Everything for £1 Café ($1.50) in London.

Austerity bites? The London cafe where everything is £1

The BBC are reporting on a café in London that is trying out a new model of business. Makes a refreshing change to the gentrification swallowing up the English Capital:

"BBC News visits a cafe in central London that is testing selling all its food and drink for £1."

"The inspiration came from similar shops in Israel and New Zealand".

I was always interested in this kind of business model. Café culture in UK is dying. The prices are ridiculous. Having a café in central London like this is pretty amazing. So much of social life in cities has out-priced a huge chunk of the population.

There are times when I would love to sit in a café during a long walk or when shopping in town. The prices are not worth paying and too much of a chunk of my budget to be realistically affordable.

In this café you could sit in the middle of London with a sandwich and a coffee for $3 or £2. That is how it should be. Compared to the minimum wage that so many people are on it means even these people can have a lunch out in central London. This will definitely make it into the "Lonely Planet" tourist guide. What a great spot for backpackers and budget travellers. I am sure there will be an interesting clientele.

I hope this works out. You know more can be less once you price people out. Less can be more in terms of popularity and profit margins.

Good luck with this Jo Kaye. I hope it works out for him.

a reply to: Revolution9
The main factor pushing up prices in such places would be the cost of renting the location.
They need to be able to find a way round that.

a reply to: DISRAELI

Yes, always the same. People are taking a bite even before you have started trading.

In the video of the link the owner seems positive about his business model. It is already happening in Israel and New Zealand from where he got his idea.

Capitalism has ravaged small enterprise and life is void of choice for people at the lower end of the earning scale. Previously, under more socialist influences, people could afford to participate. There is so much I can't afford now in the society I live in. I am useless as any kind of customer. If they can price me back in then I will be able to participate on some level and generate business, employment and profit.

If some entrepreneurs were able to capitalise on the lower earners they could get a lot of business. It is an area that is as yet largely untapped. It requires some ingenuity, but there are opportunities.

originally posted by: Revolution9
If some entrepreneurs were able to capitalise on the lower earners they could get a lot of business.

The economies of scale do not always make that type of model profitable and sustainable.

originally posted by: AugustusMasonicus

originally posted by: Revolution9
If some entrepreneurs were able to capitalise on the lower earners they could get a lot of business.

The economies of scale do not always make that type of model profitable and sustainable.

Very true. I hope he can pull it off. Could be one or two of these in each city and with it a valuable social resource for people on a tight budget. This is every beatniks' dream, lol.

I mentioned in a thread yesterday I like doing the tramping kind of travelling and tourism, living on street food and staying in dorms hostels. This kind of resource is a travelling resource. That is my perspective on it.

I could go visit London for a weekend well cheap now, taking a budget bus, staying in a cheap hostel and eating in this café. It can be done for peanuts. Central London on a shoe string.

originally posted by: Revolution9
a reply to: DISRAELI

Yes, always the same. People are taking a bite even before you have started trading.

In the video of the link the owner seems positive about his business model. It is already happening in Israel and New Zealand from where he got his idea.

Capitalism has ravaged small enterprise and life is void of choice for people at the lower end of the earning scale. Previously, under more socialist influences, people could afford to participate. There is so much I can't afford now in the society I live in. I am useless as any kind of customer. If they can price me back in then I will be able to participate on some level and generate business, employment and profit.

If some entrepreneurs were able to capitalise on the lower earners they could get a lot of business. It is an area that is as yet largely untapped. It requires some ingenuity, but there are opportunities.

I feel the need to point out that this is, in fact, capitalism.

Being London, I am sure that some cronyism is involved just to secure the business space but, competitive enterprise, if allowed to develop unsubsidized or burdened, will result in the most efficient and/or competitive products and services being available to customers at the least expensive price point.

The reason this doesn't happen everywhere is because we (local, state or national government) intervene in that process and legislate favors to less efficient competitors and levy sanctions against more efficient ones. Whether this is done for self-interested corrupt cronyist reasons or social progressive ones is irrelevant.

The result is less desirable and more costly wares wherever this phenomenon is observed.

It is what you refer to as "socialist influences" that have produced this effect, not the free market.

a reply to: Revolution9

They will make way more than those with shops that over charge! It will stay packed whereas the over priced places just have customers sparingly (those few who can afford)

a reply to: greencmp

What effect?

I am stating that pre 1980 there was a choice of jobs, housing, cafes, excellent health care for the less well off. Now there is no choice in jobs (you hold onto the one you have for dear life), housing (same), no choice of cafes (really for me). In the UK now the National Health Service is almost broken beyond repair. Years ago, after an operation people even got to spend time in a convalescent home to heal. Now it is a conveyer belt with undue disregard for the human element.

