Do a google search on "increase sales coffeehouse" or "Improve sales coffeehouse" or even such things as "effective coffeehouse marketing"... anything along these lines, and you will be faced with an array of utter garbage. Umm - let me revise that - mostly garbage. Almost everything I could find boiled down to: advertising, garbage from people who dont know what they are talking about & expensive consulting firms staffed by people who have not actually owned coffeehouses in 20 years.
Advertising:
I found a video with a guy from some Roaster called Kahwa Coffee who claimed that the single most important thing when setting up a coffeehouse was choosing coffee beans... HA!! What a load of garbage. Sure, having good coffee is important - I spent a good amount of time investigating different coffee suppliers, blends, etc. However, it is number seven or eight on the list of important things to worry about when starting a coffeehouse. The top three things that are WAYYYY more important? 1) location 2) location 3) niche
I stumbled across one of those hokey 'top-10' lists that made me laugh. It was a 'top ten ways to increase revenue and profitability in your coffeehouse" - AWESOME! I quickly clicked across to it... Oddly enough, all 10 involved selling more drinks with syrups, promoting drinks with syrups, putting syrup displays near the cash register.. bla bla bla. I then scrolled down to the bottom of the top 10 list, and discovered this *insightful* top-10 list had been put together by (you guessed it) a syrup manufacturer.
This garbage was sooo common - it really began to tick me off. When you are considering making a huge investment and enormous lifestyle change, you need REAL information, AUTHENTIC direction and SOLID advice. Too many companies are putting forward false advice they dress up as helpful guidance, but is nothing but thinly veiled advertising that will actually distract potential coffeehouse people from the real issues that could make or break the business. A young coffeehouse is very fragile. Something as simple as the owner not being focused on the right issues could be enough to sink a it.
People who dont know what they are talking about:
There were a number of instances of articles or lists generated by people who clearly had not owned a coffeehouse... or had not owned a coffeehouse in a VERY long time... or just worked in some monster organization like Starbucks.
One quick note here - owning a small, single-location, independent coffeehouse is COMPLETELY DIFFERENT from working for some Corporate Coffee Leviathan. Working in the marketing department for Starbucks is more akin to working in the marketing department of Ford, Proctor & Gamble or Taco Bell... large scale advertising and promotion for large mulit-location business concerns is a very different animal from a single,local independent coffeehouse. How do I know this? Simple - I used to work in Corporate America, and now I own a small independent coffeehouse. Why is this important? Because many of these self-proclaimed 'experts' in coffeehouses are ex-corporate-bigwigs that work for some impressive-sounding consulting firm that consults with coffeehouses and charge an arm and a leg. I found one 'consulting' firm that charged $3000-$5000 to drop by your location for a couple days and rain down their 'extensive experience' on your potential coffeehouse. . So, what is some of this wonderful advice they are hawking? One example: I found several that recommended new owners spend alot of time on social media (Facebook and Twitter) to get their name and brand out there. I love tech, and when twitter and facebook started going mainstream, I tried all sorts of experiments with both of these to see how I could use 'new media' to build a coffeehouse. My findings were neatly summarized by Rich Westerfield (owner of Aldo Coffee - a small independent coffeehouse) "Other than some laptop warriors and a handful of certified coffee geeks, NO ONE really pays attention to Twitter or Facebook for coffeehouses." Yes yes yes. Exactly what I found.
I found a handful of articles on eHow that talked about starting a coffeehouse - I'm not sure where they got their information, but much of it was just generic recommendations that sounds good... until you actually do it. Some examples:
- Host Music Events / Poetry slams... On a superficial level, makes sense. Do these events to draw people to your shop, so they get to know the place.. then potentially become long-term customers. Unfortunately, it doesnt work like that. Coffeehouses are all about repeat customers. The most valuable customer is the one who works down the street, and comes in every morning for their latte and muffin. Those customers who come in once and grab a cookie and a coffee, and dont come back because they dont live/work in the area?.... nearly worthless. I have a rule of thumb - 1 1/2 block radius. Most coffeehouses are not destinations in their own right - convenience plays a big role in a customers decision to go to one. Thus, 90% of my customers work, live or transit through (every day) a 1 1/2 block radius from my shop. The people who come in for music / poetry slams etc - these are generally not the people that live/work/transit within the 1 1/2 block radius on a regular basis. They come in once for the poetry slam and they might have a beer and a cookie. (though people who come for music and poetry consume less then other customers - many dont even buy anything!), then come in again six months later.... who cares!! these are not your real customers. POetry and Music do NOT bring in the people you want!
Furthermore, organizing these events takes up valuable time.... and when the event is done, then you have more work cleaning up, puttting stuff away etc.... and there is no long-term, residual benefit. Better to spend your time on something that will have a longer-term impact (like finding ways to reduce your expenses etc.). I've rarely seen a good pop to sales when I've organized some sort of event. Furthremore, when you host music, you have to get a license from those vulture Music Rights companies like BMI, who threaten you with legal action unless you buy some expensive license from them that allows you to play live music. No, to heck with that. Not worth it.
