Hello, I'm looking to open a banh mi and boba tea/coffee shop with my 2 sisters. I'm looking for some tips to get start. Thank you.
@vnhoasen I think your question is quite generic, so here are some generic answers you can start with:
- Familiarize yourself with local regulations (health, building, fire, commercial leasing, etc.)
- Understand your market and customer profile well so you know what and how best to service their needs.
- Make sure you know what's in the lease and all their implications before signing.
- Spend some quality time to create a good and unique concept for your banh mi and coffee shop, and clearly understand your brand that you want to offer to the public.
- Pay attention to your sourcing of the banh mi then learn what fresh baked banh mi means, and how to always offer fresh banh mi.
These are some of the basics that can hopefully get you started. For further and detailed consultation for your specific situation, please sign up at the Premium level.
Don't have too many tips, but I can give you the following based on experience. Not sure where you plan to open the business, but boba tea (or anything with boba) is not well known, well received in non-Asian markets. Maybe not yet, maybe never will be. If you are not in an Asian-centric market, then your challenge will be having to deal with very low sales volume. But if you are in a place where boba is very popular (meaning competition is stiff), then your prices will be kept way down.
Agree completely. Boba anything is highly dependent on where you open the business and what market you're aiming to serve. Unlike Asians, in general Americans (maybe even most Westerners) just don't eat/drink tapioca this way.
Agreed. By picking the food, many people don't understand that they have already picked the market they serve and how they serve it, unless they intend to "introduce" it to a new market. If it's the latter then they should do a good market analysis upfront.
