Sustainable Student Café
Written By Samay Bhurat
Sustainable Business Design / Feasibility and Viability Study
Theme: Sustainable Business Design, Student Enterprise, Feasibility Analysis, Circular Economy, Campus Retail, Stakeholder Strategy
Tools / Frameworks: Excel Sales Analysis, Location Scoring Model, Footfall Estimation, ROI Analysis, Break-even Analysis, Triple Bottom Line, Freeman’s Stakeholder Theory, Power–Interest Mapping, Work Breakdown Structure, Gantt Chart, Risk Matrix, Carbon Footprint Assessment
Context:
This project explored whether an underused outdoor kiosk space in Mary Seacole Courtyard could be transformed into a financially viable, socially inclusive, and environmentally sustainable student-run café.
The assignment brief was intentionally ambiguous. It required us to make assumptions about demand, operations, pricing, location, sustainability, and feasibility. This made the project difficult because a feasibility and viability study becomes weak if it depends only on unsupported assumptions. I therefore approached the project as a business problem: if I could reduce uncertainty using real-world evidence, the proposal would become much more credible.
The proposed café would operate near an existing university café on the Brookfield campus. This created both a challenge and an opportunity. On one hand, the new café would need to avoid simply duplicating the main café. On the other hand, the existing café provided a useful benchmark for understanding student demand, product preferences, pricing behaviour, transaction volume, and seasonal sales patterns.
Figure 1: Brookfield Campus floorplan
Rather than treating the café as a purely theoretical idea, I tried to ground the proposal in actual campus behaviour. I used a combination of cold emails, informal conversations with café employees, sales data from the company managing the existing café, campus floor-plan analysis, and secondary research to build the business case.
Problem:
The main problem was uncertainty.
The assignment required a feasibility and viability study, but many of the key inputs were not provided. I needed to estimate whether students would actually buy from the café, what products should be sold first, whether the location was strong enough, how the café could remain sustainable, and whether the concept could be financially realistic.
At first, the courtyard seemed less convenient than the existing main café because it had poorer visibility, outdoor exposure, and limited weather protection. However, the location also had important strengths: it was close to lecture rooms, seminar rooms, student movement, and outdoor seating. This created a more complicated question:
Could a location that initially looked weaker become viable if the product mix, pricing, operations, and sustainability model were designed around its specific context?
A second problem was product strategy. Without real sales data, it would have been easy to design an unrealistic menu based on assumptions about what students “might” want. I needed a stronger starting point.
This led me to gather and analyse existing café sales data. The data showed that demand was not evenly distributed across products. Some best-selling products, such as water bottles and basic drinks, had strong volume, while some lower-volume products still contributed meaningfully to sales value. This changed how I thought about the opening menu. The café should not begin with an overly complex sustainable menu. It should start with high-volume essentials, price differentiation, and a carefully selected margin mix before gradually introducing more differentiated sustainable products.
Figure 2: Sales-weighting analysis showing how product categories contributed to revenue.
My Role:
This was an individual sustainable business design project.
My role was to develop the concept, collect evidence, analyse the feasibility of the location, build the business model, assess sustainability implications, and turn the proposal into a structured portfolio-style report.
One of the most important parts of my role was reducing the level of guesswork in the project. Because the brief was ambiguous, I had to create my own evidence base. I sent cold emails, spoke to employees at the existing café, and eventually obtained a sales-data Excel sheet from the company managing the café. This became one of the most useful parts of the project because it allowed me to move from assumption-based planning to evidence-based planning.
I analysed the sales data to identify best-selling products, sales-value patterns, transaction volume, and seasonal volatility. This helped me understand what students were already buying and what kind of product mix could support a new café from the beginning.
I also used a campus floor plan to estimate likely footfall. By identifying nearby lecture halls and seminar rooms, I could estimate the number of students present around the café location at any given point. From a conservative conversion assumption, I then built a rough ROI and break-even logic for the café.
