How to Start a Coffee Shop or Cafe: An Architect’s Perspective

Also, we just really love coffee.

So we understand the little things that make a big difference in a café: how the bar flows, how the space feels, and how to create the kind of atmosphere people want to come back to, again and again…

We’re not just here to make things look beautiful, though it definitely helps when your space turns heads. We’re here to bring your vision to life, from first spark to final detail. This guide pulls together what we’ve learned from years of working with café owners just like you: people turning an idea (and a love of coffee) into something real. 

Part 1: Defining Your Vision

Before you start thinking about espresso machines, floor plans, or tile colors, it’s worth asking yourself one critical question:

Why do you want to open a coffee shop?

The most successful cafés are rooted in a clear vision. They serve a specific purpose, reflect the personality of their founders, and solve a real need in their community. Without that clarity from the start, it’s easy to get lost in a saturated market.

The Café as a Place

Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Cigarettes and Coffee” revolves around a series of interconnected characters whose lives intersect in subtle and unexpected ways, all tied together by a single moment at the same café.

If the walls of a bustling café could talk, they might share stories of ideas being born (or quietly dying on the vine), of lovers reconnecting after time apart, or of strangers engaged in unexpected, soul-stirring conversations about life’s joys and sorrows all unfolding over a simple cup of coffee.

At their core, cafés are deeply human places. They exist for connection: physical, emotional, creative. They transcend borders and bridge cultures. For generations, they’ve been backdrops to movements, muses for artists, gathering spots for thinkers and writers and people who just need a soft place to land.

There’s a reason cafés show up again and again in film and literature: they hold space for life to happen.

So if you’re setting out to open a coffee shop, it’s worth pausing here.

Ask yourself:

• What role will your café play in the lives of the people who walk through its doors?
  
• What kind of energy will it hold?
  
• What memories will it create?

What will make your café feel different, more personal, more thoughtful, than the Starbucks or Peet’s around the corner?

The answers to these questions matter. They’ll shape your brand, your design, and the way people experience your space. Get clear on the feeling you want to create and everything else will follow.

Finding Your Backstory

Coffee Bar’s mezzanine (RIP), san francisco, ca

The café as a “place” holds its own special little corner in the caffeine-fueled heart of our small business, and we often reminisce with our coffee clients about how Studio BANAA was conceived.

The year was 2015, and Nastaran and I were young, nomadic freelance architects. Not in a position to rent a “real” office, we spent our workdays drifting around cafés across the city, embarking daily on our sleepy search for the perfect workspace: free WiFi, two open tables, and a readily available outlet were all we needed to get through the day (aside from paying the “coffee tax” a few times daily, of course).

Our go-to haunt back then was the now-defunct café on Bryant Street, aptly named Coffee Bar, pictured above. Nestled inside a large concrete warehouse, the café lived up to its central concept: a vast double-height seating area with a mezzanine surrounding a centrally located coffee bar on three sides. The bar itself was the focal point from every angle: a bustling nucleus with counter seating where you could watch the baristas pull espresso after silky espresso.

And spatial arrangements aside, Coffee Bar’s greatest strength was how it catered to the increasing demand for remote work. According to its owner, it was one of the first informal co-working cafés in San Francisco. The ambient noise, the hum of conversations, and the relaxed atmosphere helped many of us focus better than in any traditional office.

Ten years later, in the wake of COVID, many new office designs now attempt to mimic the liveliness and casual energy of cafés, replacing the sterile rows of desks with more human-centered environments. Who knew?

Define Your Café’s Identity

Opening a café in today’s market takes more than great beans and a solid pastry lineup (although it’s a great start). You need a clear differentiator; something that defines your brand and sets your space apart from the crowd.

Examples from our own work and community:

Your differentiator might be a complementary offering, like in-house baking, a focus on roasting, or curated retail. Or it might be tied to a specific customer base, like families, remote workers, or commuters. It could even be inspired by your personal story, culture, or values.

The more specific and authentic you can get, the more memorable, and successful, your café will be.

Laying the Foundation:
Coffee Shop Design Must-Haves

Before you hire an architect for your coffee shop or start sketching floor plans on the back of a napkin, it helps to have a few key ideas floating around. Nothing needs to be set in stone (in fact, most of it will evolve), but having a sense of direction will make the design process that much smoother.

The BANAA team sitting down with Voyager founders Sam and Lauren to plan their next location

When we work with clients, we go through a thorough discovery phase where we ask a lot of questions to uncover these things together. But if you’ve already given some of this a little thought, you’re ahead of the game.

Here’s what we’re talking about:

• Your concept – What’s your café really about? What’s the bigger idea behind it?
  
• Your customer – Who’s your space for? Locals, students, commuters, families, niche communities? Cat people? Spite store?
  
