1.    Connect with the Customer

As an independent coffee retailer, everything you do should be quality driven.  If the product is not the best, why go to your store before one of the large chains?  As an independent retailer, you have the greatest opportunity in the industry to connect with the coffee consumers.  By building trust and confidence within the consumer and your staff, you position yourself as the local “coffee expert,” which will allow you to provide the proper education for your staff and customers to increase your sales and brand image.

2.    Education is Contagious

As the owner or manager of the store, it is your responsibility to know everything about the products you are selling.  This includes everything from country of origin, roast profile, nuances, as well as general coffee knowledge to carry on conversations with interested customers.

Building knowledge with your staff is the most important part of this step.  Every person in the staff must buy into the idea of fresh roasted coffee, and only serving the best coffee at that.  This is much easier to do when hiring only coffee lovers.  Coffee lover or not, it should be the responsibility of the owner/manager to get committed to the coffee culture, from there, your staff will get on board.  Hold weekly tasting tests with the staff, keep a tasting journal, and even give out coffee quizzes with prizes for highest scores.  Pass out educational materials, and preach proper coffee and espresso preparation.  Coffee education should be a never ending process.  This forces the staff to realize this isn’t just a job; it’s a culture that influences sales dramatically.

There is no single thing that you can do to help you sell more whole bean coffee than having a competent, knowledgeable, and trustworthy staff.

3.    Internal and External Marketing

With more and more chains popping up selling aggressively mediocre coffee, it is more important than ever to distance yourself from the big man and promote your independence and individuality.  What sets you apart from Starbucks? Dunkin Donuts?  This should be the first question you ask yourself before creating a marketing plan.  Market yourself in your advertisements and marketing with the intention to highlight the best products you have to offer, while maintaining your stores individuality.  In this 2009 economic climate, the new consumer is not always a price consumer, but rather a value consumer.  The extra fifty cents a cup is worth it to them if the differences are apparent (and marketed).

Dedicate an entire area of your store to Whole bean coffee.  The bigger the better.  If you just throw a couple bags up, it will show that your coffee is a side item and it is not a serious part of your operation, when in reality it should be a basis.  If a customer sees that you take whole bean coffee seriously, it shows that you are a coffee company that actually takes coffee seriously!  This may sound ridiculous, but you would be surprised how many coffee shops exist with employees that don’t know where their coffee comes from, how to properly brew a shot of espresso, or how to up sell a customer.  In a full scale café, it is not unheard of to sell more than 50lbs of coffee per week retail if marketed and maintained properly.

Studies have recently showed that over 50% of people that brew coffee at home, regularly visit a coffee shop.  This study comes at an interesting economic time, where it becomes more and more essential to capture and capitalize on all potential business.  This study shows that many of your current customers are buying coffee elsewhere to brew at their house.  With new economic rules in people’s routine, instead of wondering why they are not coming in everyday anymore, why not capitalize and sell them a pound to brew at home?  Consumers are not cutting back on their caffeine intake; they are just being smarter about it.

4.    Sustainability

There are many applications for the word sustainability within the coffee industry however, for our purposes we are going to apply it to the overall quality of your operation.  During a day when mediocrity is heavily marketed as the best, it becomes more and more vital for independents to uphold it’s commitment to the community, continue to be focused on quality and education, and by doing so, it should become very clear that you have two incredibly powerful assets over the large chains.  The first being your individuality and second being the ability to connect with customers like no other big business can.  It becomes a matter of managing these two assets properly and you will create sustainability within your business.

By: Matt Swenson

As always, If you have any questions or comments, please shoot me an email at matt@evansandkingcoffee.com