☕How to start a café business
Morning + work-from-cafe crowd. Repeat business is everything.
Live OpenStreetMap data on our map — pick your city and explore real businesses.
Per-city research below + a free interactive map showing competitors and catchment factors.
Claim your free AI-visible mini-page so GPT, Claude, Perplexity and Google AI can cite you.
What to look at when picking a location
The same factors apply in every city — the difference is how each city scores on them. Use the per-city links below to dig into your specific market.
- 👣Foot-traffic proxy
Morning rush hour is the make-or-break window.
- 🏢Office density
Office workers drive weekday morning + lunch traffic.
- ⚔️Direct competitors (1km)
More than 3 cafés within 300m → saturated.
- 🚉Public transit
Commuters stop in on the way to / from transit.
- 👀Street visibility
Corner locations with wide windows hugely outperform.
Investment outlook
Common rookie mistakes
- ⚠Underestimating staffing cost (you need 2-3 baristas before you break even)
- ⚠Picking quiet streets because rent is cheap — quiet means no walk-ins
- ⚠Skipping the WORST locations (next to a McDonald's or Starbucks) when actually piggybacking on their traffic works
City-by-city café guides
Each guide weights the factors above using live OpenStreetMap data for that city.
- Café in Auckland· NZ
New Zealand's largest city, a Pacific commercial hub with dense CBD precincts and rapidly growing fringe suburbs.
- Café in Wellington· NZ
New Zealand's capital, with one of the most café-dense city centres per capita in the world.
- Café in Christchurch· NZ
New Zealand's South Island gateway, rebuilt around a low-rise grid with strong retail clusters in the CBD and Riccarton.
- Café in Sydney· AU
Australia's largest city, mixing global brands in the CBD with vibrant neighbourhood high streets.
- Café in Melbourne· AU
Australia's café capital, famous for laneway commerce and dense inner-suburb retail strips.
- Café in Brisbane· AU
Queensland's subtropical capital, with fast-growing retail across the river-spanning CBD and inner suburbs.
- Café in Perth· AU
Australia's isolated western capital, where resources-sector wealth funds high-end CBD and inner-suburb retail.
- Café in Adelaide· AU
A South Australian capital with a one-mile-square grid CBD and strong adjacent neighbourhood retail strips.
- Café in Canberra· AU
Australia's planned federal capital, where district-centre retail outpaces a deliberately low-density CBD.
- Café in Gold Coast· AU
A Queensland tourism-driven coastal corridor where retail flows along the beach and inland canal precincts.
- Café in Hobart· AU
Tasmania's historic harbour-side capital, with a tight walkable centre fed by tourism and a growing food scene.
- Café in New York· US
The world's densest commercial market, where street-level competition shifts block by block.
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