I posted earlier why it's tough to open one, but some suggestions that will help you are the following:
1. Have a payment system where patrons prepay not pay after like there done in many korean cyber cafe.
2. If your going to be selling cooked food make sure you get a food establishment license or else the Chicago Department of Revenue or Department of Public Health can and will come after you.
3. Limit the noise, get high quality headphones
4. Offer patrons to bring there own PC's and charge them internet connection only something reasonable like $1 an hour. Your selling your T1 and the social experience to these customers
5. Offer tournaments lock in style. Offer tournements where customer prepays and plays over night for a reasonable fee. Offer prizes from sponsors or money.
6. Don't ignore senior citizens and females. Senior citizens may be your bread and butter during the day and non school hours, don't ignore females since they represent half the population. To get both enforce conduct code limit smoking to smoking section only, and limit profanity and shouting.
7. Offer hardware/training classes during the day or early mornings.
8. Run a secondary business like PC repair, PC sales, webhost and webdesign etc...
9. Target schools and other organizations, give them a discount
10. Get good chairs like previous posts.
11. Maintain PC's all time. Any minute a PC is down is losing you money.
12. Offer wifi service, at an extreme discount like.50 an hour or free with purchase of food or prepay internet card.
13. Market, Market, Market, so many cyber cafe's fail because they cater to only certain people and they expect people to be able to find them. Build a website, run ads and coupons, create a referrel program get as many people don't be content.
14. Make sure you have the capital to sustain your operation. I've seen so many cyber cafes that last only 6 months because there undercapitalized.
15. Realize your running a business so go easy on those comps to your friends and family or so called friends.
That's just a few that came to the top of my head, I have more. If you need help with web site and online marketing you can email me at alink@estoreware.com my company specializes in that we're based in chicago. Good Luck!!!
I'm from chicago and I know 4 different owners and two of them I supplied them the computers. 3 of the 4 went out of business in under 2 years. Not to be a pessimist but you really need to know what your doing. It's a big investment. It's not a matter a buying a bunch of cheap gaming systems a fractional t1 and think flocks of teens are going to come. The major cost is supporting those PC's especially if you allow your patrons to smoke like most cyber pc's. You have crazy sofware costs involved, but the biggest problem is unlike the past but today 90% of people have access to broad band internet and they want to use there computer since most likely it will be better then the cyber cafe. I know of at least 15 cyber cafe's in the chicagoland area ranging from 5 PC's to 60+ and half or 3/4 are korean owned and of those half have gone out of business. It's a very tough market. You need to market to schools run tournements get sponsorship and try to atract a few pro gamers. Most pro gamers are not going to be caught dead at a cyber cafe, why would they use inferior machines that aren't customized to there needs and why would they bother with the noise and distractions. Another problem with many cyber cafes that I've seen is you lose alot of females and older like 40+ crowd because cyber cafes are so overwhelmed with teenagers playing counter strike at the highest volume possible and being very obnoxious. I actually visited korea last year and I can't believe how much money they make especially for what they charge. You can play for.50 to a dollar and hour on a full T1 sometimes a T3 and the cafes are so nice and they bring you food and everything. These cafes are packed and run 24 hours. Hope this helps and good luck you'll most likely need it.
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I posted earlier why it's tough to open one, but some suggestions that will help you are the following: 1. Have a payment system where patrons prepay not pay after like there done in many korean cyber cafe. 2. If your going to be selling cooked food make sure you get a food establishment license or else the Chicago Department of Revenue or Department of Public Health can and will come after you. 3. Limit the noise, get high quality headphones 4. Offer patrons to bring there own PC's and charge them internet connection only something reasonable like $1 an hour. Your selling your T1 and the social experience to these customers 5. Offer tournaments lock in style. Offer tournements where customer prepays and plays over night for a reasonable fee. Offer prizes from sponsors or money. 6. Don't ignore senior citizens and females. Senior citizens may be your bread and butter during the day and non school hours, don't ignore females since they represent half the population. To get both enforce conduct code limit smoking to smoking section only, and limit profanity and shouting. 7. Offer hardware/training classes during the day or early mornings. 8. Run a secondary business like PC repair, PC sales, webhost and webdesign etc... 9. Target schools and other organizations, give them a discount 10. Get good chairs like previous posts. 11. Maintain PC's all time. Any minute a PC is down is losing you money. 12. Offer wifi service, at an extreme discount like .50 an hour or free with purchase of food or prepay internet card.
13. Market, Market, Market, so many cyber cafe's fail because they cater to only certain people and they expect people to be able to find them. Build a website, run ads and coupons, create a referrel program get as many people don't be content.
14. Make sure you have the capital to sustain your operation. I've seen so many cyber cafes that last only 6 months because there undercapitalized.
15. Realize your running a business so go easy on those comps to your friends and family or so called friends.
That's just a few that came to the top of my head, I have more. If you need help with web site and online marketing you can email me at alink@estoreware.com my company specializes in that we're based in chicago. Good Luck!!!
I'm from chicago and I know 4 different owners and two of them I supplied them the computers. 3 of the 4 went out of business in under 2 years. Not to be a pessimist but you really need to know what your doing. It's a big investment. It's not a matter a buying a bunch of cheap gaming systems a fractional t1 and think flocks of teens are going to come. The major cost is supporting those PC's especially if you allow your patrons to smoke like most cyber pc's. You have crazy sofware costs involved, but the biggest problem is unlike the past but today 90% of people have access to broad band internet and they want to use there computer since most likely it will be better then the cyber cafe. I know of at least 15 cyber cafe's in the chicagoland area ranging from 5 PC's to 60+ and half or 3/4 are korean owned and of those half have gone out of business. It's a very tough market. You need to market to schools run tournements get sponsorship and try to atract a few pro gamers. Most pro gamers are not going to be caught dead at a cyber cafe, why would they use inferior machines that aren't customized to there needs and why would they bother with the noise and distractions. Another problem with many cyber cafes that I've seen is you lose alot of females and older like 40+ crowd because cyber cafes are so overwhelmed with teenagers playing counter strike at the highest volume possible and being very obnoxious. I actually visited korea last year and I can't believe how much money they make especially for what they charge. You can play for .50 to a dollar and hour on a full T1 sometimes a T3 and the cafes are so nice and they bring you food and everything. These cafes are packed and run 24 hours. Hope this helps and good luck you'll most likely need it.