Opening a bakery downtown -- thoughts?

[Bativac]

Frequent lurker here. I was reading a post by ThirdEye about opening a brewery downtown, and I wanted to get folks' thoughts on opening a bakery someplace downtown. It would be designed to serve both the downtown office workers with quick breakfast items (coffee, muffins, bagels) and the local residents with other baked goods (breads, pretzels, cookies, cakes).

Is there room for such an establishment? Do we have a decent chance at success? We are thinking small-scale, not a big eat in type of place, probably a "cafe" style thing with just a handful of tables. We like the downtown area and would love to aid in bringing the area up while doing our own thing. We'd be open in the morning hours and again in the late afternoon (my fiancee is from Italy and favors the "siesta" plan), probably later on Fridays and Saturdays, and maybe early afternoon on Sunday to catch the after-church crowd.

Thoughts??

[BridgeTroll]

I am sure the project is currently on hold but there is a group that wants to re use the Hayden Burns library as a multi use supermarket/coffee shop/ fill in the blank.  I believe the owner of Burrito Gallery is part of this group.  A bakery might fit in nicely with their future plans.

[Deuce]

If you also carried the sweet baked goods selection that Worman's did, you would be an instant success in my opinion. I think there's a definite hole and opportunity since their closing. Please just don't put it at the landing, make it more accessible to the people who actually live in the area.

[cdb]

We'd be open in the morning hours and again in the late afternoon (my fiancee is from Italy and favors the "siesta" plan), probably later on Fridays and Saturdays, and maybe early afternoon on Sunday to catch the after-church crowd.

Thoughts??

Siesta would not work for this type of establishment. You could basically do NY coffee shop hours, morning to afternoon, no dinner. You could close at 3pm and do fine.... Good luck....

[jbroadglide]

If you also carried the sweet baked goods selection that Worman's did, you would be an instant success in my opinion. I think there's a definite hole and opportunity since their closing. Please just don't put it at the landing, make it more accessible to the people who actually live in the area.

I double what Deuce says..Not everyone can or wants to go all the way to the Landing. There are plenty of vacant stores in downtown Jax, probably at much cheaper rents.

[vicupstate]

We'd be open in the morning hours and again in the late afternoon (my fiancee is from Italy and favors the "siesta" plan), probably later on Fridays and Saturdays, and maybe early afternoon on Sunday to catch the after-church crowd.

Thoughts??

Siesta would not work for this type of establishment. You could basically do NY coffee shop hours, morning to afternoon, no dinner. You could close at 3pm and do fine.... Good luck....

My thoughts exactly.  Lunch time would be superior to end-of-day, IMO. 

[Traveller]

Weekend nights would work if the place were something like Tryst in the Washington, DC neighborhood of Adam's Morgan.  It's a coffee shop by day but turns into a lounge at night (with full liquor service).  It was always a good place to take a date if one of you wasn't much of a drinker.  For this to work in Jax, I think you'd need to be close to both downtown offices (for day customers) and the Bay Street nightlife district (for evening customers).  Somewhere near the Florida Theater maybe.

http://www.trystdc.com/

[cdb]

Weekend nights would work if the place were something like Tryst in the Washington, DC neighborhood of Adam's Morgan.  It's a coffee shop by day but turns into a lounge at night (with full liquor service).  It was always a good place to take a date if one of you wasn't much of a drinker.  For this to work in Jax, I think you'd need to be close to both downtown offices (for day customers) and the Bay Street nightlife district (for evening customers).  Somewhere near the Florida Theater maybe.

http://www.trystdc.com/

Nice idea, doubles your chances at revenue Downtown, which is a must until Downtown has more people living there and more business.

[TPC]

Bread & Butter was downtown, they didn't last long though.

[Overstreet]

We'd be open in the morning hours and again in the late afternoon (my fiancee is from Italy and favors the "siesta" plan), probably later on Fridays and Saturdays, and maybe early afternoon on Sunday to catch the after-church crowd.

Thoughts??

Siesta would not work for this type of establishment. You could basically do NY coffee shop hours, morning to afternoon, no dinner. You could close at 3pm and do fine.... Good luck....

That is current Jacksonville sandwich shop hours. Most of them close around 2pm.  Except you won't find them open on Saturday or Sunday.

[Dog Walker]

Construction on the first phase of the Hayden Burns Library re-do is scheduled to start in October and take about a year.  Basement spaces are going to available earlier, maybe next spring.

Rumor is that Toni Allegretti is going to open a deli, grocery, cafe in the space when it is finished, but that there is plenty of room for others.

There is one firm that does restaurant/bars that has been scouting locations in downtown building and is looking for clients.  It is a design/build firm,  Act Architectural Associate/Accelerated Construction - 904-721-1771.  They have done a lot of restaurants in North Florida.  Check out Pattaya Thai on Baymeadows.  That is one of their designs.

The owner of the building firm is Brad Hollett and he is enthusiastic about the potential of some of the buildings he has examined that are near the old library.  He says that one of them was built against the exterior wall of the adjacent building and that there is an old style Budweiser sign on what is now an interior wall.  It has to date from pre-Prohibition days.

Hollett has done some small projects for me in the past and has always been on time and on budget.

[Seraphs]

In my opinion, I agree with some of the others morning and afternoon would be best.  Later on once your are established you perhaps could be open later.  It's probably not cost effective to be open later now.  Whatever hours you choose-be CONSISTENT, people need to know you are open when you say you're open.

Nowadays very few people know what customer service is-your service must be EXCELLENT, above and beyond anyone else.


Most importantly your food must be fresh and GOOD, GOOD, GOOD!  People will come and come back again and again.  So many restaurants open with regular run of the mill food stuff and they close as quickly as they open.  I have driven miles to get to Atlanta Bread Co., just to name one.  
One of my many hobbies is baking and as you know there is an art to baking, I don't take it lightly.

Good Luck!

[Bativac]

Thanks for the comments, guys and girls.

We're in the middle of purchasing a house. Once that's out of the way we're going to buckle down and start moving forward... plans are to open early next year. We have experience in the management side of foodservice (though it has been a few years) and in retail management so I think we know what we're doing... Gulp!

Appreciate everyone's comments on hours. I think 6 AM to 2 PM Monday thru Friday, maybe 8 to 2 weekends are where we'll start. We want to keep the menu pretty simple to begin with, just with a handful of items -- biscuits, cinnamon rolls, bagels, coffee, cookies, maybe cakes. We figure having a few fantastic items is better than a couple dozen mediocre offerings. Baking is a passion of hers (and eating, a passion of mine). We hope catering can keep us going if foot traffic isn't what we hope it will be, at least to start.

Does anybody know anything about rent downtown? We are partial to the area near the new entertainment district, which someone mentioned earlier. We have zero interest in being in the Landing, and I worry about being in the old library -- will we be visible? Are there marketing plans for whatever is going to occupy that building? Might be a silly question, but could people see us from the street?

[urbanlibertarian]

Plenty of visibility at the old Starbucks location at Main and Forsyth.  It's in the ground floor of an apartment bldg (built in customers) and people are already accustomed to that type of business being there.  Starbucks rent was practically nothing.  Might be too small, though.

[Deuce]

^ That's a good location.

Bread & Butter was downtown, they didn't last long though.

They also had slow ass service and were out of baked goods by the afternoon.