Hi David,
> What sort of size are these cafes and are they
> really profitable based on
> computer services?
The cafes around our town vary in size. I have seen "cafes" with 1 or 2
machines, and the largest places in town have about 25 to 30 machines (we
have 25 right now, but we are still expanding). Can they be profitable,
sure! We've been open only 1 month and we are already turning a profit. We
are sort of unique, though, the only cafe within 300 miles of here that has
a satellite connection (DirecPC), so our connection is fast. Other cafes
have very slow connections, it can take as long as 15 minutes to load a page
like cnn.com. We offer internet surfing, network games and also Sony
Playstation games. About 80% of our business is internet, though. The
other cafes in town are about 80% game revenue, since their internet
connection is so bad.
> i.e.. As it is a developing country, do you also
> have to keep prices down?
Yes, prices are very low, but our operating are very low too (except our
internet connection, which is higher than in the States). We charge 35
Pesos per hour, which is equal to about 75 cents US per hour. However,
based on our expenses, if we can earn 2000 Pesos per day that is our
breakeven point. Yesterday our revenue was about 5000 pesos, so not bad.
> Can you realistically offer high tech machines or is
> that totally
> unnecessary in your environment?
All of our machines are AMD K6/2's at 500MHz with 10Gb hard drives, 64Mb RAM
and 15" monitors. They are not bad machines. We are able to buy that class
of machine here for about $500 or so. Based on our current average revenue,
we should be able to recover all of our startup costs in about 1 year and 8
months. We do have some ideas to help bring in more revenue too.
> I suppose there are completely different parameters
> involved in your setup.
Yes, operating a business in a third world country is much different than
doing it in a place like the USA or Europe. No doubt about that. There is
a lot of red tape here, getting government permits and such is a real
headache. But, labor is cheap, so I generally hire people to do the "dirty
work".
____________________________________
Bob Martin ----Copyright �2000------
Make a virtual visit to General Santos City!
http://www.mindanao.com/gensan
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