A vital part of your café’s business plan should be the SWOT Analysis which looks at the various Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats to the venture.

A general rule of thumb is to develop your business and marketing strategy to take advantage of your strengths and minimise exposure to the weaknesses while always being wary of the threats which could affect profits or even the viability of the company.

When doing your SWOT, it’s useful to reflect back on your reasons for wanting to open the café. In many cases, the urge to start the business will arise from your potential strengths and/or the opportunity, so these will be easy to do.

However, when it comes to the weaknesses and threats to the business, a lot of people spend too little time in analysing these issues and addressing them, which is why most new businesses fail.

Budding entrepreneurs are optimistically focused on the opportunities and profits when starting a business. If you can, try to spend more time looking at the problems, weaknesses and limitations of your business model, so that you’re fully aware of all potential downsides where possible.