• Your products – What are you serving, and why? Coffee, yes, but what else? What’s your signature offering?
  
• Your service style – Is it a quick grab-and-go counter, a cozy hangout spot, or something in between?

Again, this doesn’t need to be a fully developed business plan,  but starting with a rough outline of your vision helps us design a space that actually supports how your café will operate, not just how it looks on Instagram.

We’ll help you refine and expand on all of this during our initial workshops and precedent studies, but planting the seed early makes everything grow a little more intentionally.

Start with the Story: Our Process

At Studio BANAA, before we even think about picking up a pencil or iPad, we start by getting to know you. Your business, your brand, your story, your food or drink (or even the individual ingredients). Your life story (well, maybe not that deep) but you get the idea.

We’re looking for what makes you click. We ask a lot of questions through early meetings, written questionnaires, and a “precedent study” presentation, where we walk you through a range of other projects; you might love some, you might hate others (honestly, the strong reactions are helpful either way).

All of this helps us move beyond surface-level design to find what’s actually meaningful, something that ultimately shows up in everything from the big concept down to the materials, colors, and smallest details in the space.

Real Design Journeys to Inspire Your Coffee Shop Vision

These examples show how we turn brand stories into spaces that stick with people – something every great café should do.

What This Series Will Cover

This blog series will walk you through the major steps of opening a coffee shop, with a focus on design, branding, and spatial planning, from those early napkin-sketch ideas all the way through construction. We’ll cover everything from concept development and layout to construction documentation, permitting, and working with engineers and consultants. We’ll also touch on what to expect during the construction process itself.

We won’t dive into the day-to-day logistics like profit margins or staffing models, but we will help you understand how to create a space that supports your business goals from day one, and how good design can set the foundation for long-term success.

Some spaces carry a quiet kind of character that isn’t always obvious at first glance, an energy, a presence (some might even say a “soul” especially after their second espresso). It might be tucked behind an old t-bar ceiling or revealed in the way natural light moves through the room. But with the right eye and a bit of imagination, that spark can be uncovered and elevated.

In our architectural process, we like to get involved early, sometimes even while clients are touring spaces with their real estate agent. We help spot hidden potential and shape it into something that feels authentic and uniquely theirs. For clients who want to go a step further before signing a lease, we offer a quick feasibility study: a site visit, consultation, sketch floor plan, and early budget pricing through one of our trusted contractor partners. It’s a smart way to understand what a space can become, and what it might take to get there.

In the next sections, we’ll break down what really matters when choosing a location for your coffee shop or café, including:

1. Your Café Concept and Customer Base – How your vision, values, and target audience should shape your location search.
2. Zoning and Permitting Basics – What types of spaces legally allow cafés, how to avoid delays, and when you’ll need special approvals.
3. Foot Traffic, Visibility, Demographics, and Competition – Understanding who’s nearby, where people are walking, and what kind of exposure your space will get.
4. New Commercial Space or Former Café? How to Choose the Right Fit – From raw commercial shells to move-in-ready former cafés, we’ll walk through how much work each type may require.
5. Lease Terms and Landlord Expectations – What to look for in a lease, how to negotiate lease terms and free rent periods, and how to avoid surprises during the buildout process.

These are the tools we use to help our clients choose the right space, and uncover its full potential. Let’s dive in.

1. Your Café Concept and Customer Base

Your café’s location, and eventually its layout and flow, all come down to one thing: finding your people. In the world of coffee, it’s not just about beans and brew methods. It’s about creating a space for community, whether that’s bleary-eyed commuters, espresso purists, stroller squads, or the laptop crowd jockeying for outlets and free tables.

That said, the relationship between location and audience works both ways. Sometimes, you’ll start with a clear concept and look for a location that serves your people. Other times, you’ll fall in love with a space first before identifying the community around it and adapting your concept to serve them. The key is alignment: your café should meet the needs of the neighborhood, whether you’re bringing something new to the scene or doubling down on what already resonates.

Below are some common customer types, along with a few of our favorite local examples (including some we’ve had the pleasure of designing). And no, these groups aren’t mutually exclusive. Your café isn’t a nightclub with a dress code. It’s more like a beautifully caffeinated ecosystem.

That’s the magic of a great café: it brings all kinds of people together, bonded by a shared love of coffee, pastries, and a sense of place. We’ll dig into how to design for this mix, using smart layouts, flexible seating, and intentional design moves, in later sections. But for now, let’s start by identifying your tribe.

Both models work. But they require different strategies, timelines, and relationships to the space.

