Café add-on to existing business

brynne

Per the title, if I wanted to add a café to my existing 'arts and crafts-type' business, where would I go to learn what I need to know about fitting out a kitchen and food preparation.

I need to move premises anyway, and envisage that a fair amount of building work will be needed to create the commercial space I need. My idea is a café serving cakes, snacks, tea and coffee, catering predominantly vegetarians and those with specific allergies or dietary needs. I believe the concept would sit well with my existing clientelle and would fill a gap in the market locally, but I don't know whether I'm being realistic or whether kitting out a new shop with a café area would just prove too expensive or too much of a headache.

I have an idea that there are different 'levels' of kitchen equipment, depending on what you intend to serve, but - apart from a B&B food hygiene cert - I have no experience in catering. In a nutshell, I need to know what I need to know!

ironclaw

There are some really good threads here for cafes, I'd suggest a search as there is gold within them.

On this point:

My idea is a café serving cakes, snacks, tea and coffee, catering predominantly vegetarians and those with specific allergies or dietary needs

I'd be careful if that is your overall image. A lot of people, wrongly, have the idea that vegetarian and vegan food is tasteless/bland/etc. "Sure, why would we go there? They only have gluten-free!" Your market is therefore much smaller.

I'd become known as the place that has great stuff for sale but also caters to dietary restrictions. Win-win for everyone.

Which is a minor second point, if you intend to cater to dietary restrictions especially stuff like nuts and gluten, your kitchen/process needs to be top-notch.

silver2020

Difficult to answer. I wouldn't worry have the learning as that can be done quite easily

The good news is that if it's a small add-on to your business, no planning permission is required once you are not cooking on the premises.

I assume the idea is something along what art galleries offer?

Have a look at Catoca in Emo court in Emo just off the M7 (they also operate in a couple of other OPW locations) https://www.facebook.com/catocafinefood and model yourself on them.

Busy even on winter mornings - a sort of getaway place.

size5

brynne wrote: »

My idea is a café serving cakes, snacks, tea and coffee, catering predominantly vegetarians and those with specific allergies or dietary needs. !

If your current business is an Art & Craft then a coffee shop is an ideal fit. So if its going to be a dietary needs cafe then go all out. By that I mean go Gluten free on all the product or nut free on all the product as that means no cross contamination and takes a lot of the heart ache out.

Now if you are going to but the cakes ate of a supplier I would question how much equipment you would need OR how much space. However if you are thinking of making them in your coffee shop well thats a different story.

brynne

Thanks so much for all your answers. Sorry to be slow to respond but ... Christmas!

I had a quick trawl of other 'cafe' themed threads. One of the recent ones pointed the OP to the local Environmental Health Officer, so that was useful in itself.

size5 wrote: »

Now if you are going to but the cakes ate of a supplier I would question how much equipment you would need OR how much space. However if you are thinking of making them in your coffee shop well thats a different story.

When I first posted, I had the idea that a simple choice of [mainly] baked goods would be produced on-site, but this may not be necessary. I have a chef friend who runs a restaurant, currently opposite my (existing) shop. I suddenly remembered that, prior to Covid, he had been talking about building up an outside catering interest. We're at a very early conceptual stage at the moment but, once we identify a potential new premises, I will talk to him and ask if he might be interested in supplying us. That would neatly cover the requirement for a professional kitchen and would mean we don't need a qualified baker/chef ourselves.

ironclaw wrote: »

A lot of people, wrongly, have the idea that vegetarian and vegan food is tasteless/bland/etc. "Sure, why would we go there? They only have gluten-free!" Your market is therefore much smaller.

Absolutely. However, experience suggests that vegetarians and [slightly less so] vegans are a growing and often-ignored market - particularly in the rural West. From 2012 until March this year, I ran dressmaking courses. Usually 6-8 people on each 6-day course, divided into classes of max. 4 people. They were all-day classes and I used to offer lunch. We're not talking a huge number of people but, in each course intake, there would be at least 2 vegetarians. Oddly, despite my asking if anyone had any dietary requirements before the course started, so often, vegetarians would bring their own food, rather than put me to any trouble. In the end, I used to provide vegetarian meals for everyone. I never advertised the veggie nature of the meals and never had any complaints from meat-eaters. I think we're on the same page re 'overall image'.

size5 wrote: »

So if its going to be a dietary needs cafe then go all out. By that I mean go Gluten free on all the product or nut free on all the product as that means no cross contamination and takes a lot of the heart ache out.

