Frozen Hot Chocolate
Hot chocolate is a favorite among almost all kids during the winter, but there is no reason to restrict it to only months when snow is in the forecast. Just about any powder or liquid based hot chocolate can be served as a frozen beverage, just by adding ice, water and blending. Big Train even offers a “Frozen Hot Chocolate” and “Frozen White Chocolate” in their 20 Below® line.

Creams
Creams are similar to milkshakes, but venture beyond your traditional chocolate and vanilla flavors. By only using a powdered base mix such as vanilla bean, milk, ice and flavoring syrup, you can offer cream flavors ranging from pomegranate to peanut butter. Big Train also offers a variety of powdered creams in their Kidz Kreamz® line, which features Bubble Gum, Cotton Candy and Orange Cream.

Slushes
Slushes are just like frozen granita beverages found in convenient stores, typically offered in cherry and blue raspberry. Slushes, however, can be offered in dozens of flavors, and they don’t include nearly as much sugar or artificial food coloring. Slushes don’t take a lot of effort, and they do not require a big expense granita machine. They can be quickly and easily prepared in your blender, just add a 16oz cup of ice, 3oz of water and 3oz of your desired flavored syrup from Torani, Monin & DaVinci. Easy and inexpensive, slushes are a great way to satisfy customers of all ages.

Italian Sodas
Soda is something that every kid can understand, and the idea of trying something new can be a difficult hurdle to overcome for most young people. By pointing out how similar Italian soda is to regular soda, up-selling to kids can be easier than you think. In addition to the fact that Italian sodas are relatively easy to prepare, it shouldn’t be hard to develop a youthful clientele.

Toppings
Toppings are a perfect way to top off any drink! It not only increases the value of the drink, but it also allows you to customize a drink and make it unique. With endless possibilities, toppings such as whipped cream, sprinkles, marshmallows, cookie crumbs, candy bits and much more, your drinks will be sure to catch the eyes of children of all ages.

The purpose of selling a wide variety of kids drinks is not necessarily to make money off of the kids drinks themselves, but to increase the total sale of their parents order. At first, it starts off with a child coming in with their mom or dad and asking for a drink for themself. Then that child will remember that drink and ask to come back periodically as a treat, and before you know it, it’s the children bringing their parents into your shop, who will most likely place an order for their usual (more expensive) café drink. Parents can be very hesitant to spend money on large drinks that kids will never finish, so consider offering kids sizes for the drinks that are intended for children. Adding a children’s drink menu can make even higher margins for small sizes seem attractive, because the prices are lower than adult portions.

Parents can also show hesitation when the drinks on the kids menu don’t seem healthy. It is important to stress the healthy, low sugar aspects of natural smoothies and other kid oriented beverages, otherwise you run the risk of competing with lower quality competitors.

I would suggest your next coupon be a Buy 1 Get 1 Free or BOGO; free is always more enticing than $1.00 off or .50¢ off. Here is a comparison of what you might expect in terms of cost:

16oz. Mocha @ $3.50
Cost = ~.75¢
Profit= ~$2.75

.50¢ off:
Cost= ~.75¢
Profit= ~$2.25

BOGO:
Cost= ~$1.50
Profit= ~$2.00

The BOGO offer costs you about .25¢ more, but very rarely will someone consume both drinks. More than likely, they will share this with a coworker, friend or family member. Why does that matter? Now two people are drinking your product instead of one, and since it’s being delivered by someone they know, it’s like word of mouth advertising plus a sample. That’s well worth the .25¢ difference. This also prevents someone coming in to use a coupon and then going back to the chains once they run out of coupons.

I would also suggest a bounce-back coupon. This could be the same as your BOGO above. I would only give this away periodically to help you build your daily customer counts. Also, I would only give these away after 9:30 am or so, and only to customers who did not present a coupon already on that visit. Lastly, make sure they are given with their change, to avoid them using the coupon on that visit – make it clear to your staff that it is for their next visit.

Next month, you may want to consider a slight variation on the BOGO- that is to hand them out after noon and make them valid only from open to 11am. The point of this is to get your afternoon customers into the habit of making you their morning coffee choice as well. And if they know they cannot come in the morning, maybe they will give the coupon to someone else who would.

You see, it is always about trying to get them to come back!

Always keep in mind that some of the best marketing is cheap. Standing by the road with a sign is one way, coupons are another. I’m not a fan of mass media like newspaper, TV or radio for a local cafes and coffee houses. Broadcast is too vast, too expensive and you really do not get a good hit rate in your immediate area, which is where most of your customers are. More than likely, anything that hits more than three miles from your store is a waste. Marketing yourself locally with coupon strategies is often cheaper and more effective.

1) What is the NY US “C” futures price that coffee is traded on? The NY “C” price is based on the commodity market on any given day. It is the base price used for coffee purchasing. We then pay a differential, which is added to the overall “C” price.

2) What is a “differential?” Differential is the difference between the base, or “C” price of the green coffee and the final price that we pay. Differential is determined by the coffee broker, the farm, or the country of origin, and is based on the quantity and quality available, in the long and short term.