Real-World Examples

• Voyager Craft Coffee has built its presence near university campuses like Santa Clara and Stanford. These are high-foot-traffic zones with a defined, repeat customer base, the student crowd.
• Moonwake Coffee Roasters took the opposite approach, opening in a San Jose strip mall. It’s not the obvious choice for walk-ins, but with a clear identity and standout product, they’ve become a destination for coffee enthusiasts.

Strong brand + clear vision = people will seek you out.

Voyager Craft Coffee – the coop in Cupertino, CA. Design by Studio BANAA
View more photos of the coop

Smart Visibility and Strategic Collaborations

Park Café Group is a great example of visibility done right. Their cafés are strategically placed next to some of San Francisco’s most beloved public parks: Dolores Park Café, Precita Park Café, and others. By positioning themselves where people already want to be, they’ve tapped into natural foot traffic and created spaces that feel like an extension of the park itself. People grab coffee or food on the way in, and the setting does the rest.

That said, visibility isn’t just about foot traffic or corner real estate, it can also come from strategic partnerships that put your brand in front of new audiences.

Take Starbucks’ famous partnership with Safeway, for example. This wasn’t just about leasing space, it was a strategic move to embed Starbucks kiosks inside grocery stores. They turned coffee into an impulse buy: you’re already grabbing eggs and toilet paper, might as well throw in a $6 latte, too.

Do two mediocre corporate giants make something greater than the sum of their parts? Debatable. But they did manage to turn grocery shopping into a slightly more caffeinated experience, and rake in foot traffic while they were at it. Andytown’s partnership with Gus’s Market is a great local parallel. By bringing quality coffee into a neighborhood grocery setting, they’ve pulled off a similar visibility play, just scaled to a more community-driven, independent model.

Sketch of Andytown within Gus’s Market in San Francisco, CA. Design by Studio BANAA

For smaller shops, these kinds of collaborations happen on a more local level, but can be just as powerful:

• Don’t roast your own beans? Partner with a beloved local roaster and tap into their built-in following.
• Want to elevate your pastries? Bring in a bakery with name recognition.
• Need more eyes on your shop? Collaborate with a neighboring business or event series that shares your audience.

A great example is Nabi Cat Café, which teamed up with Ritual Coffee for an exclusive supply deal. In exchange, they got top-tier beans, wholesale equipment pricing, training, and even design guidance, plus the cachet of a respected local roaster behind the bar.

Nabi Cat Café in Santa Clara, CA.

The takeaway: Visibility can be built, borrowed, or shared. Whether through smart location, brand partnerships, or both, the goal is the same: put yourself where your people already are (or want to be).

4. New Commercial Space or Former Café? How to Choose the Right Fit

Once you’ve narrowed down the where and the who, it’s time to assess the what.

Are you looking at a blank slate, or stepping into a second-generation space like a former café or restaurant? The existing infrastructure (or lack of it) can have a major impact on your budget, timeline, and design flexibility. At this point, you’re likely comparing real spaces, and understanding what you’re actually working with becomes key to making a smart choice.

Clients often face this classic dilemma: start from scratch or take over an existing space? Some spaces are full of promise; others are full of surprises. Here’s a breakdown of typical conditions we see:

Cold Shell (Challenging)
Also known as a “vanilla box” or blank slate, this type of space is usually found in newer buildings, often on the ground floor of mixed-use residential developments in cities like San Francisco or San Jose. These spaces are clean and brand new, which is a plus. But they come with a catch: you’re starting from scratch.

There’s no plumbing, no HVAC, no electrical (the most expensive items in a buildout generally), just four walls and potential. While you’ll have total freedom to design exactly what you want, the money you spend here often goes toward things customers will never see: in-slab plumbing, rooftop units, electrical. That’s budget that could have gone toward your coffee bar, custom seating, or other design features that enhance the customer experience.

Major Conversion (Moderate)
These are spaces that weren’t originally designed for food or beverage service, think old offices, retail spaces, or tired buildings with outdated layouts. Some have existing restrooms or partial utilities, but still require major upgrades.

In these cases, a feasibility study with your architect and contractor can help determine whether it’s worth working with what’s there or gutting it entirely. Sometimes, starting over is easier than trying to make a Frankenstein version of what’s there. But in less extreme cases, these can be great middle-ground spaces: existing core systems plus creative freedom.

Second-Gen Café or Restaurant (Easiest)
This is the most turnkey option, taking over a former café or restaurant where the core infrastructure is already in place: plumbing, power, and equipment hookups are often ready to go. While you likely won’t reuse the existing furniture, the built-in utility layout can save significant time and cost during the buildout.

