* Espresso costs about 1 euro, 2 for cappuccino, 2.5-ish for almost any croissant/pastry.
* Customers come in order/pay, stand at a bar to have their drink, all done in about 10 minutes max.
* Staff consists of a middle-aged barista with a bow-tie who pulls flawless espresso shots like a locomotive and a surly lady who handles the money + orders.
* In the evening, add a waitress and serve a limited menu of aperitivo and some specialties.
The expectations are, of course, different in the US. I think there are ways to make it work (1), but yeah, if you want to have that special chilled-out shabby-chic space typified by independent early-90's coffee houses, be prepared to make meager precarious wages at best. Virtually all of NYC is off-limits for such enterprises now because of rent.
(1) For example, this new place in Philly, informal lunch/cafe during the day, trendy byob at night: http://www.philly.com/philly/columnists/craig_laban/20170430...
[0]: Dolce Vita, they don't have a website, but here is a link to them on Google Maps: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Dolce+Vita/@30.3043196,-97...
Australian cafes make out like bandits these days. They're basically breakfast/lunch restaurants that serve great espresso based drinks, mostly don't offer wifi and have no problem moving customers along if they stop buying drinks so they can cycle the table space for new customers.
A few years later I noticed that there were some franchises springing up with the same model, but the entry prices were insane. Might as well start a McDonald's!
Anyway, my point is that perhaps the expectations in the US are regional and in some locations, the model you're describing might work.
Of course I am just one anecdote. They could be doing amazing.
It goes like this: "We doubled the prices of
food expecting demand to go down, but it went
up!"
I later experimented with various price points (without announcing, just changed the price on the home page) & lo and behold- I sold as many units at $9.99 as at $4.99 and $6.99 (I didn't dare raise it beyond the launch price)!
The corollary is to not listen to customers saying what they want, but to observe what they buy.
* this was in 2011 and that particular market has changed since, please do not email me asking "how to make money selling software online" - I don't know!
/me kicks himself for likely leaving money on the table :-(
Everyone must conform to the logic of capital. Even if, as a charitable and willing business owner, you want to remunerate your employees more than what the market suggests, or set prices lower than what consumers are willing to pay because you don't want to profit too egregiously, you will be forced into adapting and doing what the market wants you to do.
It's hard for a very scrupulous person to accept this. Many lousy software developers have more prestige than more talented ones, because the latter are seemingly unable to accept just how much they are expected to charge for their time, and therefore seem cheap by underselling themselves. The question of "How can I make so much money, when people I know working so much harder in teaching or social work, make so much less?" is expected to just be squelched or dealt via charity.
It's very interesting.
Coffee, especially currently, is one of those things that everyone has a very strong opinion about even if they can't quite articulate why they have it. Middling chain coffee houses would outperform dedicated coffee houses, despite the amenities and the quality of coffee, simply because they'd hit these three C's: Convenience, Cost, Consistency. The majority of the people want the C's - they don't particularly care about the history of the coffee, the quality of the press or the technique of the person making it. They're happy to call someone in a Starbucks apron a barista as long as coffee comes in 20 oz and with the exact extras requested.
I don't know that I'm a coffee snob, but I really did like the local place near my last work place when I worked in Tacoma, WA. The guy who owned it was just a really nice and laid back guy who made coffee I really enjoyed. His idea of a coffee house was a mixture specialty coffee with specialty beer to server the neighborhood and the campus I worked at. He wasn't a huge coffee guy, he just had a fair idea on what was good. But he wasn't interested in trying to compete with middling or larger chains; he had the vision of a coffee house and lounge that could be a nice place to help bring up the class of the neighborhood.
Regrettably his staff couldn't seem to replicate whatever it was he did and were more concerned about some of the other hallmarks of coffeehouses (the latte art, getting the right music, etc). They seemed to like the idea of being baristas in a archetypal coffeehouse, but when even a slight big of pressure hit (like of 4-5 people), they weren't really up for it. Ironically, many of my colleagues who did prefer this coffeehouse would complain if it got too much foot traffic because it would be "losing its uniqueness". It seemed almost paradoxical that the gentleman had created a really nice coffeehouse that did appeal to self-proclaimed coffee snobs and hit the right notes for a university coffeehouse; but in doing so, it would teeter on the edge of "undesirable" because it was too popular - the owner seemed cursed to either run with the image and get into a workflow he didn't want, or to be stuck with pennies of profit at the end of the month satisfying a core customer base. Without clarity on which direction to go, I think his staff faltered because each one would have a different attitude towards it. (Perhaps snobbishly of me, I too had certain baristas I preferred to make the coffee, and certain baristas where I'd just walk past if they were working that day)
I went because I liked the guy and his work and really hoped that it would help keep him going. Despite being so close to a College campus and being the only lounge style eatery in the entire area, he just couldn't seem to get a lot of foot traffic from the students at the campus or from people in the neighborhood. They either went to the campus convenience store and got the drip or button-press machine coffee, or they'd hit up one of the many drive-thru coffee stands that were getting big around that time. (The bikini stands in particular started cropping up...but I don't think those lasted long past their novelty phase)
The economics of a coffeehouse has to be just absolutely mind boggling as an owner, and to me at least, it seems like a really terrible mechanism for expressing one's own creativity, and like a money sink of a side-project. There's a lot of nuance, at least from my experiences with PNW coffeehouses, that go into making a small one successful.
At least when making indie games you can come out of the adventure with enough experience to get a well paid software developer job somewhere else afterwards (the chances of success from actually selling the games is unfortunately not higher tho).
Result: now two companies are slowly going out of business.
I have a few close friends who are cafe owners in NH (and when the time is right I will probably open one as a "side project"), and even here, getting a low-volume cafe or a two-person cafe working well, with staff dedicated to preparing food at bad margins is unlikely. Instead focus on coffee coffee coffee or raise your margins until you're happy to sell every item.
I don't think he understands the leeway he has on prices. Imagine the article his competitor (still in business) didn't write. It goes like this: "We doubled the prices of food expecting demand to go down, but it went up!"
Humans, they aren't rational. And the "coffee buyer" breed of human, they are hardly the price-sensitive crowd. At least in New Hampshire, you already lost the price sensitive crowd to Dunkins. Forget them. Sell the amazing $3.50 croissants with pride. The people who crave it will come no matter the price.
* there are no good croissants in New Hampshire.