1 PM. Coffee and Tea House Jasmine
"Welcome", a woman's voice sounded from inside the café. She is Hao Xinyi, Ken already learned about her from Yuan Liqin yesterday.
The café is located in a busy part of the city. Because of that, the size of this room is a little small. There is a bar-style counter that can handle five sitting customers at the same time. Now, there is a man with a formal business suit sitting there. Other than those four chairs, there are two tables each for two people, one of which is occupied.
Ken sit on one of the counter's chairs and ordered one random coffee listed on the menu. He observed the café in more detail. The café is painted in grey, with a warm orangish light radiating from lamps above the counter. Coupled with the music playing in the background, the mood inside the café is slow and relaxing.
A few moments later "Here is your coffee", said the woman with long black hair while placing the cup in front of Ken.
"Thank you… Also, can I ask you something?"
Ken then introduces himself and tells that he is Yuan Liqin's friend. He also explained his plan for building a new store, and his purpose for coming here. He said that he want to see how this café operate, what kind of customers come, how many, and more.
"I don't think our shop is a good comparison, but feel free to observe."
"Thank you," said Ken with a smile.
~~~
A few hours later, still in Coffee and Tea House Jasmine
After observing and asking many things about the café to Hao Xinyi, Ken has summarized most of the operations on this café.
The café is open from 7 am to 7 pm in the evening. The menu in this café only consists of coffee, tea, and bread. Most customers in this café are office workers.
There are three busy times for the café. The first is in the morning, many people like to buy coffee and bread for their breakfast. The second busy time is at lunch. At this time, many people only buy a coffee after eating lunch at other restaurants nearby. The third busy time is in the evening when workers are going home from work. But the café is not as busy it compared at breakfast time or lunchtime. Many people prefer to go to a bar or restaurant where they can get alcohol instead of a café.
In the few hours of his observations, Ken found the number of customers is around 10-20 per hour. He also asks Hao Xinyi about the daily customers. She said, there are around 200 cups sold per day. With that information, Ken estimated that in a busy hour, the café can sell 40 to 50 cups.
In this café there is only 2 staff working, Hao Xinyi excluded. They make coffee using the machine, baking the par-baked bread, and sometimes cleaning the place.
They worked for 8 hours every day for 5 days a week, the shop is closed on the weekend. One staff work at morning shift from 6 AM to 2 PM. While the evening shift starts at 12 PM to 8 PM after the café closes.
Meanwhile, Hao Xinyi works for 12 hours a day. She comes at 6 am and goes home at 8 pm with a two hours break from around 12 pm to 2 pm. She also does other things like ordering the ingredients, making a report, and other administrative work.
~~~
"Thank you very much for today, I really learn a lot," Ken said while paying for all the coffee he had drunk before.
"Really? Then I am glad to be of help. Feel free to come here again."