Many people think that UK coffee shops are too numerous, particularly people living in market towns who see the opening of Costa or Starbucks outlets as ruining the character of their villages and towns. Indeed if you visit London you will be hard pushed to find a street that doesn’t have one coffee outlet as a minimum.

However, the coffee market has experienced enormous growth in the last 5 years evidenced by the success of Costa Coffee which now has 2,000 shops in the UK, 2.5 times more than Starbucks.  But the popularity of themed independent coffee shops is also growing so if you are considering opening one, now could be a good time to do it. A prerequisite is to serve great coffee obviously, and buying single origin coffee beans is a good start especially if they are ethically produced.

Some of our favourite themes for UK Coffee Shops

Choosing a theme requires a little ingenuity and creativity but when you look at what others have done, the choice is huge.  You need to work out who your main customers are going to be, but here are some ideas that might appeal, depending on where in the UK coffee shops are:

The Bookshop Theme – this doesn’t cost a fortune to set up.  You need lots of shelves to line the walls and books to fill them (charity shops are a great place to source cheap books). When you have the books you can either hire them out at a minimal fee, sell them or just allow your customers to read them free whilst they enjoy your excellent single origin coffee creations.

Vintage English Theme – something akin to the Old Curiosity Shop; which you can create by searching online for items to decorate it. You can choose several decades or just one to come up with the perfect vintage environment.

The Cat Café – create a place of relaxation where you can have a cat on your lap, whilst enjoying your ethically produced single origin coffee. Normally, you find couches and armchairs with low coffee tables in these themed UK coffee shops and they are very comfortable.

Movie Star Theme – it’s very easy to get cheap prints of movie stars on the net. You can either buy them as posters or framed. Either way put them up on the walls and build a theme around them. You could have a modern theme with popular movie stars of today, or an older theme with stars of days gone by.

Star Wars Theme – there are people out there that live for Star Wars and its memorabilia.  Again look on the internet for decoration items but make sure you don’t steal the branding.  Nothing stops you having a life size model of Darth Vader at the door, but you won’t be able to call your coffee shop “Star Wars” without risking prosecution on copyright.   The same applies to a Dr Who theme.

A local Marketing Agency can come up with suggestions for names around all the above themes and many others at an affordable price so it’s worth spending a few pounds to make sure you have a great name that doesn’t breach copyright.

The Coffee Wholesalers sell single origin coffee beans that are ethically produced. We often have deals and discounts so if you want to jump on the bandwagon of successful themed UK coffee shops contact us to find out how we can help. As UK coffee distributors and suppliers we view your success in the same way as we view our own. Hence we supply competitively priced coffee beans that are the best!