so ...breakfast in a hostel?

[DullM]

I think many travelers hate the owner of a hostel trying to "nickel and dime" them so if i really can start my hostel, I will give much things for free as possible. Those include free washing machine, free cleaned water, free internet, free kitchen, free towel, free toilet paper. But when talking about a free breakfast, it's a dilemma. In many places, a dorm bed only costs Y25-45 depending on its rental payment, and it would be quite hard to provide free breakfast.

With a real meat sausage (Y7-10), ham(around 40 per 1jin), two eggs(Y2), two sliced of bread(Y2) with good fruit jam and butter (Y2-3), and real orange juice (Y3-5) or coffee(Y2-3?), the cost is really high. Even worst is that many westerners expect everything cheap in China, and didn't realise that having a western life in China could actually be even more expensive than their home countries because many items need to be imported.

When I hang out with my friend to a pizza place, some of them looked suspicious when they found that a pizza costs Y45-50. "That's the same price I paid in the Netherlands. Unbelievable." "In Domino, I pay the same price for two pizzas." "No way, they don't need to import these cheeses, I'm pretty sure that China has mozzarella cheese."

One of my friends tried to offer a free breakfast when his dorm bed is only sold for Y30. The breakfast has two slices of bread, one instant nescafe, jam, that's all. But the offer was cancelled within 1 month after he got a negative rating because of these free breakfast. Then my friend told me that never ever think of giving breakfast for free unless you can charge the western price for a dorm bed.

In a hostel, if the breakfast is free, what do think other travelers expect?

If they need to pay it, how much would they pay and what they would expect?

If you were me, how would you provide the breakfast? (sell or give it for free)

[aristotle1990]

When I hang out with my friend to a pizza place, some of them looked suspicious when they found that a pizza costs Y45-50. "That's the same price I paid in the Netherlands. Unbelievable." "In Domino, I pay the same price for two pizzas." "No way, they don't need to import these cheeses, I'm pretty sure that China has mozzarella cheese."

I've wondered about this two -- how hard is it to make cheese and tomato sauce in China? You could probably make a killing by figuring out how to make good, cheap pizza.

[DullM]

@aristotle1990, I had no experience in making cheese but i got the same question. As long as you have the cheese, you actually get enough culture to make cheese. In Yunan, I got some local cheese but the taste.... is more like spoiled tofu with a horrible texture. In Japan, there's also a local cheese but the taste sucks.

For the tomato sauce, I can see some good local brand for tomato sauce and the british tomato beans in Malaysia, so i don't think it's difficult to make it. China doesn't come up with a good local brand for this probably because it's just not yet common in the Chinese cuisine. However, in case i need this sauce, i think i will make it by myself. There's a lot of recipes available.

[yonglin]

I will give much things for free as possible. Those include free washing machine, free cleaned water, free internet, free kitchen, free towel, free toilet paper.

This is called "bundling", not "giving away things for free". Presumably, you want to cover the cost of these items, or even make some profit of providing them. Thus, you will need to raise the room price by at least the cost of providing them. If done right, this could be a clever business strategy, as you get people to pay for things that they don't actually need.

Personally, I never stayed in hostels targeting backpackers when travelling in China, so I don't know what's common practice. However, given the going rate of Western food as I can remember it, the going price for the type of breakfast you describe must be something like at least 40 yuan, no? Bundling this with your dorm bed is probably not feasible, as it would cut off a large chunk of the prospective customers. If you want to provide free breakfast, maybe look into some cheaper (Chinese-style?) alternatives (e.g., zhou, doujiang, youtiao, buns), perhaps with the option to upgrade to a western style breakfast? Or do western people travelling in China really dislike Chinese breakfast items for some reason?

[aristotle1990]

Definitely has to do with the cheese, which usually seems to be imported in China. Don't see why Pizza Hut can't get a local farm to produce cheese that meets their quality standards.

[DullM]

For the Chinese people, I think they may prefer this Turkish pizza because it contains no cheese. Some of my Chinese friends resist to having any food with melted Chinese cheese (sorry for the typo but just keep it) because "it looks so terrible as if someone vomits a yellow and red mixture over a slice of bread".

And.... mmm, maybe i'm off topic now.

[DullM]

@yonglin, I would be happy if many of them were okay with the Chinese breakfast but the 6-month casual research seems to suggest otherwise.

