In recent years, coffee shops have sprung up all over the city's streets. If you also have a dream of opening a coffee shop, but don't know the way to open a shop, such as what equipment you need to buy, how to maintain the equipment, how to operate it, etc., maybe you can find some answers from him. Nong Fuzhen, a "post-90s" young man from Guangxi, came to Guangdong to work after graduating from high school in 2009, starting as a barista, and now he is a boss with more than 300 coffee machines and equipment and other peripheral household appliances, serving more than 300 coffee shops every year, providing "4S" level services for coffee shops within the Pearl River Delta.
Nong Fuzhen
Walking into a shop called "18 Flavor Coffee" in the Guancheng community of Longhua District, you will be stunned by the spectacular scene of the store's "coffee machine array". As far as the eye can see, there are at least 100 coffee machines in the store, which are dazzling and neatly displayed, with brands ranging from the well-known Italian brand "Hot Mom" to various domestic home coffee machines. Nong Fuzhen, who runs a coffee machine equipment business, knows every coffee machine in the store, its performance, and the equipment used with it.
Guangxi→ Guangdong→ Shanghai→ Guangdong
Nong Fuzhen, who was born in Guangxi, couldn't wait to go out to work and see the outside world as soon as she graduated from high school. After some consideration, he decided to go to Guangdong first. At that time, he wanted to find a job with food and accommodation, and by mistake he entered a branch of "Mingdian Coffee Yucha", which was very popular at the time and integrated the characteristics of coffee and Western food, and he was assigned to work in the "water bar". "At that time, the salary for the first month after working was 690 yuan, and I remember it very clearly. Nong Fuzhen recalled that the price of a cup of coffee in the store was about 40 yuan at that time, and he found that some customers came to drink coffee almost every day.
Nong Fuzhen used his spare time to go to Guangzhou to learn professional coffee knowledge and cocktail making, and constantly improve himself. A year later, he came to Chang'an, Dongguan to work, "At that time, there were many Taiwanese in Chang'an who opened factories there, and my monthly salary also rose to 3,000. Nong Fuzhen introduced that the consumption level of coffee shops was high back then, and there were many foreign business owners who came to the store to consume. Nong Fuzhen often communicates with customers, and the knowledge and suggestions of customers have gradually opened up Nongfuzhen's cognition of herself and the industry.
Nong Fuzhen debugs the coffee machine.
Inspired by a client, in 2012, Nong Fuzhen went to work in a coffee shop in Shanghai alone, "Working in a coffee shop in Shanghai, what I saw and heard completely opened up my cognitive dimension of the coffee industry. Nong Fuzhen said that at that time, the coffee shop in Shanghai was a model for the operation of early coffee shops in China, and the operation of a coffee shop was very particular about the selection of the store location, the positioning of the customer group, and the operation mode, and the consumption power of the local consumer group was very strong, "At that time, in addition to coffee and cakes, the store also sold cigars." Nong Fuzhen, who had been in Shanghai for half a year, thought that the operation model of Shanghai coffee shops and the development momentum of the industry would soon spread across the country, so he returned to Guangdong and successfully applied for the position of manager of a coffee shop in Gongming, Shenzhen.
Selling coffee, but also selling the craft of making coffee
Nong Fuzhen learned that the monthly rent of the store was 20,000 yuan, but the store had been losing money for a while. So Nong Fuzhen quickly learned marketing knowledge like a sponge, and took the clerk to do a lot of marketing activities. In the first month of his work in the store, the turnover of the store reached 30,000 yuan or 40,000 yuan. "At that time, the boss encouraged me through the incentive mechanism, and I received a commission of 2,000 yuan for every 10,000 yuan increase in the store's turnover. Soon, my salary and commission alone can be worth the salary of 4 employees in the store, and I have achieved a monthly turnover of 150,000-180,000 yuan in just half a year. In order to control personnel costs, the owner of the coffee shop began to lower Nong Fuzhen's salary, and Nong Fuzhen realized that she needed to find another way.
With experience, Nong Fuzhen went to Guanlan at the end of 2012 to start a part-time job and half-business, "I took only 20,000 yuan to invest in a coffee shop near Guanlan Tianhong, and rented a house with a basic salary of 1,800 yuan every month. After Nong Fuzhen arrived at the store, he did both coffee and marketing, and after working for 3 months, the store began to make a profit. It didn't take long for him to find that coffee-related training, such as latte art, hand brewing and other skills training, brought unlimited business opportunities to the coffee shop, "In two years, I used the commission I got from coffee-related training for customers who came to the store to buy the first car in my life - Corolla. In 2014, Nong Fuzhen continued to study how to drive customer consumption through coffee training, and the revenue of training alone was nearly 700,000 yuan this year.
"Keeping up with the service of automobile 4S shops"
In 2016, Nong Fuzhen's coffee shop encountered problems such as well-known brand coffee shops stationed in nearby business districts and light rail repairs near the business district, and the coffee shop's income generation encountered a bottleneck period. In 2019, Nong Fuzhen, who has been married for several years, hopes to provide a better environment for her children to grow up, so she tries to buy and sell coffee equipment. "When I opened a branch of my previous coffee shop, I was learning about the operating principle of coffee machines and the maintenance of common problems while purchasing coffee machine equipment, and I found that there was a big business opportunity in the field of second-hand coffee machine equipment. In 2021, Nong Fuzhen found business opportunities and started his own business, providing a complete set of service plans for opening stores for different customer groups, including purchasing coffee machines, water purifiers, refrigerators, freezers, and purchasing coffee beans in large quantities. "I have always been very attentive to communicate with customers, not only to open up my own cognition from customers, but also to understand the pain points of the industry from the perspective of customers, and to think about how to solve the pain points and provide good services. ”
Nong Fuzhen's coffee machine "4S shop" is full of coffee machines, grinders and other equipment.
Nong Fuzhen said frankly, at present, there are about 300 customers who serve the store every year, and hope to make the company a "coffee machine equipment 4S shop", whether it is the purchase of equipment or rental equipment, there is a corresponding after-sales service, "If the customer's coffee machine equipment has a problem, we can do the Pearl River Delta region within two hours of the master to deal with it, to the service of the car 4S shop, as much as possible to do every step of the way." ”
Talking with Nong Fuzhen, I can feel full of positive energy, "The process of starting my own business is a process of constantly being suppressed, constantly adjusting myself, and adjusting the direction, anxiety and confusion are the norm, which is also one of the charms of starting a business in Shenzhen, which makes me more and more courageous, and constantly think about how to better solve problems." Looking back on the past, Nong Fuzhen firmly believes that we must first do a good job and build confidence for the people around us and upstream and downstream companies, so as to do a good job in our own business.
Nong Fuzhen
Born in 1990, he founded Shenzhen Shiwei Coffee Catering Management Co., Ltd. in 2021, committed to building a coffee machine 4S shop service model, providing coffee shop opening services for more than 300 self-employed individuals every year, and has served more than 2,000 self-employed individuals so far.
Reporter: Deng Li
Photo: Courtesy of the interviewee
Editor: Chen Jianguo