How can Chiang Mai cafes be profitable?

I visit CM a few months every year and usually visit coffee shops once or twice a day and most usually have one or two customers in the hour that I’m there in the morning or afternoon.

Yet these cafes have nice upscale interior design, top of the line espersso machines, 4-5 staff doing not much.

Is the cost of opening and running a cafe in CM so low that they only need to sell a few dozen coffees and cakes per day?

Or are most of thse money losing cafes that are a hobby of the owners or some other front for other purposes?

I can’t wrap my head around the economics of these cafes or why people keep opening new cafes when CM seems completely saturated in low traffic/low sales cafes.

Anyone have insight on how they stay in business?

View Reddit by loganedwards – View Source