CREATESPACE The Daily Grind: How to open & run a coffee shop that makes money

I picked up this book when I first had the idea to set up my own coffee shop. Now I use this book all the time. I go back to it again and again. When I reach another stage in my planning, need to figure something out or just want to know if my thinking is on track, this book gives me a bit of reassurance and valuable guidance. Paired with their online resource, The Daily Grind makes the reality of creating a profitable and successful coffee shop business clear and straightforward, but it also gives you confidence that with careful thought and preparation, the potential for success can be within reach. Setting up a coffee shop on your own can be daunting, but having Andrew and Claire right beside you and wanting you to succeed can make all the difference.

This book covers the absolute basics of opening a cafe. Some of the suggestions and ideas are extremely simple and obvious but this may be what some people need to learn. Some ideas are very personal and will not work for many.The book has quite a few spelling mistakes, some sentences do no make sense and there are a number of statistics chucked in there with no evidence or references.Overall it’s a good starter book, but if you have worked in a cafe you may already know a lot of this or have different opinions.

If you want to open a coffee shop, I believe, that it is a great advantage to be guided by people who have actually done it themselves. Not many people are so ready to share there knowledge and experience. I think this book is a great guide. I also loved that it was written in a way that was easy to understand and at times I literarily felt like the writers were talking to me directly. This book many times confirmed what I was thinking which was very encouraging for me. I also really liked the additional sections at the end: The Waitrose free coffee study, What can coffee shops learn from the pubs and Food intolerance as new opportunity - very eye opening. Thank you Andrew and Claire for sharing your knowledge in this book. I would highly recommended this book to anyone who would like to open a coffee shop 100%!

I bought this book after listening to interviews with Andrew and Claire Bowen on a cafe podcast. They both walked the walk in terms of taking over coffee shops and setting up their own chain and through their cafe consultancy work, have clearly build up an expertise.Their philosophies of 'working out your why' at the outset and creating a 'guest avatar' have given me real clarity and focus at my early stage of planning and writing a business plan. The book explains these clearly and the process to work through them and other concepts. The book is laid out specifically in the process that you need to work through setting up a cafe. The strongest aspects are those on marketing and promotion and I enjoyed their own case studies. At the back of the book are some of their best blog articles too. You can tell from the book that they have read widely on business with various concepts peppering the pages - the reference list at the back should certainly help my bookshelf to get full. The book makes constant reference to their online platform where key documents to help with all aspects of running a cafe are kept - a fabulous free resource. And if that's not enough, this morning I had a free consultancy call with Andrew and Claire, after registering my purchase of the book. The call was eye-opening and has given me a clear roadmap for the next couple of months, what further research and actions to take - taking the value of my purchase into the stratosphere. I couldn't recommend them and this book highly enough.website/call

I would greatly recommend this book if you're considering entering this business for the first time (like me) or if you're an existing coffee shop owner seeking to improve your offer and become more profitable at the same time. The book is well structured and really does give you the 'nuts and bolts' of what is required to establish and then grow a successful coffee shop. There is a well made 'reality check' point : this industry is no route to easy money or instant vast profits! - but if you're really committed, then the book goes on to guide you through the process: what to expect, what you'll need to deal with and some of the potential pitfalls. You also get access to some excellent online resources which I for one will definitely be using as we work up our business case. You get the feeling that Andrew and Claire have real passion for the industry and the rewarding career it can bring, despite the challenges - and this shines through the book.