The project therefore combined creative business design with practical commercial analysis. It was not only about imagining a sustainable café; it was about proving why the concept could work.
Method:
The project developed through several stages.
First, I assessed the location. I used a structured location scoring model to evaluate the site across factors such as visibility, convenience, competition, footfall potential, accessibility, size, and weather exposure. This helped me separate the emotional appeal of the courtyard from its practical strengths and weaknesses.
The scoring model showed that the courtyard was not a perfect site. It had clear weaknesses in visibility and weather protection. However, it also had strong potential because of its proximity to student movement and its ability to create a distinct outdoor café experience.
Second, I gathered real-world demand evidence. I used data from the existing Brookfield café to understand what students were already buying. The data showed strong transaction levels and highlighted which products had the greatest commercial importance.
From this, I developed a product-entry strategy. The new café would initially focus on best sellers and high-volume, low-price goods such as water bottles, simple drinks, coffee, and grab-and-go products. This would create a stable revenue foundation before expanding into more differentiated sustainable offerings.
Figure 3: Weekly profit at existing cafe (Email for original/ Download full report)
Third, I estimated footfall. I used the business campus floor plan to identify nearby lecture halls and seminar rooms and estimate how many students could be present during key teaching periods (See figure 1). From this, I applied a conservative conversion rate to estimate potential daily sales and test whether the café could reach break-even.
Fourth, I developed the sustainability model. I used the Triple Bottom Line to structure the café around economic, social, and environmental value. Economically, the café would rely on low overheads, student staffing, high-volume essentials, and margin-mix optimisation. Socially, it would use a “by students, for students” model through the Rotational Student Management Model. Environmentally, it would prioritise compostable packaging, reusable-cup incentives, organic waste recovery, and circular economy principles.
Fifth, I mapped stakeholders. I used Freeman’s stakeholder theory and a power–interest approach to identify which groups mattered most to the success of the café. These included students, the Student Union, Brookfield management, facilities staff, the health and safety team, suppliers, IT services, the sustainability office, the existing main café, and delivery platforms.
This changed how I thought about the project. In the first version, stakeholders were mostly background actors. By the final version, they became active participants whose power, legitimacy, and interest would shape whether the café could actually succeed.
Figure 4: Stakeholder mapping for the sustainable student café.
Finally, I developed the project implementation and risk analysis. I used a Work Breakdown Structure and Gantt chart to divide the project into concept, feasibility, design, development, implementation, and evaluation. I also created a risk matrix covering issues such as weather exposure, staff inconsistency, cannibalisation by the main café, supplier disruption, waste mismanagement, and health and safety concerns.
Output:
The final output was a sustainable business design portfolio proposing a student-run café in Mary Seacole Courtyard.
The proposal argued that the café could be viable if it was positioned as a complementary, student-led, sustainable alternative to the existing main café rather than a direct replacement. The business model was built around quick-service convenience, student footfall, product differentiation, and sustainability-led value creation.
The project proposed the Rotational Student Management Model, or RSMM, as a core part of the concept. This model would allow students to participate in café operations on a rotating basis, creating employment, training, peer learning, and a stronger sense of campus ownership. This made the café more than a retail outlet. It became a student enterprise model that could support employability, sustainability awareness, and community engagement.
The financial logic was built around low overheads, student staffing, high-volume essentials, and margin-mix optimisation. The product strategy began with proven sellers from the existing café data and then expanded into differentiated sustainable products. This reduced the risk of launching with an unrealistic menu.
The sustainability strategy focused on compostable packaging, reusable-cup incentives, waste recovery, circular economy principles, and a carbon-footprint assessment. The aim was not only to make the café look sustainable, but to embed sustainability into operations, pricing, waste, sourcing, and student behaviour.
Overall, the project moved from a simple café idea to a more developed feasibility proposal supported by data, theory, stakeholder analysis, sustainability logic, and implementation planning.
