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How to plan the opening of a cafe, or write your own planner for opening establishments

I want to share with you how I, with the help of a "hammer and anvil," made a project for planning the opening of public catering establishments, a kind of to-do planner. Why "hammer and anvil"? So this is because I only started programming a year ago, and now I have only used basic html, php and js (jquery).

A couple of years ago, when I decided to open my first pizza delivery, the first thing I did was surf the Internet to find the necessary information on this matter. Like any normal person, I began to look for detailed business plans and guidelines, which I soon regretted quite a lot.

If you also at least once asked the question of opening a cafe and googled info about it, then you know that almost all information is either repeated from the resource on the resource or generally outdated today, as prices have already changed three times and Bitcoin has finished its trend.

It all boils down to banal points, as if they were written by insta bloggers and phyto-nannies, who opened up to a maximum of their own Zen channel:

  • Come up with a brilliant idea for your cafe;
  • Decorate the room like no one else in the city;
  • Find suppliers who will bring you products for mentioning them on the blog;
  • Roll one hundred million into advertising;
  • Assemble a dream team and a chef from France;
  • Fill the loot like the son of my mother’s girlfriend;

Sometimes you read such plans, already from the side of some experience in owning a pizzeria, and you think what heresy is written here.

90% of people who begin to open their institution according to these plans will not succeed, simply because they do not give the most complete assessment of the preparatory work. I have not yet met a single restaurateur who would have gone according to the prepared plan, or the figures on expenses and income have converged. And this, not to mention the mistakes that we all made at the beginning of the path simply by not knowing!

One of the priority areas of my delivery service was student dormitories and events. It so happened that more and more students began to ask me to help them with the opening of their own establishments: a mini-coffee shop, coworking or anticafe, a dining room and others. They brought their plans, calculations and ideas, and always left with puzzled new questions. Yes, I didn’t tell them directly what to do, but rather gave recommendations where they can have a miscalculation and where to find the necessary knowledge.

It was then that the idea came to me to create a small planner for opening an institution. It would not be bad to collect the costs of opening, as in the designer, to find out what documents may be needed, what you will have to face when starting the institution, and also find a partner in your city.

And so, having gathered together my minimal knowledge of site building and videos on YouTube, I began to write a small project.

WePlan, a simple and convenient planner for opening a catering establishment.


I constantly use various schedulers and to-do applications. I like the ease of adding tasks, tracking their progress and the feeling when you delete it by completing a task or simply scoring it. In general, such things just sometimes help to keep many things not in the head, but on the phone. And I really like the recommending things in them, such as “Don't forget to call mom”, “Meet Sasha”, “Stop smoking”, “Take your child out of kindergarten”, etc. You simply add this task to yourself with a click, and you do not need to invent and strain your brain yourself by making sentences.

These are the principles I decided to follow: plan different tasks, cut off completed ones, as in the designer, add recommended ones, only within the institution.
Oh yes, I also forgot to mention that at that time I liked the Basecamp 3 project, which helps organize the work of teams within the company and control many points.
In general, I saw my project as a combination of all of the above. And here is what came of it.

Since I am “dumb as a sparrow” in programming and still laravel or even react is something out of this world for me, I decided to write everything rudely and impudently in php 7, vanilla js, jquery (well, where without him to lamers like me) and, beloved by everyone, html 5. Hammer and hard place in the programming world.

What to place on the main screen, on what the user will see when they register on the project? Immediately invite him to make plans? And for what? Why is he even registered?
After a little thought, I decided that the main goals on my planner would be two blocks: Creating an institution project and Search for partners.

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When we plan the opening, in addition to the obvious question: “Where can I get the money?”, Two more arise: “What should I open” and “And with whom”?

In short, it is necessary that users can find each other without any unnecessary information, such as searching for dealers, the development of regional "super international" representative offices and, of course, franchises. I don’t know about you, but such hidden ads really freeze me. Like, at first someone is looking for a partner to open a cafe, and after a little digging, it turns out that he is in another city and, in general, the contract will be franchised. Yes, I do not want any franchise! I need a young man with burning eyes, like mine.

So you have to not only send each added ad for manual moderation, but also close access to search until the user himself adds his ad to the portal, while telling about his experience, what he currently has, what is required from the partner and what kind of deal offers.

I think this way it will be possible to understand what a person is looking for and what can be expected from him in the future. Although this can not be predicted, the prerequisites can be noticed in advance. As the saying goes, a fool can be seen from far. Or doesn’t say so ... In general, not about that now.

