Cyber Cafe? Suggestions?

[thread_killer]

I don't want to be discouraging, but around here they go out of business as fast as they go up. There is, in fact, a P4 1.8 Ghz Dell 4400 sitting not 5 feet away from me right now purchased for $200 when the last one went under.

You may be able to make some money off of LAN parties if you put good switches in and have the hardware to handle the games. Not having broadband seriously limits the amount of surfing that people are going to do.

I'd focus on making it as technology friendly as a place as possible. MathGirls suggestions were excellent.

[Maverick811]

Originally posted here by aeallison
Hi everyone,

I have an opportunity to open a Cyber Cafe, my son and several of his friends have expressed an issue to open one up.

My questions are purely for my own "peace of mind" as I will have to put a significant amount of collateral to start up.

I open the floor to all of AO as to their opinions of these types of establishments around the world, and any suggestions from you on what you would like to see, or have, at a similar place should one open up near you. Would you go to one that offered high speed Internet access, multi-player games, a space for board games like D&D, Battle Tech, etc.? Snacks and Drinks, frozen pizzas, etc. ?
I have loads of ideas myself, but, alas... I have never been to one to experience it. I live in the United States midwestern region, high speed internet access here is only for ISP's and businesses. We don't have DSL or Cable Internet access, just 56k dial up for 95% of this region. I have had high speed access in the past at places I have worked, I MISS IT A LOT!!! I would probably spend a lot of time at one just so I can have that "incredi-uber-fast-bandwidth" I so long for anymore.

Sounds like a good idea.. I know that if I lived in a big enough city that had cafes like these present, I would go to them every now and then. I'd say you have to look at it this way - who do you want your customers to be? The young, teenage or college-age who are looking for a place to hang out and have some fun, or do you want your customers to be the working type - young or old, but a little more interested in a place to work than a place to hang out. Once you figure that out, you can decide what kind of services and resources to offer - if you are going to cater to a younger crowd, resources for LAN games and parties might be a pretty good idea - an older crowd may not be as interested in that. The same goes for food and beverages offered (if any) - younger crowds would be looking for pizza, soft drinks, etc. while an older crowd may be looking for bagels, pastries, etc.

Something that may attract business is that of high-speed access - you may have an advantage in your area since it sounds like most home users don't have high-speed availability. If you can accquire high-speed net access, that's just another benefit that your cafe can offer.

Are there any similar businesses of this kind in your area? If the area is saturated with these, then quite honestly, you'd have to think long and hard about trying to break into that market. If you are the only unique one, then you'd have an advantage.

You might want to try market surveys just to see if the area residents may be interested in giving business to place like this. The market surveys would provide invaluable feedback as far as the potential sucess of a business such as this.

I think it's a pretty cool idea and I only wish that I had a few in my area...

[Uhu]

I don't want to discourage you, but the first thing you should bring to mind is that your plan is an economic challenge. You should do a careful research whether you have found a gap in the market in your region.

- Will you be able to attract enough potential customers as you need?
- Will they find your cafe just by passing by?
- Or do you have to spend lots of money in advertising?
- What about already established competitors?
- How much money has to be invested?
- Will you be able to bridge the first months without earning money?

I don't know anything about the structure of the environment in which you plan to establish your firm. But these were the questions I became aware of when I read your post and I think they apply under any cirumstances. As soon as you are sure that you have a real chance you should go on to the technical details, which of course are much more interesting for someone like you and me :-)

[xmaddness]

I actually had an entire business plan set out for a gaming/cyber cafe that I was going to open. It turned out that the overhead cost ended up around $200,000 dollars. The best advice I can give you is this:


www.igames.org


good luck

[aeallison]

Wow! Thanks for all of the great ideas/advice. I will atempt to cover everthing but I might miss a couple of things.

