Bar owner here, I decided to open another store, but this time as a Cafe instead. Tell me what would make you avoid the place?

Poor choice of coffee and tea, and poor musical decisions ruin so many coffee shops for me.

Music in your cafe should be gentle, eclectic, conforming to a wide variety of styles yet at the same time never really commanding the attention of your patrons. Piano, ambient, instrumental electronic music. Also it should be contemporary, none of that late '90s played out trip hop jazz sax stuff. Here's an example of what I'm talking about.

If the music's too loud that I can't read a book or chat with a friend without being bothered by the music then I won't come back.

In addition to all your regular espresso drinks you should offer filter coffee, V60, Chemex, or Aeropress if you really want to nail it. It pisses me off when a coffee shop sells all the milk drinks under the sun but their filter game's weak as fuck/non-existant. Nah man, fuck that. /r/Coffee can help you out with this if you're unsure. I wouldn't mind helping you out too if you want to PM me.

Offer a few different types of coffee, tea, decaf of both. If I were choosing coffees I'd want an espresso roast, and for filter I'd want something chocolate, something apple/citrus acidity, something stone fruit. I'd give customer taste notes, origins, farm names, the name of the company or person who roasted the coffee, that sort of thing.

For tea you can ask /r/tea, but I'd want an earl grey, a breakfast tea, a rooibos, a ceylon and an assam, a darjeeling, a longjing, maybe a hou kui. That covers your basic black and green tea needs. Offer white tea if you want to impress the shit out of people. You might want to get some bullshit herbal/flavoured teas in to please regular people but I'm strongly averse to that kind of shit so I'd leave it out. I don't want those people for customers (I'm only being slightly sarcastic here).

All I know is that if I walked into a cafe with that kind of tea and coffee selection, as well as that kind of music (and some comfy chairs), I'd probably want to go back with all my friends.

/r/Coffee Thread