Bingo! My thoughts exactly.

silver2020

Don't go down the speciality route on its own - you will be ignoring 80%+ of the potential customer base.

Do offer items that are suitable for special dietary requirements, but remember less than 1% of the population are coeliac and the "Fad" of gluten free is all but over.

Similarly, Veganism is a tiny number compared to vegetarians who are themselves a small number.


Go for a "Healthy" menu. Again, I'd recommend a visit to Catoca in one of their 5 locations https://www.catocafinefood.com/about - They sell on Locally Sourced, Organic & Wild and offer gluten free / vegan options.

brynne

silver2020 wrote: »

Don't go down the speciality route on its own - you will be ignoring 80%+ of the potential customer base.

Do offer items that are suitable for special dietary requirements, but remember less than 1% of the population are coeliac and the "Fad" of gluten free is all but over.

Similarly, Veganism is a tiny number compared to vegetarians who are themselves a small number.


Go for a "Healthy" menu. Again, I'd recommend a visit to Catoca in one of their 5 locations https://www.catocafinefood.com/about - They sell on Locally Sourced, Organic & Wild and offer gluten free / vegan options.

Thank you for your advice. The Catoca cafes are, indeed, lovely but cater to a different - and much larger - potential market.

Veganism, I agree, is - and probably always will be - quite niche. Applying the 'course lunch' test, the only person who ever declared themselves to be vegan, was actually vegetarian and ignored the plant-based spread that I had provided, in favour of butter! Apparently, she hadn't noticed the little notice about all meals being suitable for vegetarians, so ticked the Vegan checkbox. However, vegetarians are more common than you might believe. I've only been a veggie for 3 or 4 years, but I'm far from alone in my small community. I've not done any solid market research, but I have a hunch that the arts and crafts scene attracts a greater percentage of vegetarians than perhaps exists in the general population. In any event, from my own experience, eating out as a vegetarian is unnecessarily difficult. Most mainstream restaurants and cafes [around here, anyway] only have one or two menu options, most of which involve curry or goats cheese. Even vegetable soup is often made with meat-based stock and don't get me started on sandwich options!

You may have a point about gluten-free but, again, applying the 'course lunch' test, I've met a handful - none coeliac. I have a couple of coeliac friends (who live in the US and UK are, thus, unlikely to visit my cafe) and I know how extremely sensitive they are to gluten contamination. It may actually turn out to be safer to buy in a few specialist products. Otherwise, I have no plans to shout "Vegetarian Cafe" in my signage, so few customers are likely to notice the lack of meat or nuts on the menu.

silver2020

The "gluten free" person usually forgets they want gluten free when delicious looking cakes are offered

Vegetarians and those who would like less meat are a minority, but it is a substantial number. However if a group of 3 want to have lunch, will all 3 be happy with vegetarian options? That's the challenge.

Even the Happy Pear with all their publicity found the going difficult and are back at just one cafe.

Maybe turn the menu upside down? - Have it primarily vegetarian and mark a couple of dishes as containing meat products It would give a news angle and every vegetarian would love to get one over on their companions

myNewName

silver2020 wrote: »

Vegetarians and those who would like less meat are a minority, but it is a substantial number. However if a group of 3 want to have lunch, will all 3 be happy with vegetarian options? That's the challenge.

I find in a group it’s always the vegetarian who has the deciding vote where to eat. Restaurants that don’t cater properly to vegetarians often lose out on large bookings as they can’t feed the one vegetarian with them. I’ve often brought a group to Cornucopia or other vegetarian places and everyone’s happy with the food.

silver2020

myNewName wrote: »

I find in a group it’s always the vegetarian who has the deciding vote where to eat. Restaurants that don’t cater properly to vegetarians often lose out on large bookings as they can’t feed the one vegetarian with them. I’ve often brought a group to Cornucopia or other vegetarian places and everyone’s happy with the food.

