Shipping Container Coffee Shops & Cafés
If you’re interested in a modular café or mobile coffee shop, you have a lot options if you choose to establish your business using a shipping container. Standard shipping containers range in size from 20-feet to over 50-feet in length. While a shipping container’s usual ceiling height is eight-feet, six-inches, containers that have a nine-foot, six-inch ceiling are available.
Shipping containers are made with 16-gauge corrugated steel which provides a modern industrial look, but you can alter the appearance of a container with materials such as siding. While Taco Bell decided to leave the external appearance of the containers used to make its first shipping container outlet intact, Starbucks chose to alter the look of its drive-thru shipping container locations by adding reclaimed wood paneling to the outside of each one.
Since shipping containers can be positioned next to or on top of each other and can bear hundreds of thousands of pounds of weight as a function of their design and the materials used to make them, the options you have for the configuration of your shipping container coffee house are nearly limitless.
Although shipping containers can be made to construct a permanent structure, the fact that they were originally made to be transported on boats, trucks and trains makes them ideal for mobile businesses. Since they were moved from location to location and from one form of transportation to another during their shipping careers, shipping containers are outfitted to be picked up and loaded onto a
truck with ease.
Locations for portable coffee shop or café:
Car Parks
Marinas
Dog Parks
Beaches
Construction Sites
Commuting Stations
Business Parks
If you already own a business and want an extra income stream, you may want to put a shipping container café in your own parking lot. You can use your portable coffee shop to serve items that complement what you serve in your permanent location, or you can use it to serve food when your restaurant is closed. For instance, if your permanent establishment only serves lunch and dinner, you can serve breakfast in your shipping container coffee house.
Even though you may not have thought about alternative building materials such as shipping containers before, the versatility they provide has been recognized by industry leaders, including Taco Bell, Subway and Starbucks. Taco Bell debuted its first shipping container store at an annual film and music festival in Austin, Texas in 2015. Starbucks introduced its drive-thru shipping container outlets in 2014 and is already using them in Seattle, Chicago, Denver, Oregon, Kansas City and Colorado.
During the construction of the Freedom Tower in New York City, Subway was tapped for what is perhaps the most creative pop-up restaurant idea to-date, and it was certainly one of the highest. While construction continued on the 105-floor structure, workers found it increasingly difficult to make it to ground level, eat their lunches and return to work on time the higher the building became. Subway solved this problem by using shipping containers to make a portable restaurant that could be lifted to the height of whatever floor the workers were on, saving them valuable time.
Pop-up restaurant ideas aren’t limited to national chain operators, though. Many independent restaurant owners have also recognized the practicality and flexibility that shipping containers provide and have used them to either add onto an existing structure or to create a new one. Asheville, NC residents Matt Logan, Kristie Quinn and chef Mark Rosenstein, used 19 shipping containers to open America’s largest shipping container restaurant in the spring of 2015, for instance. Amazingly, the structure was installed in just three days.
Ska Brewing opened the Container Restaurant to offer guests fare that would complement their beer tasting experience when they visited the brewery’s Durango, CO campus. The Container Restaurant consists of two containers that are positioned on top of each other. The Container Restaurant uses its lower level to prepare food while its upper container serves as an outdoor patio where people can eat their food and enjoy an elevated view of the brewery’s property.
While shipping containers are ideal for large-scale operations because they can be used to build outward as well as upward, they are also perfect for smaller businesses. If you’re trying to think of a pop-up restaurant idea that will enable you to enjoy the many benefits that come with having a mobile structure made from durable materials and the strong structure of a modified shipping container, you may want to consider the following popular ideas:
Portable Coffee Shop
Shipping Container Cafe
Modular Bar
Pop-Up Beer Garden
