Mummy Cafe

[GetSmart]

Calling all mum's....I'm thinking of starting a cafe thats specifically for Mums (and dads) as a place to go and mix with other parents in a comfortable and slightly luxurious place, enjoy a decent coffee and healthy food, a clean and baby/toddler friendly environment with high speed internet access and phone signal. I want to create a little retreat where Mums can go to be with likeminded (and often sleep deprived) people and just hang out! I want to evolve this to have a 'pamper room' and the occasional sitting service for parents who just 'need an hour'. I wanted to use you lovely people as a sounding board really. What would make this idea extra special? Any advice would be appreciated. Thank you!

Maybe I was thinking along the lines of newer parents but you can't police that so it wouldn't work. Hey, thats what I love about these forums (first time using tonight!). You guys are honest and I love it! I'll wait for the next idea to materialise. One day something might bite!

A few people have tried to open things along these lines near me.
They've all failed for the same reason - their target customer doesn't spend enough.
The venue needs to be a big space to accommodate the play areas and the buggy parking and the comfy sofas
And each mum turns up with a couple of children, buys one coffee and stays for hours. Maybe a cookie as well but it isn't enough to cover the amount of time they spend while hogging an entire table/sofa for several hours.

Some tried charging for the play facilities and people refused to play. They tried charging for baby food, and people continued to bring their own and ask for it to be heated.

It just doesn't work as a business model. At least in Costa, you get enough people getting takeaways to offset the cost of the table blockers nursing one cup and some tap water.
But no office worker is going to go near a 'mummy cafe' for their takeaway flat white

I think the reason you don't see these kinds of things very often as it simply doesn't make good business sense, families who like your café will spend too long there and not spend enough money to justify the area that has toys rather than places for people to sit and drink coffee. The location is very important, if this is a town centre the rates are likely to be far too much to do this. However if you're not in a busy centre it may be more doable but you wouldn't get the footfall of a busy centre so you'd have to do a lot of marketing to get the family market to know about you. Good luck.

I think adding in supervision for the children will be dodgy and complicated; you may need different insurance and qualified staff. Best just to leave it as a cafe that is also child friendly and then you're widening your customer base to people without children too (who may be bonkers enough to want a cuppa with other people's screaming children! )

I think you'll have an issue with people setting up camp for the day nursing one cup of tea so you may need to consider a charge for children to play.

Also think about a good children's menu, plenty of highchairs, pushchair park, excellent changing facilities, comfy seating for bfing, a large, uncluttered space for the tables and chairs and decent soft play. We could definitely use a cafe like that in my village and in the city.

We have an excellent soft play centre some distance from here. It stands out from the rest in terms of cleanliness, facilities, size of frame, volume of activities etc. Its even got before/after school clubs and I think is opening a preschool shortly. I think if you are going to do anything like this, you have to go big. Like you've all mentioned, a smallish cafe (in the grand scheme of things) would struggle to cut it by the time people have nursed their cold teas and parked their buggies in doors. Maybe its back to the soft play centre again!

There was a place near me like that but you can't just let your baby loose on the floor in a cafe; it's a health and safety risk re hot drinks and tripping over babies and babies eating stuff dropped by other customers. So it had a play area but that ended up grimy and all broken stuff and anyway you had to sit by it to look after your child so you couldn't relax anyway. I would never have left my little ones with a stranger in a crèche area, they and I would not be able to relax. Might as well go to a parent&toddler group which is a much more relaxing place to chat to other parents

Cafes with soft play areas have worked well where I live (Croydon).

We had one near us, it badged itself as more kid friendly than mummy friendly though. It had buggy park, play house and toy area and also a child hairdressers in a small room off the back. This had child appealing stuff in it too and made haircuts much easier. Food was healthy-ish and not expensive.

Unfortunately it closed. It was down a side street, but not far enough off the beaten track to have not been successful if the model worked. The kids area was often filthy though, and I think that contributed. It certainly put me off going towards the end and it was only the hairdresser that drew us in when needed.

Like others have said I think it's difficult to make good money on something like this. And it has to have high standards of hygiene. Good luck with it though if you do go for it. Unlike others up thread I used to like going somewhere specifically set up to welcome me when I had two small DC. I found it much more relaxing than worrying if we were disturbing folk. Oh, And I took others without kids along too, as we got to talk more than in regular cafe / coffee shops.

Agree on what others have said, it's a lovely idea but if it's too kid friendly people will go and nurse one cup of tea for hours.
Depends a bit on area though, wealthy area, good, organic nibble food for kids and posh coffees for mums, with a few toys can work well.