Business iv Cyprus

Neil and Mags wrote:

Hi.


Sorry if this has been discussed a thousand times. However, my partner and I are planning to move to Cyprus next year. We are planning on running a café type business. We are both from Scotland and fancy a complete change; after all we're not getting any younger.

Does anyone know any trusted links for business advisors/agents, that could point us in the right directions?

Many thanks.

Neil and Mags.

Cant really help you with advisors or agents, but from my experience, I played around with the idea of doing something similar a few years ago, and after doing a lot of research and due diligence I gave up on the idea.

The truth is in my experience, for every successful coffee shop/cafe here, there is an equal amount of failures. I've seen really successful ones and others that have gone bankrupt in under a year, having spent a small fortune kitting out the premises,  similarily with small boutiques and clothes shops. Its difficult to compete with the franchised coffee shops,  and chain stores, but I have seen a few small food outlets who have struck gold, mostly down to location, and targeting their product to a specific market, for eg. targeting areas with a lot of expats with a   small English tea rooms or a greasy spoon. But if your targeting the local communities you need to be able to cater for their pallet and be prepared to have customers sitting in your cafe all day having spent €1.00 on a Cyprus coffee. (and using your free Wifi) .This is the situation in Larnaca and Nicosia, cant really comment on other areas.

Anyway the moral of the story is do the Math and proper research before making any commitments, and pay a visit to the area where you are thinking of setting up to get a feel for it. Best of luck with it.

Good solid advice Jake and I concur

Thank you very much.

Neil

Did The Old Coffee Shop in Maroni ever sell? Maybe Google it and see if it is still for sale.
Olive.