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Merely My Curiosity

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benji:
Yeah, but that assumes a ready supply chain, which is easy if you are actually attached to the market, but much more difficult if you're anywhere else. If you have a cafe near campus, several miles from the nearest market, you can probably only do one supply run a day, which means you have to have a clear notion of how many people are going to come to your cafe in a day. Since you can't really know that, your options are to over-buy and absorb the coast of spoilage into your overhead or to under-buy and risk running out of food. The other advantage of being attached to the market is that people go to markets prepared not to get exactly what they want: sellers run out of stock for the day and go home all the time. So if the cafe runs out of food and closes an hour early, someone might be disappointed, but no one is going to mind too much. A cafe not attached to the market has no such leniency: if someone shows up expecting lunch and finds out you only have coffee left, they're going to be upset. So generally, you'll end up buying more fruit then you think you need. This can be offset, of course, by making deals with local growers: they'll probably be happy to cut prices a little in exchange for a certain amount of guaranteed sale.

Anyway, you factor in the amount you spend on foods that go to waste, plus the cost of the foods that don't, plus staff and overhead, you probably won't any better then the muffin or the panini price wise. It might be better food, though, which is worth something to people. As for time, the big time killer at Coffee Houses is making espresso drinks, so your best option there is to only serve things that can be pre-brewed and served out of one of those pump things.

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