Skills Applied:
Business feasibility analysis
Excel sales-data analysis
Location analysis
Break-even analysis
Product strategy
Pricing strategy
Margin-mix analysis
Triple Bottom Line analysis
Stakeholder mapping
Power–interest analysis
Risk analysis
Sustainable business design
Creative problem-solving
Key Insight:
The biggest insight from this project was that business creativity becomes stronger when it is grounded in evidence.
At the start, the assignment felt difficult because the brief left many variables open. There was no perfect data, no fixed demand estimate, and no clear answer about whether the café would work. Initially, that ambiguity felt like a weakness. Over time, I realised it was the main challenge of the project: the task was not just to fill in assumptions, but to decide which assumptions could be supported, challenged, or replaced with real evidence.
The sales data changed the direction of the project. Instead of designing the café around what I personally thought would be popular, I used existing customer behaviour to shape the opening product strategy. Water bottles, basic drinks, and other high-volume convenience goods gave the café a realistic foundation. At the same time, the sales-weighting analysis showed that revenue value was not only about top-selling products. Some lower-volume products still mattered because of their contribution to sales value. This helped me think more carefully about the balance between volume, price, and margin.
The second major insight was that location is not objective. In CW1, I treated the courtyard as less convenient than the main café. In CW2, I realised that the same location could be interpreted differently depending on the criteria used. If visibility and weather protection are prioritised, the site looks weak. If outdoor seating, student flow, sustainability, and distinctiveness are prioritised, the site becomes more promising.
This changed how I think about business evaluation. A weak location can become stronger if the operating model is designed around the site’s actual behaviour.
Reflection:
Between CW1 and CW2, my understanding of the project changed significantly.
In CW1, I approached the café mainly as a financial and operational problem. I focused on best-selling items, break-even estimates, product demand, and foot traffic predictions. This was useful, but it was not enough. It made the café look feasible in a narrow sense, but it did not fully explain how the project would create long-term value.
CW2 forced me to treat the café as a strategic intervention shaped by theory, stakeholders, sustainability, and assessment tools. The project became less about asking, “Can this café make money?” and more about asking, “Can this café create economic, social, and environmental value in a way that fits the campus?”
The biggest methodological improvement was the use of real-world data. Because the assignment involved many assumptions, I tried to reduce uncertainty wherever possible. Cold emailing, speaking to café employees, and obtaining actual sales data helped me replace some of the weaker assumptions with stronger evidence. This made the proposal more practical and gave me a clearer starting point for product selection, pricing, and feasibility.
My understanding of stakeholders also evolved. At first, I treated stakeholders as background actors. Later, through Freeman’s stakeholder theory and the power–interest framework, I began to see them as active players who could influence the success or failure of the project. This led to more practical engagement strategies, such as voting portals, loyalty schemes, student participation, sustainability-office involvement, health and safety coordination, and the RSMM model.
The environmental side of the project also became more developed. Instead of treating sustainability as an add-on, I tried to make it part of the operating model. Composting, reusable-cup incentives, packaging choices, waste recovery, local sourcing, and behavioural nudges all became part of the café’s value proposition.
The project also improved my financial thinking. Reviewing sales and footfall data helped me move away from rough assumptions and toward more reliable forecasts. The addition of subscription pricing, loss-leader logic, and margin-mix optimisation made the business model more commercially realistic.
If I were improving the project further, I would conduct a short live survey with students and staff to test willingness to pay, preferred products, and likely purchase frequency. I would also build a more detailed spreadsheet model showing product-level margins, labour scheduling, monthly seasonality, and sensitivity analysis under different conversion rates.
Overall, this project demonstrated my ability to work with ambiguity, gather real-world data, analyse commercial viability, design a sustainability-led business model, and turn a vague brief into a structured, evidence-based proposal.
Professional Value:
This project demonstrates my ability to take an ambiguous business problem, gather practical evidence, analyse sales and footfall data, design a feasible operating model, and connect commercial viability with sustainability and stakeholder value.
