How to Choose the Right Location for Your Café in India

Written by Tiny Tiger Coffee

You've found a lovely space. High ceilings, big windows, a tree outside. Should you sign?

Picture two cafés that opened in the same month. The first took a beautiful bungalow on a quiet lane, and on most afternoons the baristas outnumber the customers. The second took a plain, slightly cramped shop on a corner beside a bus stop and three offices, and by 9 am there's a queue.

The coffee in both is good. The difference is the street.

Why location decides so much

Your location sets three things you can't easily change once the lease is signed:

• How many people walk past. This is the pool every customer comes from.
• What you pay every month. Rent arrives whether you sell ten cups or a thousand.
• How easily people find you. A café people can't see, or can't stop outside, has to work much harder for each customer.

You can change your menu, your staff and your coffee in a week. Changing your location means starting again.

Six things to check before you sign

1. Footfall at your hours. Brokers call almost every site "high footfall". What matters is how many people pass during the hours you'll be open, on the side of the road your door faces. Stand outside for an hour during the morning rush and an hour mid-afternoon, on a weekday and a weekend, and count.

2. Who walks past. Office workers want a fast takeaway at 9 am. Students want somewhere to sit for three hours. Families come at weekends. Make sure the people passing are the people your menu is built for.

3. Competition. A busy café next door is usually good news, because it proves people on this street already pay for coffee. A street with no cafés at all more often means people there don't buy coffee out.

4. Access and parking. Can a customer stop for two minutes without blocking traffic? Is the entrance at street level, or up a flight of stairs?

5. Rent. Read the lock-in period and the yearly increase carefully, because they decide what the site costs you in year three. Ask for a rent-free period to fit out the café before rent starts.

6. Local demand at your price. If the cafés nearby sell a cappuccino for ₹120, your menu has to work at ₹120, or your coffee has to be good enough to bring people back at a higher price. Look for streets where people already pay ₹150 or more for a coffee without thinking twice.

Warning signs of a poor site

Walk away, or at least negotiate hard, if you see any of these:

• You can't see the shopfront until you're standing in front of it.
• There's nowhere for a car or scooter to stop.
• The street is busy at night but empty in the morning, or the other way round, and that doesn't match your hours.
• Three or four cafés have opened and closed in the same spot.
• The rent only works if everything goes right from the first month.
• The landlord won't allow changes to power, water or drainage.

Do the cup sum before you sign

Before you fall for a building, work out how many cups it has to sell each day to cover its fixed costs.

Take a small café spending ₹2.5 lakh a month on rent, salaries and bills. If each ₹180 cappuccino leaves about ₹120 after coffee, milk and cups, then:

₹2,50,000 ÷ ₹120 ≈ 2,080 cups a month, or about 70 a day.

Now compare that with your footfall count. If 1,400 people pass while you're open, one in every 20 has to stop and buy. The lower that share, the safer the site. Our cost per cup calculator helps you work out your own figure per cup.

Check the space for a coffee setup

A site can pass every test above and still be wrong for coffee. Check these four things before you sign:

• Power. A two-group espresso machine, a grinder and a fridge often need more than a shop's basic connection. Check the machine's power rating against the site's sanctioned load.
• Water. Borewell water in many Indian cities can scale up an espresso machine within months. Get it tested for TDS (total dissolved solids), and if it's far above 75 to 250 ppm, budget for filtration from day one.
• Drainage. The espresso machine and the dishwasher both need a drain close by.
• Licences. FSSAI, the municipal trade licence and shops and establishments registration all depend on the site. A space where food businesses have run before is usually simpler.

If you want to become a B2B partner of Tiny Tiger

Once your site is settled, our guide to opening a café in India covers choosing a house coffee and a grinder, and five café business models in India explains how your model changes the coffee you need.

If you want to become a B2B partner of Tiny Tiger, message us on WhatsApp with your city and expected cups a day, and we'll talk through your site and your coffee with you. Café orders ship free to metro cities within 3 working days, and take about 5 days elsewhere. When you're ready to taste, order a paid Café Sampler, roasted just for you. Order a Café Sampler.

Common questions

How many cups of coffee does a café need to sell to break even in India?

Divide your monthly fixed costs by what each cup leaves after coffee, milk and other per-cup costs. With a ₹180 cappuccino leaving about ₹120, a café with ₹2.5 lakh a month in fixed costs needs about 2,080 cups a month, or roughly 70 a day.