I want to cater to the younger crowds, I want it to be alccohol and smoke free indoors where the equipment is, I was going to put in a large Smoker/Bar-b-que and serve real hickory smoked meats, as for serving beer I am not totally against a good beer now and then, but the licensing is hard to get here, I live in a region we call the bible belt and liquer licensing has to go before the churches here as well. A seperate room for RPG "or board" games and such is in the plans, as was a room for lan parties. I had not thought of work areas though, that is a great idea, what would you like best? Private cubicles or small private rooms? I think adding a print server and a couple of nice printers would be enough around here.

As for a market here there are presently zero establishments here that are doing this, and getting in the internet T1s and such is not a problem, runs about $700.00 US per month per T1. I was planning on building a 40 foot by 40 ft 2 story building to house this all in.

As for the snacks and such, that will have to be away from any of the equipment, I think theere would be enough room that we could even have special events there too such as a live band or a banquet once in a while, I have apx an acre to park cars on. I could start this up with as little as 35 to 40,000 dollars.

Did I leave anything out? Keep the good stuff coming, this is exactly the type of input I was looking for.

[instronics]

Hi aeallison :)

I dunno where to start, this is a big and nice idea you have. Let me tell you what experience has shown to me. My best friend here owns a web cafe. It runs well due to the fact that my friend and myself setup that network. Its the only webcafe in the area where everything works, from printing, scanning to alot of online access possibilities. Also an important role here at my location is that the laws on the internet are very loose (kinda no internet laws at all here :p ). Now then. Allow me to compare 2 types of webcafes to you in detail, telling you the negative and positive sides of each. I will compare our netcafe to one i saw in Holland and Germany.

Netcafe Holland/UK (easynet):

A huge building with about 200 work-stations running on high speed access. Theres a machine on the front of the entrance where you can buy your online time. There is no drinks or food allowed inside, and its very quiet inside there. The only available resources on the stations are a web browser and mIRC. Nothing else is allowed on the machines, and no HD access either. The positive side of this is you save alot of money for employees, its all simple and very little maintainance is needed, since the computers are locked up so tight that you cant do anything else on them. Also its very very cheap. They have no applications such as office, or paint-software. The bad side is (along with not having any applications available) that the customers do not feel well when they go there. No smoking, no drinks, no food, noone to ask for assistance if needed since everything is automated. Its more like a high-tech graveyard in there, all you hear is the keyboards. Nothing else. If you need help in there, well then your F$&*%. :p Reminds me of a school.

Our webcafe here in Greece:

The first step we made was to make sure that the shop would work alone pretty well without the computer section. A good idea is to have the computers as an addon to the place. Meaning that we have a beautiful bar in there, we offer drinks, coffee, toasts, crepes etc... Nice music in the background etc.. We offer alot of applications on our systems, from office, paint software (psp), different chats (mirc, pirch, x-chat), we offer ssh and telnet clients, and a few games once in a while (games are illegal on public computers in greece at this moment). We have 2 people working there who both know a bit about computers, so we can assist people who have questions or need help on something (which is very very important). We liven up the place, with friendliness, we let the customers feel well. The Good side with this is, you, the customer feels very well here, you have assistance, we offer good music, drinks, simple food, and you have a large variety of applications at your disposal (also scanners etc...). The bad side is, we have to pay 2 employees, we have alot of administration and maintaining todo, and we have to keep our prices very low which is hard.