Voyager Craft Coffee: The Alameda in Santa Clara, CA. Design by Studo BANAA
View more photos of Voyager Craft Coffee

Our friends at Voyager Craft Coffee have had great success with this model, moving into old coffee chain locations such as Starbucks and Peets and making them feel entirely new through bold design and brand elements. These spaces offer great value, even if they come with a few quirks. Sure, you’re working within someone else’s old layout, but with a little imagination (and maybe a sledgehammer or two), even the most rigid floor plan can be reworked into something that feels uniquely yours. Plus, construction costs are often a fraction of what you’d spend on a cold shell, leaving more budget for the fun stuff: your coffee bar, seating, and the design moments that actually shape the customer experience.

Every project is different, and every space comes with its own mix of perks and pitfalls. In some cases, deeper due diligence is required, including walkthroughs with your architect, general contractor, and sometimes engineers, to understand what’s possible before you sign on the dotted line. A little extra homework upfront can save you major headaches (and dollars) later.

5. Lease Terms and Landlord Expectations

Once you’ve found the right space, it’s time to dig into the lease. Terms like free rent periods, tenant allowances, and approval steps will shape your timeline, budget, and flexibility.

In hot markets, landlords may offer little to no free rent, leaving you to cover months of design, permitting, and buildout out of pocket. Others may contribute financially, but only if you follow their approval process or coordinate work between teams.

This is your final checkpoint before signing, often where hidden costs and delays emerge. Getting clarity now saves time, money, and stress later.

 It’s important to go in with eyes wide open.

Questions to Ask and Consider

Who You’re Renting From Matters 
Not all landlords operate the same way. Some are individual property owners who take a more casual or hands-off approach. Others are large corporate entities with formal processes, building engineers, property managers, and multi-layered approval structures. The type of landlord you’re dealing with can significantly shape your project experience, impacting everything from timelines and communication to how tenant improvements and repairs are delivered.

How many months is typical for a “free rent” period (if any)?
This is one of the most common pain points we see. As architects, we’re often brought in just as the lease is signed, or worse, after, and suddenly the clock is ticking. Clients are eager to move fast, but we’re still in early design stages. This is where things get stressful.

We do our best to provide realistic project timelines so free rent periods can be negotiated accordingly, ideally before the lease is signed. Free rent periods vary depending on location, landlord flexibility, and lease length, but some rough rules of thumb are:

• 2 to 4 months in strong, high-demand markets
• 4 – 6+ months in softer markets or for longer lease terms
• 0 months (unfortunately) if you’re dealing with a competitive space or a tough landlord

The key is aligning the timeline of your rent obligations with the actual time it takes to get to opening day.

What elements are typically included in a tenant improvement allowance?

Tenant allowances can be helpful, but they come with fine print. These are funds the landlord contributes toward your buildout, often based on the idea that some improvements will outlast your lease and benefit future tenants or the building overall.

Eligible improvements typically include:

• Upgraded building systems (electrical panels, HVAC, plumbing)
• Restrooms or core ADA upgrades
• Structural upgrades
• Exterior work or facade improvements

Landlords are usually not interested in funding elements specific to your café, like custom casework, kitchen buildout, lighting, finishes, or brand-driven design features.

A few things we always clarify when tenant allowances are involved:

• What building elements is the landlord delivering, and by when?
• Will the landlord handle their scope with their own team, or will it fall under yours? Some landlords use their own architect, engineer, and contractor to complete certain improvements before your lease even begins. Others prefer that you handle everything, including design and permitting, through your own team, and they’ll reimburse part of the cost (usually through a tenant allowance split out by your contractor). Make sure you know which path you’re on before starting.
• What, if any, landlord approvals are required?
  These can range from informal email check-ins to weekly meetings and full drawing reviews by the landlord’s team or architect. It all adds time and complexity to the process, and should be factored into your project schedule.

How are square footages calculated?

It’s not always straightforward. Brokers and landlords often use different methods, some calculate gross square footage (outside face of walls), others use net usable (inside face of walls), and sometimes common areas, closets, or even mechanical spaces are lumped into your “rentable” area.

If your space is simple enough, we recommend doing a quick measurement to confirm. This gives you a clearer sense of what you’re actually getting and paying for.

Your real estate broker or agent will be key in helping you assess lease terms, allowances, and landlord expectations. We recommend doing a thorough analysis of comparable leases (“comps”) in the area to make sure you’re getting a fair deal and a feasible path to opening.

Understanding the lease isn’t just about locking down the space. It’s about ensuring your café is set up for success long before the first cup is poured.

Choosing the right space is more than just picking a good address. It’s about aligning your vision with the realities of zoning, infrastructure, timeline, and budget. The decisions you make at this stage set the tone for everything that follows.

Now that you’ve narrowed down where and why, it’s time to talk about how much. In the next section, we’ll break down real-world coffee shop buildout costs, budget categories, and what to expect.