Thousands of Cafés Open and Vanish Every Year

The New York Times once turned its lens on South Korea's café-opening frenzy under the headline "South Korea's Café Problem." Seoul alone is home to more than 10,000 cafés, a density that rivals Paris and ranks among the highest in the world. Yet the article also surfaced a sobering reality: for the first time in 60 years, closures have outpaced openings.

What stands out in the piece is the reality these owners actually face. Many work 13 hours a day or more and still take home only 3.6 to 4.5 million won a month (roughly $2,700 to $3,400), and most shut their doors within a year or two. That points to a problem too fundamental to be explained by market saturation or fiercer competition alone.

The Gap Between Fantasy and Reality

Plenty of would-be owners picture a café as an escape from the dull nine-to-five grind. Scrolling past the success stories of buzzy, Instagram-famous "hot spots," they convince themselves that easy money is within reach. The reality is nothing of the sort.

Running a café is an all-encompassing business in which one person has to handle everything—marketing, interior design, menu development. And in a culture organized around social media, how photogenic a drink is now matters more than how it tastes. That shift demands a completely different set of skills from the owner than the job once required.

The Limits of Opening a Shop Without Inner Preparation

The most important problem the NYT article exposes is that owners pour their energy into outward preparation. They obsess over location analysis and interior design, but never stop to ask whether they themselves are built for the grind of retail.

Do you have the physical and mental stamina to repeat the same 13-hour routine every day? Can you keep your composure and keep serving even when a customer is rude? Can you tidy the shop and prepare for tomorrow just as diligently on days when sales don't come? These are the questions to settle in advance.

Training Your Retail Instincts Comes First

Success in opening a café starts not with capital or a clever concept, but with sharpening the owner's "retail instincts." That isn't something built overnight; it's a core capability that has to be trained systematically, long before the doors open.

Start by examining your own daily habits. Assess honestly whether you can wake at a set time each day and keep a consistent routine, and whether you can hold your focus even amid the monotony. It also helps to ask family members or close friends for candid feedback on how well you manage your emotions and respond to stress.

A Shift in Perspective for Running a Café That Lasts

The problems in Korea's café market that the NYT flagged ultimately trace back to owners who aren't ready. Rather than the vague hope that "I'll be the lucky one," what has to come first is clear-eyed self-assessment and methodical preparation.

A café isn't simply a place that sells coffee; it's a space where you endure the rhythm of daily life and build lasting relationships with your customers. Only once you can manage both the visible and the invisible are you truly ready to begin.

For today's café boom to mature in a healthy direction, owners need to start by examining and developing their own retail instincts. That is the only way to escape the statistic of "thousands disappearing every year" and build a business that lasts.