Cyber-Cafe

[Domi]

Well I have some experience of this though a little out dated as my own cafe shut about 4 years ago.

I took over an existing cafe that was actually one of the very first in the UK (and indeed the world) and right from day one I never really believed I could ever make enough money to be able to work there full time.

To have any hope of success you need a sideline be it an actual cafe / selling second hand games / PC sales or repair BUT something. The crux is that all these things are likely to generate more income and if your good at any of those then your floor space is probably better served catering to those alone.

Running any business in an area where you can find enough custom is expensive in rent/rates and basic running costs. With an internet cafe you have the added cost of PC hardware the games and other software that go out of date surprisingly fast. Balance that against how much you can possibly make.

My cafe would get completely full on good days (24 machines) but rarely did we ever break a £1000 in a week on gaming.

Consider a basic layout is going to cost you almost a minimum of £10,000 per annum in rent and rates lets say £5000 for basic utilities and consumables and 2 x Staff cost of £10,000 each.

That is without spending a single penny on investment in hardware software fixtures and fittings etc and however much interest you have to pay back on that money.

To be perfectly honest if you get a turnover of 50k a year I would think you were doing very well indeed , consider that when you are doing your sums.

 

[psychas]

cyber cafes was big thing in 1997 ~ 2000 , not so many people had computers at home , now mostly everyone has one . i would not see it taking of and making profit specially in uk.

 

[JonJ678]

I fully agree with the above, computers alone probably aren't enough. However I can imagine it being full of people playing a given game against each other over the lan. I'd guess you'd have to supply at least food and coffee, though food and cheap beer may work out better. The profit margin on sandwiches can be astonishing compared to that on hardware.

I'm aware that for gaming this won't work, but for browsing/office etc, you can run a large number of monitors, keyboards, mice off a single computer. An i7 for example is sufficiently ludicrously overspecced for web browsing that I think it would offer considerable performance in such tasks to six or eight people at once, at which point the cost per machine goes down somewhat. There's a good chance it would cope with considerably more than this if you could fit more graphics cards in it.

Second it would be a good idea to have few different types of computer for gaming. If the hardware in each is the same, one OS image, complete with games can be distributed to the entire network. If you chose to overclock the computers you could put a cpu block in each one and run tubing between them, so having them considerably overclocked while quiet. It's probably more exciting having a water cooled lan than an air cooled one, and if everything has "watercooling from ocuk" stamped on it then all the better.

I think the idea has potential, but you're going to have to be good at spotting gaps in the market. Preferably good at talking people into sponsoring you as well (WD may be interested in contributing a raptor per gaming machine, as sales of raptors must be horrific these days, an online retailer may be interested in donating some water blocks to have their name written everywhere etc).

Fixing computers is an obvious thing to add to this. If you're not capable of it yourself (it's a lot harder than you'd expect, since people bring in dropped & beer soaked laptops), strike up a deal with a local repair shop. They'll get most of the money for the repair, but you'll get something for taking in the computer, initial diagnosis, and sending it on to them.

Where are you intending to open this? Not right next to one of the established ones I trust. Relying on students is a bad call. We don't think very far ahead and get a student loan three times a year. Anyone who wants a laptop has one. That said, supplying internet connection and free tables may result in people turning up with their own laptops to play games against each other.

p.s. regarding multiple users on one computer, the best approach is going to be messing around with xorg.conf under debian or ubuntu until you have each screen as its own x session, with mouse and keyboard bound. You then run virtualbox on the server, with eight identical images of XP. Tell it to discard changes on shut down, and open an instance of xp on each x session. This'll probably take a day or so to get running cleanly if you have some experience with linux, if not perhaps borrow a friend who knows more about it.

 

[Lanz]

Just forget about it, you're about 10 years too late.

For starters, you wouldn't be able to get a bank loan for such a venture, as they will tell you its a bad idea too.

 

[scorchisio]

yes im afraid this is a bad idea

 

[Glaucus]

The local one to me is flooded constantly, they must be making a mint.
All bar a few of dedicated gamers are all 12-16 year olds from the local secondary schools.

even then how much spare money do 12-16 year olds have to spend every night. Even at £5 each per evening that's not even £100

I bet they don't make anything like you think. Probably just making a profit but not a mint. Then any profit they do get will have to be swallowed once a year or once every two years into new computers.

 

[Cold Fusion]

Don't let the doomsayers get you down. Its good to see some entrepreneurial endeavor still around. Its true that Cyber Cafe's are a niche these days compared with 10 years ago, but as suggested if you branch out a little into related areas then you could turn a profit.

My best suggestion would be to do as much research on it as you can. On the type of client(s) you want to attract, the numbers you can expect, the advertising budget you would need, the rental costs, business rates, utilities costs and hardware costs.

I think a high street bank would want some kind of 5 year business plan to see how long the return on investment might take.

also i did a quick google search and found: http://www.smallbusiness.co.uk/channels/small-business-finance/government-grants/ looks like it has a lot of useful things on there.

Its good to see people taking the plunge as long as you go into it with a clear understanding I'm sure you'll be okay.

 

[Chronictank]

As above really, Cyber Cafe's are very niche nowadays because of the online services reaching consoles, price of gameworthy pc's, internet speeds and so on.
A friend of mine (well e-friend) tried to open one but it didn't end well, most of their income ended up coming in through educational courses and the 'gaming' section was scrapped altogether eventually.

hat off to you for wanting to do something, and personally i fully encourage you thinking of ways to make money
But i think you are picking a bit of a dead horse.

However if you are serious about this,

DO NOT open a cyber caf straight off the bat, you will be sinking a reasonable sum of money into a black hole.

Instead first run a few LAN events to test the water and build brand loyalty, if you run them well people will know your name and you can use that to bring them in if you decide it is worth opening a permanent fixture.

Start off with your school hall if it is the rest of the school can be closed off.
The main reason for this is
1) Security will already be in place, CCTV and so on
2) The school will be far more accomodating (and forgiving) as you are pupils there, you may even get a teacher or 2 helping you out with logistics and so on.
3) It's your school so it will be very easy to drum up interest for the occasional event, parent's will also be less wary about their kids going as at the end of the day it is your school after all.
4) Rent will be cheap, if they charge you at all the first time as if they are anything like my school (oh so long ago )

I suggest running it as a competition,£5 entry for the day or something just to get people interested and have them bring their own machines.


If your first few runs are successful try the next one with a handful of your own machines which you rent out to people (others own machines making up the rest of the room). Lets face it in a school few people will care about a few dodgey cd keys in games you can get away with it on.

Once you have filled a hall, expand into another premises where you can do things properly. If you feel comfortable doing that, you can start building a proper cybercaf running the LAN events to subsidize the cost of the project and it will give you a real business case to show a bank, i.e. i have made this much money over this amount of time and so on.

The above way means you can see if it will work in your area with significantly less risk, one thing i have to add though. My friend didn't really do anything special he essentially had a group of machines with game son them running competitions now and again to drum up interest, you will need something people won't get at home if you want them to keep coming.