have enough cash on hand to implement it. (Yes I know the opposing argument is that copious amounts of cash won't make a fundamentally bad design good).

BTW - where Los Angeles are you guys located at? We just moved from Monrovia last year.

 

[cafemakers]

I would budget about $2,500 to $3,500 for design and architecture of a "typical" shop (whatever that is); from my experience, this is inline with the costs charged by D&LS.

Depending on your plans and what is intended to be included in the setup portion of your budget, $50k is may be a little too slim, particularly for So Cal; for example, the build-out from white box condition that we see on most shops alone is in that range, before you even begin to talk about things like your furnishings, equipment, signage and cash reserves for operation over the first 6-12 months. I agree that throwing money at a problem is not the answer, but undercapitalization is a much bigger risk to the success of your business than a bad design. ...again, this all depends on what you intend to include within that budget; please disregard if you have separate budgets set aside for these other areas.

We were in Brentwood until this summer and recently completed the permanent location here to the Big Island. Ironically, this probably means I'll be spending more time in LA than ever, between servicing ongoing and new clients on the mainland, wrapping up some business dealing there and visiting friends and family. Let me know where your shop will be and I'll be pleased to pop in when next in town.

Best of success!

Andrew

 

[cafemakers]

Right - Charleston, SC. I see that now. Time for another cup.

 

[GeorgeW]

Hi Andrew,

Thanks again for your responses. Fortunately I'm pretty handy with remodeling projects and costs out here are lower than southern California so I feel pretty good about keeping our build out costs around 50k. We're not including our operating cash in that figure (have an equity line of credit for those costs - I hope I don't run through all 75k!).

We're taking a staggered approach to build out, with 'nice to haves' and 'no compromise' items listed. I've got a good carpenter to do the woodwork and may have someone else do the floors, aside from that the only other no compromise item is the espresso machine. For the rest we don't need to go top dollar initially (we have some fairly nice furniture and the like from another cafe that closed down). Anything out of sight from the customers we can go cheaper on.... I'll definitely post some pictures as we get the cafe up and running so everyone can see.