Can you start a bookshop and cafe business with no money?

[Lessthandreamy]

Is it possible to ever start a business with no money?

Im poor, no debt as such but I work part time and I have two kids and a mortgage - but my absolute dream is to open a bookshop with a small cafe, I want to be open at unconventional times (4pm - 11pm) to give people who work normal 9-5’s a chance to do something after a day of work.. I’d like to open it as an independent bookshop that sells good condition second hand books to keep the costs low for everyone, perhaps even as an independent library. I’d love a small cafe there and occasionally invite pop up shops ect, have its own book club and events.

will this ever be doable? It doesn’t feel like something I’m ever going to accomplish.. but then I see people says you don’t need money to start a business.. how?!

Of course you need money! And if you are selling really cheap books then you're not going to make any money, either! People will sit and drink coffee for hours while reading the books, then put them back on the shelf. Are you going to limit the time they could spend with one coffee, when they're taking up a table for four?

In any case, you'd have to pay for rent, utilities, stock, redecorating, installing a kitchen, perhaps, new chairs etc, as well as council tax. Have a think about why nobody offers a place like this at the moment!

start-up finance, grants, community funding, local enterprise support, crowdfunding, investors or partnerships can potentially come into the picture.
But yes you do need some money behind you unfortunately not sure how you would turn over any kind of profit if your just selling cheap books and only open half the day. You need to go back to the drawing board.

What would happen to your children? They'd be in school all day and then you'd be out all evening. Is that fair on them?

if you have a front porch or garden you can set up a home bakery where you have an honesty box on your door step. I have seen many case studies of these being so successful that it has grown into a business that has a premises

If you need premises and stock then of course you need money, quite a lot of it.

If you are starting a side hustle selling trinkets made from your dog's fur combings on Etsy, then you can probably start a business with very little. If you don't know or understand this I wouldn't hold out much hope for your future success as an entrepreneur I'm afraid.

My parents ran a book shop for years, it's far, far more than a 9-5 job I have to warn you.

Are you single or have a partner who could help with childcare and hopefully money?

Even if you could start a business with no money, how would you ever make any money with that model?

I think renting premises is the biggest issue - but some local authorities offer "pop up" places, where you can rent for free or cheaply for a set number of weeks to test out your idea. Obviously I don't think you can use that for catering but anyway, just a thought. And you could volunteer with a community cafe, that way you can do your food hygiene certificate and find out about stock control and ordering etc. But honestly? Who doesn't want to have a cafe and bookshop, if it was easily we'd all be at it!

How would this business make money? Literally - how? If you etc selling cheap books (or running as a library) where does the income come from? Cafes don’t make much, a £5 latte here and there won’t bring money in either. I don’t think you have a business model at all, sorry!

As others have said, it's not possible to start a business like this without money, nor does it seem like this kind of business would make money.

However, whilst I don't think it's possible to do this for a living as a small trader, it might be possible to operate as a community charity or in partnership with an existing charity.

One way to do it privately would be to cut costs drastically by using a portion of your own home (subject to planning and other permissions which I suspect would not be easy to get). But you'd need a big home and an understanding family .

Yes, lots of businesses start on a shoestring, but your idea is a non starter I'm afraid. I'd look to a different model with low start up costs to get "something" off the ground to start to build up some funds.

For a shop/cafe, the start up costs are going to be high, i.e. upfront rent and deposit to lease somewhere, fixtures, fittings and furnishings, buying start up stock to sell, equipment to actually make the coffee, utilities, telecoms, security, cleaning/waste disposal, etc.

If you have a love of books, how about a market stall buying and selling second hand books? Usually no deposit, relatively low stall rentals, usually no utilities to pay for. Or even Sunday markets or Church Hall antique fairs, indoor car boot sales, etc? All low set up costs, no long term obligations, but you can "bootstrap" your way up by selling things and re-investing the proceeds in more stock.

By the way, there's a reason why cafes etc tend not to open in the evenings - it's lack of trade as the "cafe" trade are typically day time users who do other things in the evening. Our village library tried opening in the evenings, and barely anyone ever used it - their busy times were 10-2!

Is there anything a bit like this in your area? If so, volunteer there. Learn stuff about what is needed. Yes you need money and some can be loaned but some will have to be your own investment. Independent bookshops do exist, but volunteering in a charity shop might be a good start.

