At Caffe Culture this year much of what Hugh and I will be doing is talking about marketing.
In our coffeeshopquestion survey (which if you haven’t filled it out yet - please DO!) the biggest issue so far is an inability to attract new customers. Therefore this will be a major part of our talk.
One [...]
Today’s Guardian has yet another story about the closure of pubs and clubs.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/jun/06/bars-pubs-bust
We’ve talked about this many times and in many formats but it continues to be a great opportunity for coffee shops. The reality is that the big three historical centres of a community are all disappearing:
1. Churches - as a nation we really [...]
Hugh and I were kindly invited by Jeffery Young of Allegra Strategies to attend the UK Coffee Leader Summit on the day previous to Caffe Culture. These events are always useful from a networking perspective (even though that’s generally an expression that puts the fear of god into me) but there was some great content [...]
On Sunday and Monday of this week Hugo and I were speaking at the Hotelympia show in London. Ultimately both talks went very well and we had good audiences at both but it was a graphic illustration of the need to have a strong “reason why” in terms of promotion. There had been very little [...]
Every coffee business of almost any type (even the unsuccessful ones) manages to generate some fiercely loyal customers. These customers very often visit every day and sometimes will visit several times a day. Occasionally they can be irritating and offer you all sorts of advice that you could easily do without. But [...]
I have been on my travels in the last 6 weeks and thinking of my trip am reminded of a brilliant comment a Brazillian made to me ;
Coffee is like Sex …. Everybody wants it but not many know what good is!
Businesses spend a lot of time and energy extolling the virtue of their coffee. [...]
