I have worked at a highly successful venue and one that would have been successful except that...

I started by hanging around the Side Door Coffeehouse. At the end of the evening I would help put away chairs and clean up. Over the years I became one of two people running the place. Then, owing to influences that are not important here, I quit. I then tried to start up a coffeehouse in the next town over.

There are certain questions you will have to answer for yourself. How often will you be open? What will your format be? Do you need a sound system? How many people say they want to help? How many of them will actually show up when there is work to be done? Are there any free sources of publicity in your area? Can you find them? This is going to be a coffeehouse so will you serve coffee and food?

The Side Door is open on the third Friday of every month. The format is to have an open mike in the first half of the evening with a featured performer in the second half. The featured performers are chosen from the ranks of the open mike performers, with one or two exceptions.

The Mocha Cafe started with the same format making sure we were always on a different night than the Side Door. After a while we shifted to all open mike. Even now, having been closed for almost a year, I still get questions about when we will be open.

The most important thing in running a coffeehouse is consistency. Find a venue you can keep and be open on the same night every week or month. Your audience has to be sure of when and where you will be. It was the killer for my Mocha Cafe. My venue kept shifting me to different nights and some months I couldn't get into the building at all.

You can run a coffeehouse all by yourself. Don't depend on a lot of help in the early stages. Ask for volunteers and don't be surprised when they don't show up. The Side Door offers free admission to those people who provide goodies to be served with the coffee.

Good luck,

Brett