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 [...]
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 [...]
Today The Coffee Boys move into the funky new Web 2.0 world - we’re getting down there with the hip media kids and at the moment they’re staring at us in a “freak” fashion but we’re here to stay.
Hugh and I will be producing a lot more of these in the future but hopefully it [...]
When we first set up our businesses we are 100% convinced that we can and will do a better job than the competition. We list out the factors that we will do better, that we’ll relentlessly focus on until we have this wonderful business that clearly offers a “superior experience”. We smirk, snigger and discuss [...]
I’m just back from nearly three weeks in the US and spent considerable time in New York - it is, as ever, just about the most stimulating city on the planet.
I saw some amazing retailing and some inspirational restaurants but I have to say the quality of the coffee bars (that I saw anyway) wasn’t [...]
Why are you doing what you do?
What is the outcome?
What are you slogging away day to day for?
Most people simply can’t answer these questions within their business. You must be able to clearly state what it is that you want out of the business in an effort to properly move towards that. Do [...]
I’m increasingly obsessed with this concept since it applies to such a large extent in so much of our lives.
Why does Tiger Woods want to keep getting better at golf for example? What drove Michael Schumacher, despite so many years at the top of Formula One, to still work harder than anyone else and [...]
Tomorrow evening in the US Starbucks are closing all their stores to retrain their baristas. They’ve pulled together some nifty new milk frothing techniques and changed a couple of the rules in terms of pulling shots. It’s their latest attempt to get themselves back on track after a pretty dismal year.
All round the world cool [...]
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 [...]
Coming through Edinburgh airport for the second time in as many weeks I was again struck by just how superb a job the West Cornwall Pasty Company do. They have the last stand in a long line of food and coffee operations but their branding and use of great images is so brilliant that [...]
