Empowering people with disabilities: A coffee shop where services are provided by people with disabilities.
The management team of The Coffee Shop -
The management team meets monthly to establish The Coffee Shop. The management team already meets since a year now.
The National Federation of People with Disabilities in Nambia (NFPDN) is planning to set up a coffee shop where people with disabilities (pwd’s) can work. The project wants to reduce the poverty, discrimination and segregation faced by pwd’s by providing them with skills, income and by empowering them. Activities within the project will include the training of pwd’s in hospitality skills, business management skills and financial skills, provide them a paid job in The Coffee Shop after they successfully finalized the training, enlarge their opportunities on a mainstream job by training them and awareness raising.
The Coffee Shop will be a high quality service provider, where people can sit down in a pleasant ambience and enjoy nice handcraft made by pwd’s. Because competition is “around the corner" The Coffee Shop distinguishes itself by the unique combination of high quality service, craft sold, home made food and an attractive menu.
The Business
Business
The implementation phase of The Coffee Shop will take about six months. In this phase people will be trained and The Coffee Shop will be furnished. After this phase, The Coffee Shop will start to be in business. According to our business plan, The Coffee Shop will start to make a small profit after 1,5 year of being in business. Profit will be realized by the quality of the services rendered. The market demand for the services of The Coffee Shop comes out of the unique combination of the services. Windhoek does not have a lot of catering facilities or coffee shops where you can sit down and have something to eat or drink in an inspiring environment. A nice atmosphere in combination with a small craft market of craft made by pwd’s makes a unique combination that does not yet exist in Namibia.
The menu price of food will be market based. The profit margin will be generated by realizing low cost prices. For instance:
· Saving in employee cost: at the time the pwd’s will be employed, they will have no education or work experience, so salaries will be lower than in a commercial organization;
· Making profitable (donation) arrangements with suppliers of services. For instance concerning suppliers of food, rent of venue, free audited financial statements etc.
Customers of The Coffee Shop will be:
· Locals (business community as well as shopping people)
· Tourists
· Organizations: All kind of organizations active in Windhoek. Organizations have events that offer opportunities for catering facilities (meetings, workshops, special events etc.).
The aim is to have about 15,000 customers in the first and 24,000 in the second year of operation.
The total investment needed in the implementation phase of The Coffee Shop amounts to EUR 102,000. EUR 57,000 has already been raised. After the implementation phase, The Coffee Shop needs to be sustainable. The financial need of this project and the budget for the BiD Challenge amounts to EUR 45,000.
In the first two years of the project, it is expected that 10 people will be employed by the project.
Feasibility:
The services of The Coffee Shop will be marketed in several ways:
· Developing a leaflet and poster to spread at target places (tourist information, businesses in town, ministries, hotels/guesthouses, tour operators etc.);
· Lobbying with tour operators to get the lunchroom included in their tours;
· Periodically writing articles in local newspapers / magazines (the first one has been launched already);
· Developing a brochure specifically for offering catering services to organizations;
· Getting included in travel guides;
· Selling printed awareness raising items like t-shirts, cabs, mugs etc;
· Appealing in- and exterior of the lunchroom with an own identity;
· Providing good food and a friendly service where everybody wants to sit down.
Potential competitors are a handful of lunchrooms in the centre of town. We will be able to compete with our competitors by our unique selling points. Our unique selling points will be the combination of location, atmosphere, type of food, it's freshness, home baked products and the quality of the service. In addition, the presentation of Namibian craft and the possibility to buy it will make The Coffee Shop a pleasant environment to sit down and have a drink / eat something.
The fact that The Coffee Shop will be run by pwd’s will give an extra dimension to The Coffee Shop and will attract customers as well.
The unique selling points can be summarized as follows:
§ Good quality products and services
§ Attractive environment and nice atmosphere
§ Presentation of food and craft together
§ An assortment / menu that differs from the other coffee shops in town
§ Friendly service
§ Home made products
§ Good price — quality relationship
§ Development objectives besides commercial objectives
§ Innovativeness
§ Facilities will be accessible for pwd’s
The Coffee Shop will be an independent project of the NFPDN. The legal structure will be a Trust. It will not have any business partners apart from arrangements set up with suppliers and donors.
Start-up funding has been solicited for with many organizations, leading to having available funds already for 55% of the needed investment. Applications with different organizations for the remaining budget are still running.
Development
Development:
The unemployment rate of pwd’s in Namibia is higher than people without disabilities. Education facilities are poor for pwd’s (long waiting lists for special schools, no accessible schools and discrimination by teachers). In addition, accessibility to buildings (and thus working places) is often bad or impossible. Pwd’s generally live in poverty because of segregation, stigmatization and discrimination. The Coffee Shop will employ pwd’s (10 to start with) as well as sell craft of pwd’s, providing them with income as well (estimated to be 10 people at one given time). It is expected that a after a while a certain number of pwd’s (2 per year) will flow into mainstream jobs, providing opportunities for other pwd’s to get employed and skilled by The Coffee Shop. So, in the future, more and more pwd’s will get skilled by working in The Coffee Shop. Being employed, learning skills and earning an income will have a positive effect on the self esteem of pwd’s. Something that is badly needed, because of the long history of discrimination they face.
The people working in The Coffee Shop will earn EUR 170 per month, based on a 40 hour working week. This income will improve the living standard of people with disabilities significantly, because it will not only give them the opportunity to raise an own income, but also skill them and give them opportunities to get a mainstream job and get included into society.
After a few years that The Coffee Shop will be running, services can be expanded like expanding the catering service, setting up coffee shops in other important towns (Oshakati, Swakopmund etc.).