You can start a business with no money, but that doesn't mean you can start any business with no money usually people are refering to businesses where they sell their own labour as a service, like consulting, accounting, gardening/landscaping, or cleaning etc. Those can have very little start up costs as you are either working from home or at a clients place, likely already own most of the needed tools, and don't need to keep stock/inventory.

To run a bookshop cafe you would need to rent a premise, plus pay the utilities, do food hygiene compliance, buy kitchen equipment (industrial grade stuff is very expensive), have enough food and drink stock in order to serve people, a point of sales/ordering system, tables and chairs, shelves, and then the actual books.

And then there is marketing, which can cost an absolute fortune if you don't know what you are doing.

An independent bookshop usually takes 12-18 months to start turning a profit, so you would need enough to cover buying all the initial items, plus 18 months worth of rent and utilities (consumer prices for gas/electric are heavily subsidised Vs retail so it will cost a lot more than you expect). Oh and enough to restock what you do sell and replace expired food/drinks.

Depending on location you are probably going to need somewhere around £250k. And it's still a gamble, even if you had the money and did everything perfectly there is still a decent chance the business will fail and you lose it all.

You definitely need money to start this, you'd need to buy products, find a premises then pay staff. We've one beside us, it's a pain in the hole, the food is actually good but getting a table is ridiculous, people sit reading half the day, you can't wait as you don't know if they're going to sit over 1-2 cups of coffee and finish the book they chose. The owner doesn't rush anyone reading but does those eating which confuses me as that's where the money is, anyway I guess you could opt not to do food but then it'd be a library with drinks.

I would imagine opening hours of between 4pm - 11pm for a cafe/bookshop would be a non starter too.
I may be wrong but I think you'd need a licence to open so late at night.

There is a similar business to the one you describe in Stirling. It is called the Book Nook.

To pay yourself a wage, pay all the overheads and buy stock you will need to turn over somewhere in the region of at least £2000 a week. If you open 5 days a week thats 400 a day. You would need to sell a lot of coffees to cover that. Plus when you start looking at serving food and drinks there are a lot of hoops to jump through. How many people can you see sitting in your shop at 10.30 at night drinking cup after cup of coffee?

It's not impossible to set up your own business, but you will need money if you want a premises. I would urge you to think realistically about what is going to put the money in the till. Not, think of the dream.

You don't need an extensive business plan, but you absolutely do need to be able to estimate how much money is going to come over the counter, and whether that will cover rent, rates, prs, electric, gas, water, public liability insurance, internet and phone, plus all the one off start up costs, like stocking the place, hardware, signeage, and also pay you a reasonable wage that will make up for all the faff of running a shop, and I can assure you there is plenty.

I can't see that coming from an independent library, and second hand book store, but you may have a different angle.

The reason businesses like that don’t really exist is because they don’t really make money.

Just piping up to say there are cafes like this in other countries (maybe the UK too but I haven't seen many of them) where you pay (a fairly low amount) to use the space by the minute. In places like these, basic drinks and sometimes snacks are included in the price and you get to use the space for reading, socialising or playing (provided) boardgames etc. I think if you were well placed in for example a city with a large student population it may be popular.

You need to lease premises.
You need insurance.
You need to meet health and safety standards
and so...

How would you do that with no money?

One way to do it privately would be to cut costs drastically by using a portion of your own home (subject to planning and other permissions which I suspect would not be easy to get). But you'd need a big home and an understanding family .

This might just work if you happen to live on the High Street opposite a car park. I doubt that anyone would want to trek out to a suburban housing estate to obtain coffee and books, neither of which are exactly difficult to get hold of.

There's 7 cafes up the road to us, 2 have closed down this week as not taking enough money. There is a bookshop and cafe that has been there a while and seems to keep going...however, the woman that set it up has very wealthy parents who helped out, in fact the majority of the small shops and other cafes all have big family money behind them..millionaire levels....!..good luck.

I think you need to find a job in a similar set up , or as close as you can get, and try it for several months

even if an employee has none of the logistics to deal with but it would still be a start.

I work with small businesses, the current climate is just so difficult. You would need thousands for equipment, insurance, business rates, its a huge huge list. Think about how many coffees you would need to sell to make a profit. There are lots of independents that do these posts on instagram that show what happens to your £4 coffee as its eaten up by costs.

sorry to sound negative. But its really tough.