Guides
A coffee shop plan: questions each section should answer
Use a coffee shop plan to test the offer, demand, staffing, cash, quiet hours, permissions, and follow-up, then apply seven checks to a draft.
What to take away
- A coffee shop plan is not a document you write once for a lender. It is the thing you argue with when the first month does not look like the forecast.
- Every section owes one answer. If you cannot state the question a section answers, delete the section.
- Three numbers have to reconcile across the whole plandrinks sold in the peak, hours of labor scheduled, and cash remaining at the end of each month.
- The weakest part of most drafts is the quiet part of the day, because nobody wants to write it down.
- Bring the plan back out every quarter and mark what was wrong. An unmarked plan is a wish.
What each section owes the reader
Write the question at the top of each section, then answer only that. This is a shorter document than most templates produce, and it survives contact with an operating week.
Section questions and proof
- The offerwhat is bought, instead of what?
- Demandwhen does buying happen?
- Productioncan the bar make that?
- Peoplewho is on bar at peak?
- Supplywhat arrives, how often?
- Permissionswho must say yes?
- Moneywhat is committed, what remains?
What each section owes
| Section | The one question it answers | What proves the answer |
|---|---|---|
| The offer | What does someone buy here, and instead of what? | A named alternative you lose customers to |
| Demand | When does the buying happen? | Your own counts, in five minute buckets |
| Production | Can the bar make that in that window? | A stopwatch time per drink type |
| People | Who is on the bar at the peak, and who trains them? | A named schedule for how new bar staff are brought up to speed |
| Supply | What arrives, how often, and who receives it? | A delivery calendar against storage volume |
| Permissions | Who has to say yes before you open? | Written answers, not phone calls |
| Money | What is committed, and what is left in month four? | A month by month cash line |
The three numbers that have to reconcile
Most plans fail an internal consistency check rather than a market test. Use named variables and substitute your own measurements.
Three numbers to reconcile
- D: drinks sold in busiest block
- H: labor hours scheduled to cover block
- C: cash balance at each month end
- Check D against measured bar time
- Check H covers D plus uncounted hours
- Check C stays positive without best month
Let D be drinks sold in the busiest block, H the labor hours scheduled to cover that block, and C the cash balance at the end of each month.
- Dhas to be producible. Multiply your measured seconds of bar time per drink by D and compare it against the bar minutes you actually have. If the product exceeds the window, the sales forecast is fiction.
- Hhas to cover D plus opening, closing and the hours nobody counts. Schedules written to the peak alone always overspend later, because the missing hours get added as overtime.
- Chas to stay positive without the optimistic month. Rerun it with the best month deleted. If the plan only survives with that month in it, it does not survive.
If any two of those disagree, the plan is describing two different businesses.
The section people leave out
Between the morning block and the end of the day there is a stretch where very little sells and the rent runs anyway. Almost no draft plan addresses it, because it is the least interesting hour to imagine.
Quiet hours decision
What is the shop for during quiet hours?
different product for different visitor
prep moved into quiet time
Write it as its own section. State what the shop is for during those hours, what it costs to stay open, and what would have to be true to close early instead.
Three workable answers: a different product for a different visitor, prep moved into the quiet time so the peak stays clear, or shorter hours. Pick one on purpose. A quiet hour is carried by the busy one, which is why it belongs in how demand around a site actually builds.
Permissions belong in the plan, not the appendix
A plan that treats approvals as paperwork underestimates the calendar. The sequence of who must say yes is a schedule constraint, and it is the one that most often moves an opening date.
Permission tracker
- List every body you need an answer from
- State what you are asking
- Record when you asked
- Keep the written reply
- Confirm state and local authority
- Track business registration separately
List every body you need an answer from, what you are asking, when you asked, and what they said. Keep the written reply. The detail of which approvals a coffee shop actually has to obtain depends on your address, your menu and your service model, so the plan holds the tracker rather than the answers.
The federal overview at How to Start a Food Business explains why: retail food establishments are generally regulated by state and local authorities. Use it to understand the division of responsibility, then ask locally.
The SBA Business Guide covers the parallel business registration track. The Internal Revenue Service page on starting a business sets out structure, identification and recordkeeping choices to make before the first sale, not after.
Auditing a draft you already wrote
Take the plan you have and mark it up against these seven tests. Anything that fails gets rewritten or cut.
- Every section states the question it answers in its first sentence.
- The demand figures come from something you counted, not from a published average.
- Bar time per drink appears somewhere, measured with a stopwatch.
- The quiet hours have their own section with a decision in it.
- Stock arrives at a stated frequency into a stated volume of storage, which ties to what you hold and how often it is replaced.
- Every permission has a named body and a date you asked.
- The cash line survives with the best month removed.
Keeping it alive after opening
Print the forecast for the month before the month starts. At month end, write the actual beside it in a different color and add one sentence saying why it differed. Twelve of those and you have a model of your own shop that no template could have given you.
It also forces you to record where the traffic came from. Split it between people who already knew about you and people reached by the work you do to bring new customers in. Guessing at that split is how marketing budgets get set by mood.
Common questions
How long should the plan be?
Short enough that you reread it. If it runs past a dozen pages, most of the extra is description rather than decision, and description is what nobody checks against reality.
Do I need a plan if I am not borrowing money?
Yes, and it is a different document. A lender wants to see the downside covered. You need to see which assumption breaks first, which means writing the assumptions down in a form you can test.
What if I cannot count traffic because the shop does not exist yet?
Count somewhere comparable, at the hours you intend to open, and say in the plan that the figures are borrowed. Borrowed numbers marked as borrowed are usable. Borrowed numbers presented as your own are the reason forecasts fail quietly.
