FabJob Guide to Become a Coffee House Owner (FabJob Guides) [Paperback]

Tom Hennessy (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 2006 | Series: FabJob Guides

By owning your own coffee house, you become part of a rich culture. A café is a place where people may meet to discuss politics, poetry, romance or rebellion. In our culture, coffee is accepted as social, affluent, and downright hip. In this guide you will discover:

• Your options for buying an existing coffee house, franchising, or opening a new coffee house
• How to build a coffee house (including how to find the right location and avoid costly mistakes)
• How to save money on equipment for your café
• How to market your business to attract customers
• Financing your business and managing money

If you would like to start your own coffee house, this FabJob guide is for you! It shows what you need to know to become a successful coffee house owner.

Editorial Reviews

Review

From business planning to lighting to great recipes, it is all inside. I highly recommend it! -- Larina Kase, PsyD, MBA, President of Performance and Success Coaching

About the Author

Author Tom Hennessy is a 25 year veteran of the business. He opened his first restaurant when he was 27 and the coffee house he started has been operating successfully for over 12 years. A recognized industry expert, he has written for industry publications and spoken at conventions across the country. In this guide he shares his own experiences as well as insider tips and expert advice from other successful coffee house owners.

Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: FabJob.com (May 1, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1894638603
• ISBN-13: 978-1894638609
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #251,966 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

31 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic resource., June 30, 2005

By 

Greg Andjon "Greg" (Dallas, TX) - See all my reviews

This review is from: FabJob Guide to Become a Coffee House Owner (FabJob Guides) (Paperback)

You can get all the answers you need to get started in this business within this book. It is a great source of information on what steps you have to take to get started and run your business. Includes handy forms that cover all areas of the coffee shop business (and many that I hadn't even considered). Well written and easy to understand.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Pore/pour thru this book and profit, September 18, 2008

By 

Jerry L. Kuhlman "yoga studio owner" (Butler, NJ USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: FabJob Guide to Become a Coffee House Owner (FabJob Guides) (Paperback)

In the past, I've had the pleasure of frequenting some of the fine establishments owned by Tom Hennessy and his wife, Sandy. Seems that I always left wanting to return, and the experience was about more than product and price. In this book, Tom covers all the nuts and bolts and bells and whistles involved in creating and running a successful coffee house. Especially interesting, though, is his coverage of the intangibles and details that give the aspiring business owner an edge over the competition. What does lighting and music and temperature have to do with coffee? A lot, says Tom. When you enter a Tom Hennessy designed business, the atmosphere seems to seep into a room in your psyche where happiness and well-being reside, not only changing the comfort level there, but actually rearranging your furniture. It feels like home, but even more so. You want to be a part of it. No joke. To anyone interested in running a coffee house, or to those already in the business, buy this book, pore through it, and use the information therein to your decided advantage.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good information - wish the CD had better formats, February 22, 2012

By 

Empirekiller - See all my reviews

This review is from: FabJob Guide to Become a Coffee House Owner (FabJob Guides) (Paperback)

This book is chock full of useful information that will help me in my quest to open a coffee house. The author has opened several successful restaurants in addition to his coffee house, so he knows what he is talking about. I found the sections on Managing Your Coffee House and Budgets and Building Wealth especially helpful.

I took off two stars because the sample forms provided on the CD, while helpful, would have worked much better if they had been in a more useful format. All of the samples are in MS Word format. While this works just fine for things like checklists, it is essentially useless for anything dealing with numbers, e.g. budgets, profit & loss statements, and daily sales. These would be much more valuable in a spreadsheet format. As it is, if you wish to make use of these tools in a practical way, you have to cut and paste them into a spreadsheet. Using Word as a format for anything to do with numbers is akin to using a hoe to dig a well. It is a useful tool for its intended purpose and it will eventually get the job done, but not without a lot of extra and unnecessary effort. It is a woefully inadequate and impractical to use for a totally different type of job.

When I asked the publisher about this, their Vice President, Administration and Special Projects replied "Our guides are sold worldwide and not everyone uses Excel programs and not everyone is familiar with that program. Although, it is becoming more and more common Word documents are more universal and our customers are using the sample forms to adapt to their personal use, whether that is using them as they are or simply using the information in them to create their own in another format."

Really??? People worldwide who are intelligent and entrepreneurial enough to want to open a business like this are not familiar with spreadsheets? I know that Excel is expensive, but OpenOffice can read the format and is free. Why not put it in both formats (document and spreadsheet)? That way it is even more adaptable.