Many people dislike some Chinese food that I think likable - tofu brain (sweet vegan tofu soup), Cantonese style porridge, famous Cantonese "old-fire" soup (some said it too light and watery), anything with bones. Some backpackers who are stingy about the dorm bed are more willing to pay for having a good breakfast to kickstart their whole day but I don't know how big is those "some".

A little bit surprise for me is that many people seem to enjoy the hot pot (not necessarily the Sichuanese spicy oily style). I came up with an idea to serve hot pot breakfast. The soup is vegetarian carrot broth with some light dipping sauce, 10 kinds of all-you-can-eat vegetables. Y15 for each. This is very easy to make. The drawback is that it may take some more time to finish it.

[Shelley]

Hi ya,

Why not have 2 prices one including breakfast and one not. People can choose. In UK we have Bed and Breakfast. the cost includes breakfast and people know this. If you just want a room you use a hotel. If you don't want breakfast there is no refund at a bed & breakfast. At a hotel breakfast is an "extra". I would not expect meals from a hostel. But a simple breakfast tea, or coffee or orange juice, toast , marmalade, cereals etc would be what i would expect. Nothing cooked.It is just somewhere to sleep cheap. There would probably be coffee vending machine in the lobby along with some other vending machines. Hostels alway make me think of students backpacking and cycling. No insult intended but they always seem to me to be cheap and basic, which is great for young people, students etc. It sounds like a really fun idea to open a hostel in china, go for it :rolleyes: and enjoy it.

P.S. How did we get on to pizza making? Shelley

[skylee]

Could you run a cafe attached to your hostel? The cafe can take in customers other than the guests in the hostel and offer a wider range of food. It can offer discounted prices to the hostel guests, who can choose to eat (breakfast and/or other meals) at this cafe or go elsewhere. And you charge the hostel guests for the bed only. Is this possible?

I have never stayed in a hostel in China.

PS - But I have stayed in many hotels in different places in the world, and I contributed hotel reviews to tripadvisor occassionally. If a hotel offers good breakfast, I might praise it. If it is bad, I might criticise it. But if it does not offer breakfast, well no big deal, unless no food is available in the vicinity of the hotel.

PPS - Or could you outsource the breakfast? Make a deal with a local cafe and send the hostel guests there to have breakfast? Some B&B in Italy do this. It just seems to me that your plan to provide cheap, good breakfast that caters for western guests (who as you describe are very demanding, wanting to pay very little and expecting a lot) might not be workable/sustainable given the scale of operation.

[gougou]

I definitely wouldn't give away a full English breakfast - they usually are more expensive than dorm beds in China. Maybe you could give a dorm bed away with your English breakfast? ;)

I think it's a good idea to give people a fixed price, not ten options (airlines take note!). If you find that doesn't work with the breakfast you envisioned, consider skylee's idea of the separate cafe - and especially the part with the discount: you'll want to make people feel they're getting something special, not that they're being (over-)charged.

I reckon the reason that your friend got bad reviews for the free breakfast could be that he was promoting it too much? Maybe people were expecting meat and sausage and only found jam, of course they'll be unhappy. If you don't promise a breakfast, but deliver it, you might find you're getting positive reviews instead. Like they say - underpromise and overdeliver.

Also, have you tried looking into other possible breakfasts? How about omelettes, they could be pretty cheap to make? Or sandwiches?

[anonymoose]

Definitely has to do with the cheese, which usually seems to be imported in China. Don't see why Pizza Hut can't get a local farm to produce cheese that meets their quality standards.

So are you saying Pizza Hut imports their cheese? Where from? North Korea? Pizza Hut is disgusting here.

[frank the tank]

Buying in bulk, using local products and making things from scratch you should be able to put together a good English breakfast for less than 4 kuai (not including labor and utilities). Pizza can also be done cheap as you can buy cheese in bulk quiet cheaply and easily.

I think most places charge a lot because they can. It's really that simple.

I had a restaurant and I was amazed when we added up the cost price of our English breakfast to less than 4 kuai. I , like most people, assumed it would be a lot more expensive.

Just so you know, we had home made baked beans, roasted tomatoes, bread, bacon, eggs and garlic and butter mushrooms....

Personally I wouldn't mind paying for washing machines, towels and toilet paper if I was getting breakfast for free but at the same time I wouldbt mind paying for breakfast and getting the other things for free.