Because in many cases no-one want to offend them and if its a once in a few months event, there's no issue. The op seems to be looking at a local cafe where people would be regulars, so ignoring the largest market is not wise.

Big city where there are many options, it can be done, but in reality how many vegetarian only restaurants/cafes are there in Dublin? (Happy Pear closed Clondalkin - they cited covid, but the reality was it was struggling anyway)

CelticRambler

brynne wrote: »

I've not done any solid market research, but I have a hunch that the arts and crafts scene attracts a greater percentage of vegetarians than perhaps exists in the general population.

You're probably correct in that hunch. My own leisure activities take me deep into artsy-craftsy territory, and at some events I'd say vegetarians/non-meat-eaters could well make up around 75% of the attendance.

From a personal point of view, I wouldn't set foot in a restaurant that promoted itself as offering primarily a vegetarian menu; but in an add-on café, where you're not really having a meal, I wouldn't even think about whether or not the food on offer was vegetarian (or meaty).

brynne

CelticRambler wrote: »

From a personal point of view, I wouldn't set foot in a restaurant that promoted itself as offering primarily a vegetarian menu; but in an add-on café, where you're not really having a meal, I wouldn't even think about whether or not the food on offer was vegetarian (or meaty).

And this is the point that seems to be getting lost. Maybe it's my use of the word 'café' that's problematic. What I really mean is a coffee shop. No one is going to be booking a table for a three-course meal.

CelticRambler

My information is somewhat out of date, and in any case, I never followed the idea through to the end, but when thinking about doing something similar (coffee-shop-snack-bar-taste-before-you-buy type thing within a retail space) I was told that as long as everything was prepared off-site, there was no need to go down the more complicated restaurant route. There are some grey areas like soup (sorry for the imagery) where the act of (re)heating it can be considered "food preparation" but that's something we felt we could sit down and discuss with the local inspector, and adjust our range to exclude problematic products. Amongst other complications, for us the killer was mainly on the drink side of things, as we wanted to offer a genuinely "continental" experience ... but wine in Ireland is treated more like a hard drug than an alternative to bottled water like it is in France! :pac:

brynne

Nearly 2 years later, I'm back.

Since I started this thread, my principal craft-related business has expanded hugely both online and in-store. We're still relatively small-fry, but we've built up a loyal following of people who've bought from us during lockdown and are now detouring from popular near-by holiday spots to visit in person. This is lovely, of course, but also slightly embarrassing as our current (rented) shop is tiny. However, at least now we are able to tell people that we're moving to a much bigger premises next year. Exactly when, next year, is harder to predict.

We've bought a massive building, a few doors down the street, that used to belong to the local butcher. The original ground-floor retail area is probably no bigger than the shop we're moving out of, but we are also repurposing the rest of the ground-floor space that used to be used for cold-storage and meat preparation, and we are currently having plans drawn up for a change of use for the first floor, previously a family residence, for a custom-fitted classroom and, yes, a café!

The biggest hurdle for the change of use will be the fire certificate, which involves some clever planning in respect of lift, stairs and exits - regardless of whether we open a café or not! So, having started the thread asking about designing and equipping a kitchen, it turns out that is currently quite low on the list of priorities. 😄

With so much invested in the new building, I'm adopting the attitude that for every problem there is a solution.

Gloomtastic!

Good luck to you! Yes, problems are just solutions waiting to be discovered. Great attitude.

Goodigal

That's great to hear your business is thriving. Re food safety and what you need to know, look up www.fsai.ie and under the heading, Food Business, it outlines all you have to do to comply with the legislation, and lots more besides.

Do link in with your local EHO before fitting out the kitchen entirely because we will more than likely point out something you should have done! Good luck!

brynne

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119756793#Comment_119756793

Thanks for that advice. Yes, I've already had a very useful conversation with the local EHO. As things turned out, it turned out to be a bit premature, but did give me plenty of - forgive the pun - food for thought.