suggestions (Score 2, Interesting)

I posted earlier why it's tough to open one, but some suggestions that will help you are the following: 1. Have a payment system where patrons prepay not pay after like there done in many korean cyber cafe. 2. If your going to be selling cooked food make sure you get a food establishment license or else the Chicago Department of Revenue or Department of Public Health can and will come after you. 3. Limit the noise, get high quality headphones 4. Offer patrons to bring there own PC's and charge them internet connection only something reasonable like $1 an hour. Your selling your T1 and the social experience to these customers 5. Offer tournaments lock in style. Offer tournements where customer prepays and plays over night for a reasonable fee. Offer prizes from sponsors or money. 6. Don't ignore senior citizens and females. Senior citizens may be your bread and butter during the day and non school hours, don't ignore females since they represent half the population. To get both enforce conduct code limit smoking to smoking section only, and limit profanity and shouting. 7. Offer hardware/training classes during the day or early mornings. 8. Run a secondary business like PC repair, PC sales, webhost and webdesign etc... 9. Target schools and other organizations, give them a discount 10. Get good chairs like previous posts. 11. Maintain PC's all time. Any minute a PC is down is losing you money. 12. Offer wifi service, at an extreme discount like .50 an hour or free with purchase of food or prepay internet card. 13. Market, Market, Market, so many cyber cafe's fail because they cater to only certain people and they expect people to be able to find them. Build a website, run ads and coupons, create a referrel program get as many people don't be content. 14. Make sure you have the capital to sustain your operation. I've seen so many cyber cafes that last only 6 months because there undercapitalized. 15. Realize your running a business so go easy on those comps to your friends and family or so called friends. That's just a few that came to the top of my head, I have more. If you need help with web site and online marketing you can email me at [e-mail] my company specializes in that we're based in chicago. Good Luck!!!