Also, since i have seen you on AO for some time, i hope i need not mention the security involved. There has to be some sort of security since your offering public computers. You have to make sure that you have a well configured firewall and proxy. You have to make sure that noone can access certain areas of the system and network. You have to make sure that noone can bring his own software nor download it. Same for physical security, as in bringing a bootable OS etc... with them. The owner of the easy net is now in court, because users at his cafes have been downloading music and movies (his physical security seems to suck). Another issue is the OS. If its windows be sure to have all the needed licenses etc... since other webcafes tend to play foul tricks to get you out of buisiness. The last thing you need is a lawsuit with Microsoft or the companies whos applications you have installed. A nice solution for this is knoppix. Almost no maintainance at all needed, a large variety of software, a nice GUI, and stable the way linux should be. We use windows here because noone in our area knows that an other OS exists. Thats also an important point, do we say to the customer: "Use what we offer or go F*&#($* off", or do we say: "We will offer what the customer wants in every case". We chose the second one. The customers want Windows, and IE. Then let them have it. Make sure you tweak the systems as well as possible. (Disable regedit, make sure the AV and proxy have rules on what is downloaded, which sites may be illegal. How bout the porn sites issue? Will you allow users to view porn in your cafe? And also like UHU has said, what about the market, is there a gap for it? One way to secure yourself from this is to make sure the cafe can survive without the computers. Make it an awesome place for people of all ages to hang out. Once that is established, add the cyber part to it. That way if the market should devour you with the computers (say easy net opens up in your area), then atleast you have a buisiness running which will not be affected. Then....56k is NOT enough for internet access. Its not even close to enough. Our cafe has broadband cable, and at times we have major laaaaaaaags. My opinion on this is, 15 computers or lower should atleast have ISDN/128. Anythying bigger than that must have a high speed with enough broadband. Theres nothing worse than waiting 20 minutes to open up their hotmail accounts. Have a look at www.diktyocafe.gr .

Also a nice programm to help you manage the cafe is : http://www.netcafes.info/
That is if you choose windows. If you choose linux or another *nix OS, then just write a few lil scripts to manage the work. The work is:

1 - Time a customer uses the computers
2 - Drinks/food
3 - Printing/scanning/cdr etc..

This should be controlled by software.

I hope that i have been of some sort of help. If you need more info, let me know ;)

Cheers.

[er0k]

aeallison >> the only problem i would see about this is, are there many kids in the area? I mean sure you will have your adults that don't want to pay for their net access or go to a library to use a computer but the kids is where the money is. 10-20 years old or so will be more prone to stopping by after school or whatever to play games, or just hang out. I would recommend that you have a nice laser printer and copy machine, as that will attract more adults than kids, so it will balance out. But no, i wouldnt recommend doing it unless you are doing this in an area where the kids are plentiful... make sure you get the word out that there is going to be a place where "You can come play games!" and stuff so that attracts dem der chitlins. Anyway, good luck.

[instronics]

Hello erok. I partly disagree with the kids and the money part. Kids dont have money. Grown ups do. Grown ups will spend more money on the extras apart from the computers. Kids will have enough money for a rounded up hour or 2. Give the cafe some style. Let it attract grown ups more. If there are too many kids all playing games and making noise, that would let many grownups feel uncomfortable. Base line is, you wanna make money. So get the money from the people who actually have money. Our webcafe here makes alot more money than the kids. (4 Kids will share on coca cola with 4 straws). Its the printing, the variety of work applications as well as what the cafe has to offer in general that will bring in money. Kids will just play games and not leave alot of money. That does not mean to not make it kid friendly, but its the grownups you will want.

Cheers.

[englishgirl1]

I have limited exposure to these places - they always seem full of 14 year old boys looking at porn! I'm hoping to find one in Austin next week though, so I'll report back on whether it's the same your side of the planet.

Of those I've been in, on the negative side:

(1) Lots of places to drink coffee, yet only one bathroom (what is *that* all about)? This bathroom is usually filthy.
(2) Nowhere to safely store your stuff while you are working. I had to keep my rollerblades on my lap because they said it was dangerous to dump them on the floor next to the machine.
(2) No graphics programs to play with.
(3) In England, the coffee is gross and the snacks are unpleasantly cheesy (and this includes the chocolate croissants!)
(4) People who play walkmans really LOUD next to me.
(5) Extortionate printing costs

On the plus side:
(1) Web design training classes - in this country you can even get the govt to pay you to run them if you let a certain number of unemployed people in. This fills in the slack times (early mornings, late afternoon).
(2) If the PC breaks - I don't have to get the screwdrivers out.
(3) Infrequent but helpful access to print services (color laserprinters, lamination, photocopying, scanner etc.)

Cheerio

Rachel
(demob happy)

[mathgirl32]

About the kids....I can tell you if a place like that was full of, or even sort of full of kids.....I would never come back. But, I am kind of crotchety.