Open a self-service coffee shop in Kraków

Kraków for your own business: who buys coffee to go here

Anyone who travels across Kraków every day to work or to lectures knows who buys coffee on the move: people at the stop at seven in the morning, students between lectures, traders at the market. These are the people a self-service coffee shop earns from. It needs no tables and no barista, and it stands where people walk past.

Most of these people are at interchange stops in the morning: Nowy Kleparz, Rondo Ofiar Katynia, Teatr Bagatela, Dworzec Główny Tunel. Every day people travel to the centre from the housing estates of Kurdwanów, Nowy Bieżanów or Os. Złotego Wieku, and many of them buy a coffee before they get on the tram.

The second large group is students. Around Akademia Górniczo-Hutnicza, at Kampus 600-lecia Odnowienia Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego and near Collegium Medicum Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego it is busy all through the teaching day. In summer there are far fewer students, so a location near a university is better placed where there is also a stop or a shop nearby.

The third group is office workers. In business centres such as Quattro Business Park people drink coffee several times a day. And on Saturdays people in Kraków go to Galeria Krakowska, Bonarka City Center or Galeria Bronowice, so a location in a shopping mall sells on Saturdays too.

How much it costs to open a coffee shop in Kraków

A turnkey indoor coffee shop costs from €4 427. For that you get a branded kiosk with LED lighting, a Saeco or Jetinno coffee machine, a contactless payment terminal, Kavil brand design and telemetry. The final amount depends on the coffee machine model, options and installation method: for example, the banknote and coin acceptors are added separately.

You pay in two parts. First we sign the contract, which sets out the coffee machine model, the equipment set, the amount and the deadlines. You make the prepayment only after signing, and the rest during installation.

Each month you will have rent, which depends on the site, taxes and the bank’s fee for card payments. You pay us no percentage of sales: Kavil has 0 royalties.

We quote the price of an outdoor coffee shop and the cold-drink format on request. If you plan several locations at once, there is a wholesale offer: from 2 to 10 coffee shops.

Where to put a coffee shop in Kraków

The map above shows more than 4 000 places in Kraków that people pass every day: stops, neighbourhood shops, supermarkets, business centres, universities, petrol stations, stations. Click on your neighbourhood and see what is nearby. These are the places where we start the search.

Have you already spotted a free corner in a shopping mall or a spot by a stop? Send us the address, and we will calculate the income for that exact site free of charge. If you do not have an address yet, we can take on the search: we check the footfall, negotiate with the landlord and show you the options. You pay for the search only when you like the site and the contract with the landlord is signed. There is no prepayment for the search.

Which format to choose in Kraków

An indoor coffee shop stands in a shopping mall, business centre, pharmacy or university. Customers are already inside, so rain and frost do not hurt sales. This is the format people choose most often.

An outdoor coffee shop stands on its own and needs no premises. It works round the clock in any weather, and its body is vandal-resistant. It goes where there is no building nearby: by a stop, a P+R car park or at a market exit.

Cold-drink is for summer: iced coffee, shakes and cold drinks. We also set up the menu of a standard coffee shop for the site: americano, latte, cappuccino, mochaccino, hot chocolate, tea with lemon.

The format is best chosen for a specific address. First we look at where people walk, and then at what will fit there and how much it will cost.

What you need to launch if you have a main job

You need no business degree or experience. We open turnkey coffee shops even for people who have never run a business: we train you from scratch, and from the day the contract is signed a personal manager looks after you. We help with the bank account and the payment terminal step by step.

The location itself takes about 15 minutes once every two or three days: topping up ingredients and collecting the takings. You can combine this with your main job. Sales and stock levels show up on your phone, so you know in advance when to go to the location.

This is how it goes. You leave your number, we call back, calculate the income for your neighbourhood, pick the equipment set and show you the coffee shop on Zoom. This stage moves at your pace. Then come the contract and the prepayment, and from that day we count the time: we build the coffee shop in our own workshop, look for a site in parallel if you have asked us to, and then deliver, install and set it up. It takes up to 30 days to the first cup.

How much Kavil partners earn

We calculate profit in Kraków for a specific site, because it depends on footfall, drink prices, the equipment set and costs. The calculation is free. To show how the format works, here are real figures from our partners in Ukraine.

Taras from Lviv has a network of 3 locations in retail areas and busy walkways. After 5 months of operation it brought in more than €1 770 of net profit a month. Vladyslav from Uman has 2 locations indoors with a steady flow of people and after 5 months was earning more than €1 480 a month. Bohdan from Odesa has 1 indoor location near an entrance: 80 drinks a day and more than €880 a month after 6 months of operation.

These are the results of partners in Ukraine for December 2024, converted into euros at the NBU rate of 50.64 UAH/€ as of 7 October 2026. Each location has its own result. What these locations have in common is that they all stand where people pass every day, like the stops and shopping malls on the Kraków map.

Coffee franchise in Kraków: what you get

You buy the equipment, and the business is entirely yours. 0 royalties, so you do not have to hand us part of your takings each month. The equipment comes with a warranty, and we write its term into the contract, which you see before you pay.

You get the beans, ingredients, cups and the coffee shop itself directly from us. We roast our own coffee, and our beans are 25% cheaper than competitors'. We build the coffee shops in our own workshop, and we buy Saeco and Jetinno coffee machines directly, with no dealer markup.

If sales drop, we go through the figures together and look for the reason, and when a site turns out to be weak, we plan a move. If you change your mind or the location doesn’t work out: we will buy back the equipment at 60% of its value, and the buyback terms are written into the contract.

You become part of a network of more than 700 locations in 7 countries. If you are also thinking about another city, see where to put a coffee shop in Warsaw and in Wrocław.

FAQ: a self-service coffee shop in Kraków