Is it a bad time to open a cafe - I have the oppurtunity to buy a cafe

[lixylix]

and seem to be surrounded by people who think it is a really bad idea to do so.

What do you think ladies? it would be a struggle to raise the funds but I believe I just about do it. I just dont know what to do....

Its been closed for a few weeks - the owner said he could not get commit to it due to other business interests.

It is a case of building up trade from scratch.

Depends what you want to sell. This is a bad time to open up a posh cafe selling £3 coffees. But if it's doing the basics, well, and conveniently, then maybe not.

But obviously, depends massively on where you are, what's already in the area, richness of local people etc etc.

Actually if you get the funds and buy it, that will be the easy bit, the hard bit and probably where people maybe telling you it's a bad idea is if you have worked out what you need to bring in as income to make money, you need to do the research, lots of places struggling now as it's one of the luxuries people give up in this financial climate. Still there is no reeason why you won't succeed if you provide a good service and something different in a positive way. Anyway I would recommend reading :
Anyone Can Do It: Building Coffee Republic From Our Kitchen Table: 57 Real-life laws on entrepreneurship (Paperback)
by Sahar Hashemi (Author), Bobby Hashemi (Author)
, it's by the siblings who set up coffee republic and interesting because it describes the great lengths they went to to research the best places to open.
What lixylix mentioned is worth considering if that's the case as re opening someone else's business won't necessarily make it a success. I've seen lots of previously successful businesses locally not do well when new people have tried to take off where it left off. If you can sail through the present financial climate, it will possibly be a good longer term investment.

Was going to go for a good quality greasy spoon. Definitely not a posh coffee shop.
Its between a council area and a more upmarket area - on the border.

Its on a fairly busy road and vehicles could park easily outside.

meant to write sallyhollyberry, not lixylix, sorry, but blinglovin is right location is important as is foot count that goes past the shop and whether they will be likely to go inside and buy a product

The problem is that with food prices as they are at present, your margins are lower than ever.
Plus- unless you have the money outright (and can afford to lose it) where on earth are yuo going to get a business mortgage and a loan at the moment?

Quality greasy spoons are likely to do better in my opinion in that location as they become local favourites

The ones I see nearby ie on the highstreet near residential and commericial premises are always full of families having chips, beans etc meals and coffee, fry ups etc, whereas the italian cafe's and patisseries and posher coffee shops aren't, but the posh ones are always busy near the shopping centre.

You are not going to make a profit (or even break even) straight away. Even if you are successful it will take a few months to settle down into running the cafe.
As well as the start up costs, you need to make sure you have enough for extras/contingencies plus enough to give yourself money to live on for the next year or two (including childcare) as this will not come out of the business until you start making a decent profit. Plus you need to make sure you will have enough each month to put into the business to pay bills and for food etc to cook if you havent got enough cash coming in straight away from customers...

If you can manage all that, and you can get a loan that doesnt put your house at risk, then its worth doing as you only stand to lose what you can sort of afford to...

and thats from someone who's shop went bankrupt earlier this year!

Also, i would worry about the kind of people that would frequent my cafe. We have quite a nice pizza place in our town, but the local gang of youths are always in there and basically intimidate any other customers and the owner seems powerless against them.
Just not a good thing to do in today's climate.

There is a very large group of youths that congregate there every evening as there is a park next door. I dont see them in the day (in school hours though) although they probably would be there in the holidays mmmm

You will not make a profit for probably the first three years.

You will have to put in a lot of hours, be in there at 6:00 in the morning to set up, receive deliveries, go out and buy supplies etc - and you will have to be there late after closing.

It's not the kind of business you can run and look after small children at the same time.

Food is one of the hardest businesses to get into - 75% of restaurants close withihn the first year, think about that.

also think about why it closed.

A good businessman will not sell a profitable business - presumably if he had other business interests this one wasn't generating the kind of profit he wanted/needed to make it successful.