Youth space/cafe

[Higgeldypiggeldy35]

I need to sound this idea somewhere and get some advice on whether it has any traction as a business opportunity.

I live in a market town, a large one. The town centre has a lot of cafes, charity shops etc. There are lots of facilities locally for parents with young children but aside from sports clubs and church groups there's nothing for teenagers/young adults.

There is a commercial building available to rent on the market square. Its £16000/annum to rent excl bills and business rates.

My idea is a cafe / meeting place for young people. It would serve light snacks, drinks, milk shakes etc and would have games like fussball, table tennis, giant connect four, free WiFi, maybe vintage arcade games and a photo booth, maybe a few board games. All of which would have a charge to use.

I have never ran a business before. I have no idea if this sort of thing is viable and I am very much just at the day dreaming stage. One concern is lack of use during the day time although there is a college a short walk away.

Any feedback, opinions, tips, advice greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

Huh?

Your energy costs
insurance
staff
security
food hygiene eyc

i don’t mean to piss on your parade but unless you are very very Rich and loads of time on your hands, then I would put this to bed

I work for the SA operating out of a church and hall

no way is the time now for churches to be financially contributing to ventures like this. They’re financially on their knees

There are some affluent churches - mine included. This venture would be totally within our remit - to love our community.

Young people tend to automatically turn their backs on anything that adults try to make "cool." They want to take risks, push boundaries and generally do things away from adults and supervision.

Also they don't have a lot of spare cash. My 12yr old has got bus into town today (free) with £6 on his card for McDs, he wouldn't have anymore money for games machines etc and I wouldn't be able to constantly top him up to 'hang out' somewhere like that.

Maybe you could do baby groups, mum's and pensioners in the morning and youth club in the evenings. I'm still not sure if it would work though.

There was one of these in my town when I was growing up, it also had computers with the internet as obviously no one had phones in those days. It didn’t last long 😞 it’s a lovely idea but none of the things you talked about make any money. The kids will buy a single can of coke and a chocolate bar for say £2 total then spend hours there. I can’t see takings even covering rent let alone wages or start up costs. That said, I know nothing about running a business!!

Which is lovely

but this venture…. Tens of thousands a year. And that would just be the cost.

They won’t buy there. If they do use the space, they will buy their coke and crisps from tescos and then go to the place. If it’s raining

Council services and libraries put a lot of research into service provision to different age groups. Maybe try to get hands on that. But generally (from my work long ago in cultural provision) this would never be for profit, it takes a lot of behavioural policing, you'd never be "cool", insurance/ liability is a kilker cost and you'd lose a lot of money very quickly before it died. The only "successful " ones are using an existing cultural space with dedicated times for the audience. E.g. Thurs evening is teen time. You'd need to run it as a social enterprise on volunteers and chase multiple grants to keep it going. As pp say: probably really really wouldn't work.

And get the church involved? You might as well save goodbye to 95% of teens

OP, trust those of us with teens. This will haemorrhage you financially and benefit very very few teens

Well it was a nice thought while it lasted 😂. Good to get a dose of realism though

My village tried to start something similar. There is a reasonable teen population and a neighbouring village has a similar number. Ping-ping, darts, pool, drinks and snacks available. Target market was 14-17, a difficult age to entertain without a lot of cash.
contraception and free sanitary protection were around. Open twice a week. Youth workers were going to drop by monthly. Teens appeared. Ate crisps, listened to music.
It rapidly became a place used by 9-12 year olds, parents dropped them off or hung around too. They declared that the children thought it was cool. These parents complained about loud teens, about contraception on display, about their “young children” not being included by teens or being ignored.
Teens vanished into the ether. Found their own spaces, the same parents complained about loud teens in the play parks, teens in the surrounding fields….
Those same 9-12 year olds must now be 14-16. I wonder what their parents think?

@QueenofLouisiana thats so frustrating that it didn't work out for you. Having clear age parameters is obviously important

Surely it could only run at weekends and school holidays

So not sure it will be a huge money spinner

Would they be buying much?

I cant see how you'd make much profit. Some kid friendly cafes in my affluent town have not lasted very long

I have teens and there really isn't anywhere for them to just hang out in the evenings with friends. So I agree there's a gap needing filled. But a cafe just for teenagers is not going to work.
I wish our local area had a coffee shop that was open in the evenings. That might work better for you op? A cafe that's open for everyone but you put the message out that teenagers are definitely welcome, particularly in the evenings. So you'll get customers all day.
I would have loved that when mine were around age 10, I would love to have gone out for a walk with them of an evening and stopped off for a hot chocolate somewhere. But the only places open were pubs. If there had been a cafe we'd have started off using it together then maybe as the kids got older they would have carried on going with their friends. Instead they get the bus to hang around in McDonald's.

Sounds like you would be great person to have at guides or scouts ??

the type of venture you are suggesting doesn’t sound to me like the type of venue a teenager would want to go -
as pp pointed out anywhere adults think is cool is by default - not cool !!

@shmiz i would love to do scouts in tje future when my kids are at that stage. Thanks for the suggestion.

@User4873628 its a hard age to target isnt it because as many have said it wont be cool because I say it is haha and also teenagers are all so different.

I love this idea!

A typical cry of any town in the UK is "there's nothing for teens to do around here" but when a place such as what the OP suggests opens up very few teens actually go to them. As people have said - they don't see it as 'cool'.
Teens who are interest will already do groups like Scouts/Cadets or sports groups. Games cafes for doing things like Dungeons and Dragons/Warhammer are fairly popular but not specifically aimed at teens.
The 'hanging around the streets' kids could easily go to several groups that an average town already has - but they just don't want to.