So, then you need to understand what a person generally wants to discover. How can the service give a recommendation on the equipment if the client himself is not aware of what he needs. This is obtained as with programmers when they are asked to make a site without TK. And without TK ...

So we asked what he wants. Dachshund, what's next.

And then already offer to assemble the project in pieces. First think and decide what equipment will be needed to work. After all, if you open a sushi bar, then the pizza oven fuck didn’t give up here.

No, there is, of course, super versatile pizza-sushi-burgers-smoothie-wok-salads delivery, but for me they always suck the flavors. If you are doing something, it is better to choose one and “cover” competitors in this market. And so, there will be a mess in the kitchen, and downtime in work. In short, you open a pizzeria, open only it.

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Together with their own ideas, the system will be able to tell you what equipment may be required. You never know, you don’t want to roll out the dough with your hands, but here op! And the system tells you that such equipment is already there! Yes, and will calculate the total cost of all planned purchases. Sounds great, let's move on.

Employees. Well, everything is simple here, even with recommendations, wake any person at night and he can name all the required staff: waiters, cooks, couriers, hostesses, etc.
Then we will make sure that the user does not write this list himself, but can add them to himself from the recommendations in one click, as in the constructor. Gather your perfect staff ... Oh! You need to do this in all blocks. Listing and List Constructor. It may be nonsense, but it reduces the operating time, and increases the convenience: you won’t need to print it yourself, but simply collect it with clicks.
Yeah, done ... More advertising and menus. We follow the same scheme that we can recommend and allow you to guess what is not there, let them think out for themselves. Well, or then I will remember and add.

Documents. Here it is serious. Their heap and still small cart ... And to receive them at the same time will not work. Then we will display a complete list, and there we will already see how to help with collecting information for them. Let them first understand what is required at the opening.

Filled all the blocks, got the cost and the average check on the menu, what next. But let’s calculate everything?

We will make new blocks Expense and Income.

In the first, we’ll put the calculation from Equipment, Advertising and Employees to find out how much money will be needed to start up and monthly expenses, and also add fields for entering new ideas for our expenses, which the system does not yet provide for. You never know, you want to change the work in a rented room, but this will not be in the recommendations. Exactly, it won’t be ... Hmm, then we’ll try to talk about not the most obvious expenses in small posts. Let them immediately know what they are getting into ...

Taxes, in the second we’ll try to calculate the Revenue by the average amount of the menu. I myself know that this is not the best option for calculating future income, but in this way it will be possible to determine the price segment of the audience of visitors: economy, standard or premium. So we can roughly calculate how long it will take to pay off the launch.

Well, what kind of a planner without planning your own opening steps. They will record everything that comes to mind.

So, we already get a beautiful system of planning and recommendations, but we need even more interesting and cooler!

And let's gash the Ribbon and user posts. So what? Let them share their observations and life hacks, and I will share mine. For a couple of years of running a pizzeria, I have something to tell novice restaurateurs. Short posts with links to the necessary resources. I think the benefits will be much more than empty business plans scattered copy-paste on the network.

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And I will throw books for familiarization in the Tape. And tables.

Stop ... Tables ... I have them. Heap. And for doing business inside the institution, and for accounting, and sanpins, and magazines are different ... I'll post it for users. Let them enjoy it.

Show me the money!


Yeah, I'm not very good with charity, and I have to pay for site maintenance. You need to enter some kind of payment. By all means fashionable, as in applications such as freemium. Right!
The usual use of the service will be left free, but for your experience and the recommendations of colleagues, perhaps you can take payment, say 500 rubles. Every month.

No, not like that. Well, it makes sense to pay every month if the opening lasts an average of two to three months, and you can plan a plan for the service in a day.

Then we will do so, in the first month for recommendations and finding a partner, 500 rubles, and in the next month, 200 for maintaining the relevance of finding a partner, and if you don’t want to, then transfer it to a free one without deleting all the filled out information. Yes, it suits me so, it will be so honest: it’s not a shame for my experience, and it’s good for others.

What's up?


Fuh, finished sawing, now you need to ask feedback from users and communities. How do they even need this service, they need it \ it is not needed, it is interesting \ it is not interesting, and maybe they will throw some ideas. In general, it would be great if it was possible with a friend to conduct one project from different accounts, and so that others could see my calculations and help. Yes, and add other graphs, such as planning opening times in stages.

But let them first say their opinion. What do you think?

Well, the name of the project for the curious: WePlan Planner.

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