[anonymoose]

DullM, why are you so intent on starting a hostel? I think that unless you are based in one of the major tourist cities (Beijing or Shanghai), you will find it hard to get more than a trickle of customers. This is of course just based on my own feeling, rather than any statistics, but it seems to me that, for the most part, the majority of travellers who go to the second-tier destinations are on package tours. Of course there is also a number of independent travellers, but of these, what proportion would go out of their way to save 100 yuan per night? Of those that do, how many will know about your hostel? If you are going to charge at the top end of the range you mentioned in your first post, 45 yuan per night, even with 20 guests per night, that is still less than 1000 yuan. With your overheads, staff and other costs, even if profitable, it doesn't sound like a very lucrative business to me.

[aristotle1990]

So are you saying Pizza Hut imports their cheese? Where from? North Korea? Pizza Hut is disgusting here.

America, apparently. At least some of their cheese. Could be that different places get their cheeses from different sources, though for consistency reasons this usually isn't the case. KFC, for example, uses only potatoes imported from America:

The shortage resulted from logistics problems at the U.S. headquarters of Tricon Global Restaurants Inc., which owns the giant fast-food chain. Potatoes used at KFC outlets in China are normally imported from the United States.

KFC shops in smaller cities also will face a "potato crisis" as soon as their supply runs out, according to Tricon Global's Chinese branch, which said at least 5 million tons of mashed potatoes are consumed each year at KFC outlets nationwide.

Last month, KFC tried to seek homegrown supply from three potato suppliers in Shanghai and Inner Mongolia, but found their potatoes were not up to standards.

"We were satisfied with the samples, but the real products in their fields had many problems, such as the unsuitable size and impurity," said Xu Zhen, public affairs manager of the operator of the KFC chain in China. "Their processing, storage and transportation conditions also need to be improved."

[imron]

Don't include breakfast in the price of the room. Just make sure your hostel has a place where guests can order breakfast if they like.

There used to be a great hostel in Beijing (now long gone) attached to the Jinghua Hotel located on the south-west third-ring road. Out the back they had an indoor bar area, with undercover outdoor tressle tables. Rooms were cheap, and the bar offered a mix of Western and Chinese food (breakfast, lunch and dinner) at reasonable prices all throughout the day.

In my opinion that would be your best bet. That way people who want to pay for breakfast can pay for breakfast, people who want to get their own breakfast elsewhere can get that elsewhere, and you don't have to worry about increasing the cost of the dorm to cover breakfast that maybe not everyone will want or like.

Plus, that common area really added to the vibe of the place. It was one of the best things about the hostel.

[gougou]

Of course there is also a number of independent travellers, but of these, what proportion would go out of their way to save 100 yuan per night?

Many, I am sure. There are a lot of backpackers that can and do stretch 100 kuai over a few days! And backpackers must make up a large part of the independent travelers?

Having said that, you indeed shouldn't be opening a hostel to get rich fast. There are ant farms for that.

[liuzhou]

(now long gone)

Er, I wonder why.

[imron]

Location-wise it wasn't so great, but back then, traffic in Beijing was still bearable and it was only 20-30 mins to the city center by bus. It shut down when the hotel decided to make renovations, and they converted the previously single storey buildings that housed the hostel dorms and the bar into tall buildings to increase total overall capacity.

Management was probably also glad to get rid of the foreign backpacker crowd.

[Lu]

I think many backpackers are westerners expecting a western-style (whatever that is) breakfast, while cheap breakfasts in China are Chinese-style. So free youtiao and doujiang would probably be financially feasible but not appealing to most guests, while the breakfast really appealing to guests would be to expensive to give away for free.

I agree with imron and skylee: make the breakfast paid and good, but optional. In the spirit of not charging extra for stuff, you can have a kitchen with fridge open to the guests so they can buy/make their own breakfast.

The only hostel I ever stayed at that had free breakfast was in Antwerp, the breakfast was extremely basic: bread and condiments (jam, peanut butter). The hostel in Beijing I stayed at last summer had a breakfast that wasn't free but was very nice. There were probably plenty of places nearby where guests could get a cheaper Chinese breakfast.

[Guest realmayo]

Suggest you consider, if offering Chinese breakfast, to advertise it as real breakfast that Chinese people enjoy eating every day, making sure write it up in a nice descriptive way with plenty of info so that: (i) people who've been in China a while and have got used to stuff like doujiang, youtiao etc, will be happy and (ii) you encourage new arrivals to China that they're getting something authentic but at the same time approachable (because what you've written will talk them through what the food is, how to pronounce it/order it, etc).