What is in operation in the West is monopoly capitalism. You and I both know it. Small business start up in the UK is at a real low now. All the small businesses have disappeared from the city centres. Look with your eyes, man, the choice is gone. Look at the way the city centres have changed.

It is not true capitalism at work. It is monopoly capitalism that actually swallows up the market.

That is the effect of 35 years of monopoly capitalism in the West.

Luckily if one looks very carefully there are still some resources though very little choice.

Stop pretending all is fine and dandy. It is far from it. Capitalism is not some miraculous save everybody system. It often disregards humanity, exploits, uses and abuses. Look at the usury in the world compared to 35 years ago.

Yes, it is capitalism the guy is using. Yet another comment here suggests he will not make it. I want the system to work for me and the less wealthy, too. That is all I am asking. I don't mind what ism it is called. I just want there to be affordable LIFE for all members of society. If the wealthy can give me that I'll be stoked. I will not mind how much they earn to tell you the truth if I can see that people are at least looked after. That is the challenge of true humanist civilization. I don't need a religion even to tell me that.

originally posted by: Staroth
a reply to: Revolution9

They will make way more than those with shops that over charge! It will stay packed whereas the over priced places just have customers sparingly (those few who can afford)

I hope it does work and encourages more business to cater for the needs of those on smaller incomes just for some inclusion. The situation is becoming silly. It is closing down life. It is no good if only one in every hundred can use your service. It will be by and large empty of clientele and perhaps the time is coming when people have been so priced out that those type of businesses are the ones being boarded up instead.

Ok, if capitalism can bring some of the good times back I am all open to discussion, but can it? Will it?

originally posted by: Revolution9
a reply to: greencmp

What effect?

I am stating that pre 1980 there was a choice of jobs, housing, cafes, excellent health care for the less well off. Now there is no choice in jobs (you hold onto the one you have for dear life), housing (same), no choice of cafes (really for me). In the UK now the National Health Service is almost broken beyond repair. Years ago, after an operation people even got to spend time in a convalescent home to heal. Now it is a conveyer belt with undue disregard for the human element.

What is in operation in the West is monopoly capitalism. You and I both know it. Small business start up in the UK is at a real low now. All the small businesses have disappeared from the city centres. Look with your eyes, man, the choice is gone. Look at the way the city centres have changed.

It is not true capitalism at work. It is monopoly capitalism that actually swallows up the market.

That is the effect of 35 years of monopoly capitalism in the West.

Luckily if one looks very carefully there are still some resources though very little choice.

Stop pretending all is fine and dandy. It is far from it. Capitalism is not some miraculous save everybody system. It often disregards humanity, exploits, uses and abuses. Look at the usury in the world compared to 35 years ago.

I haven't been around much lately so, I will forgive the suggestion that I am tolerant of the status quo.

What I mean is that this new participant is fulfilling their role in the free market by undercutting their greedy complacent competitors. That is capitalism. They are providing a service which benefits consumers, their only commanders.

I am still bouncing an idea around for a thread on monopoly. It isn't an easy topic to explain, very little of economics is immediately understandable. Suffice it to say that, monopolies require outside support, primarily in the form of coercive violence to maintain that position. Socialist totalitarian economies being the easiest to understand and interventionist/cronyist subsidies, taxes or other forms of market participation attenuation being others.

Generally, in order to reap financial benefits from a monopoly, one must be able to decrease the supply of a commodity in order to increase the price of the available proportion.

It isn't necessarily the possession of the monopoly that is the threat but, the possibility of monopoly prices. In the free market, such a position is rarely achieved and short lived but, in the hands of the state it can be ubiquitous and perpetual.

a reply to: StarothYour wrong. A couple of years ago a cafe opened up in a town near where I live, they sold everything for 99p, just under a pound. A Costa Coffee shop opened up right next door a couple of months later.
The coffee tasted virtually the same yet more people went into Costa. The food in the 99p cafe was far better and was made fresh right in front of you, yet 2 years down the line the 99p cafe shut down but Costa still trades to this day.
It totally shocked me when my sons took me into a Costa cafe and I saw the prices. In fact when we were served I actually asked the counter people if I had purchased the mug with the coffee in it. I was rudely told no but I could but a mug if I wanted one. I can't put my reply on here as it would be offensive.

a reply to: Revolution9

This just shows that not everything has to cost so much.... costs don't have to keep going up.... costs can come down and should come down.

Its stupid prices being paid in London for everything.

Thing is you can go into pound land and buy a box of tea bags for a pound. Sell 2 cups of tea for a pound each, you've paid for the tea bags, plus a pound profit.

a reply to: Revolution9

I hope it will live. Very good business model, I think. Thank you for sharing that.