Hi all
A short while ago, I asked on this list for information about the viability of cafes in libraries. I am very grateful to those who responded. Please find the anonymised answers below as promised. Do feel free to continue to send me details of your experiences and I promise to update the list.
Regards
Ian Anstice
Cheshire West and Chester Council
0151 3374682
Library Authority A
We only have two cafés and both are contracted out. I wouldn't attempt to run one ourselves. We get £7,000 a year income from one which is run as a business. The figure is set for seven years but with rent reviews. I think we missed a trick when agreeing to a figure as low as that. We could easily expand the amount of space given over to it, and have been working this through for the last few months.
The other is run by a social enterprise and they have it rent free for three years as a way of generating footfall in rather a difficult new library. I'm also looking at a franchise for a café in our biggest Library next year. Our city museum, which is joined to us but with no internal access between the two, has its own café.
Library Authority B
I can answer these questions based on how one cafe operates, but these should be considered a rough guide. On average a customer will spend between £4 and £8 depending on their order. During lunch period people might spend more. Our menu is quite varied in price, and we serve a variety of dishes from pasta to sandwiches. We also sell a variety of cakes, which along with tea and coffee are our biggest sellers.
We find the café is particularly busy between 12 and 2pm, for lunches, but also have a busy period around 10.30/11 am and again at 4/4.30pm. As our café is in the building, we are lucky enough to have a lot of custom from people who work in the building, and I would say these make up a good 30% of our sales. During the summer months we are quieter as we lose a lot of the student trade.
I would say that yes we are profitable, and quite a popular café with a lot of regular customers who use both the library and the café. It has proved very popular as we are open in line with the library, which means we capture people in the morning and evening opening hours.
Library Authority C
The café would certainly be run by volunteers. I’m in consultation with a local college with a view to arranging placements for their catering students and a local fish and chip shop to see if he’d be interested in being part of one of the initiatives, as well as having a number of volunteers ready to assist.
Library Authority D
The average transaction per customer is £1.50. Typically they buy one tea, coffee or hot chocolate. We also sell biscuits but find customers don't typically buy these in addition to their drink. The biscuits get bought primarily by and for children.
Use varies considerably between libraries. The two busiest libraries, are in the same building as other services, one in a leisure centre and the other in an Adult Education centre. The extra-footfall and the fact that customers for those services are looking at certain times for a cafe facility on site really makes a difference. The use at these two sites is not even. When there are no events there might be one coffee sold every 10 minutes. When there is an Adult Education class, or a children’s activity in the library there will then be maybe 15-20 sales in a few minutes.
In our other libraries that do not share facilities the rate of transactions is less and maybe a few sales per hour and at the smallest libraries sales may be just a few a day.
We do not share detailed financial information about cafe income. I can say the two busiest libraries generate £5-£12K a year and the other libraries break even or show a modest profit.
For us the income generation is only one aspect of providing cafe facilities, it's more about making libraries a welcoming place to spend time.
We use Starbucks machines and supplies exclusively. We buy the machines outright and negotiated a deal with Starbucks that we keep all profits (there are other models such as profit sharing available). Maintenance costs are not insubstantial, around £1k per library as it is essential to ensure the coffee machines meet required standards as we are selling drinks to the public.
We use machines which involve staff operating them for the public. This is a choice made by ourselves but it may be worth looking at self service machines as improvements in them now offer the equivalent of filter coffee from sachets.
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