- Coffeehouse Layout - one eHow document talked about the best layout for a coffeehouse. It indicated that the best place for the service counter was in the back of the shop. This is a bad idea. Your most profitable customer is the one who walks in, grabs a latte and muffin and walks out (because they dont use your tables/chairs/heat/ac etc.) . The majority of these customers want to get in and out as fast as possible - they are usually on their way to work and in a rush. You want to make it as fast and easy for these in-and-out customers to use your shop. Part of that speed of service is easy access - Get your counter area RIGHT UP FRONT. so people can peer in the door, see the counter, and realize they can get something fast and easy. it may only take 8 seconds for a person to stride from the front of the shop to the service area in the back, the distance acts as a psychological barrier to people.
- Set up WiFi - Yeah.... sure, but not for the reason stated. The author was concerned with customer access to free WiFi. That is not important at the initial stages. This can wait. However, you MUST have wifi for another more important reason - payments. Most payment systems (gift card machines, credit card acceptance machines, ATM machines etc, all connect to the internet for verification. Without internet access, it makes it very difficult for people to pay you!
Other people in the coffee industry leading you down the wrong path.
There is this strange aspect to the coffee industry that I have never understood - so many roasters and coffeehouse owners focus a disproportionate amount of time and energy on showing you how they travel to these distant, obscure destinations to see where the coffee is grown, dried etc. I fail to see the purpose of this. I believe it is important to support environmentally & socially sustainable practices (such as organic, shade grown, fairly traded coffee), and to ensure top-quality coffee. However, that can all be done from home - there is no compelling business reason for traveling to central Guatamala to shake the farmer's hand that grew the actual coffee. That makes about as much sense as a mechanic traveling to the offshore oilfields of Venezuela to ensure the quality of the oil he is putting in your car. I insist my roaster produce top-quality, sustainable coffee, but I'm not going to waste my time traveling around the world to check up on the supplies. My time is much better used building the business.
Another oddity is this practice of cupping. If you have ever seen people cupping, it is just absurd (and pretentious . There is a very specific process involved in creating the cupping experience... a certain grind of coffee, a certain oz amt with water of a specific temperature. then you 'break the crust' with a spoon, slurp a teaspoon of coffee and swish it around your mouth. Then you are obligated to make some obscure comment about how 'chocolaty, oakie, full-bodied, mildly temperamental" etc the coffee is. What bolderdash. What truly matters is that your customers like your coffee - so dont waste your time doing cupping to test various beans. Just grab 4-5 different types of beans and let your customers taste-test them. Whichever one they (and you) like best, that is the one you use. Your time is WAYYYY too valuable to waste on cupping - your time is better spent devising an effective marketing campaign.
How about those barista competitions?. These are competitions where highly trained baristas show their skills at pulling the best espresso, creating lattes, latte art, cappuccinos etc. People who talk about these competitions pretend as if these events and the skills they demonstrate are vitally important to the success of any coffeehouse. What a load of crap. If you are using good beans, at the right grind on a good espresso machine and you are no over or under pulling your shots, your espresso will be delicious. Only the 0.1% of the population who are serious coffee nuts will know the difference. In short - dont bother with the competitions for now. At some point in the future, when your coffeehouse is thriving and you have some spare time on your hands, it is fun to check them out.... but remember... barista competitions are just games, and have nothing to do with the success or failure of your coffeehouse.
So, what lesson should we draw from this? Be careful what you read. Check the source of the information. Before you take any advice to heart, think about where it comes from, who is giving it and whether this person is qualified to give such advice... or if it just some twisted way to sell their own product. Caveat Emptor.
Thanks for listening!
Duncan
Coffeehouse Guy
On a final note: as you may know, I'm in the process of writing a series of guides to show people how to move from a corporate job to owning a coffeehouse. Unfortunately, they are not going to be ready for a little while. However, If you are REALLY serious about starting your own coffeehouse, and you cant wait for my guides to come out, I also offer a 2-day, one-on-one intensive boot camp on starting a coffeehouse. You come up to New Haven for these two days, and we spend two intensive days going through all the intricacies of starting, owning and operating a successful coffeehouse. If you are interested, send me an email and we'll get it set up: coffeehouseguy1@gmail.com
On a final note: as you may know, I'm in the process of writing a series of guides to show people how to move from a corporate job to owning a coffeehouse. Unfortunately, they are not going to be ready for a little while. However, If you are REALLY serious about starting your own coffeehouse, and you cant wait for my guides to come out, I also offer a 2-day, one-on-one intensive boot camp on starting a coffeehouse. You come up to New Haven for these two days, and we spend two intensive days going through all the intricacies of starting, owning and operating a successful coffeehouse. If you are interested, send me an email and we'll get it set up: coffeehouseguy1@gmail.com
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