3) What costs are involved in getting the beans from the farms and ports to our roasting facility in Raleigh, NC? A carrying cost is added for any contract that is purchased over time, to cover storage in New York, insurance on the coffees, etc. Often it is represented by 3 – 5 cents per pound, green. To ship coffee from a farm to the US, insurance must be purchased for the coffee. It is then sealed into a shipping container and goes through customs and port authority just like any other inbound shipment. Then it is unloaded, palletized and brought to storage facilities for a fee.

4) What factors cause the “C” and/or differentials to change? Outside commodity trading effects the “c” price of coffee. For example, if oil increases, so do transportation costs. Weather also plays a big factor – most notably weather in Brazil, since it is the largest producer of coffee today. Crop forecasts and predictions in Brazil, Colombia or even Vietnam can affect the overall “C” price of coffee. Let’s say an origin country is experiencing months of poor weather conditions and social strife. Economic forecasters can probably assume that coffee production would be less than what was expected and what consumers demanded. The shortfall would likely drive the “C” price up.

5) How does the quality of the coffee affect its price? The better the quality, the more work is involved during harvesting, processing, etc., therefore the differential is greater and thus, the coffee is more costly.

6) How do certifications (Organic, Fair Trade, Utz, etc.) affect the price of green coffee? More effort is involved in certifications, and the costs of certification agencies add into the overall price.

Also, keep in mind that one pound of green coffee typically only yields around 3/4 of a pound after roasting.

Organic: Organic products are developed with an approach that views the farm as an integral part of the global ecosystem. Emphasis is placed on recycling, composting, soil health and biological activity with the goal of long-term protection of the farm environment. Synthetic chemicals are rigorously avoided. In accordance with the 1990 Organic Foods Production Act, effective October 21, 2002, the US Department of Agricultural regulated which products can be labeled “organic,” “made with organic ingredients” or “100% organic.” Only products that meet the organic foods, production, processing and handling criteria are eligible to be labeled as USDA Certified.  Certified organic handlers per the USDA National Organic Program are inspected annually.

Kosher: There are many different kosher certification agencies whose principal objectives are to ensure the ingredients used in a product; the processing methods; and handling of the product meets strict Jewish dietary guidelines. Kosher certified products offer assurance to the consumer about the purity of the ingredients used to make it.

Shade Grown: A coffee that is shade grown is one considered to be grown in the canopy of taller, shade trees. These trees can be a variety of species and with a variety of sparseness and heights. Not only does coffee thrive in shaded areas, but the acidic soil that the coffee plant grows in also acts as a natural fertilizer for these trees which provide ideal habitats for several native birds, bats and insects.

Bird Friendly: Coffees produced in a shade canopy that offers habitats for native and migratory bird populations are considered Bird-Friendly™. The Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center (SMBC) has developed a set of strict criteria for evaluating shade coffee farms. An independent, third party inspector determines whether a farm meets these criteria or not. Only those farms that also meet organic certification standards are eligible to be certified as “Bird-Friendly”™ companies.

Fair Trade: In its simplest form, Fair Trade means that the producer of the coffee receives a price sufficient to cover their costs of production, and provides a reasonable return on their invested capital. The words “fair-trade” are used by several different organizations that may or may not be governed by FLO (the Fair Labeling Organization International) which provides guidance and audit trails to ensure the price paid to the producer is indeed fair.

Rainforest Alliance: The Rainforest Alliance (“TRA”) works to conserve biodiversity and ensure sustainable livelihoods by transforming land-use practices, business practices and consumer behavior. The Rainforest Alliance works with people, whose livelihoods depend on the land, while helping them transform the way they grow food, harvest wood and host travelers. From large multinational corporations to small, community-based cooperatives, TRA involves businesses and consumers worldwide in efforts to bring responsibly produced goods and services to a global marketplace where the demand for sustainability is growing steadily.

We offer a selection of sustainable coffees with the NCompass line which contains coffees with one or more of the above certifications. With these coffees, your customers can feel good that with their purchase, they will help support a healthy environment and enhance the worldwide ecosystem.

Use Mugs!
One of the easiest ways to cut down on waste is to eliminate it from your shop all together. Many cafes are removing all paper cups from their shops and are switching to ceramic mugs that are easily washable and can be used time, and time again. Not only does it give your café that fancy touch, but serving your coffee in custom mugs with your shop name or logo on it is also a great way to advertise your business. If you wish to stay with paper products, you could encourage and reward customers for bringing in their own mugs to drink out of for a discount of around ten cents off their drink total. This helps to reduce the number of cups in the trash!

Biodegradable or Post-Consumer Recyclable Products!
Just about any paper product in your café can be replaced with a greener equivalent. This includes all cups, sleeves, napkins and more. This allows all of these products that end up in landfills (or those stragglers that don’t make it into a trashcan) to naturally decompose to help keep the environment green, even when we forget to.

Reuse your Coffee Grounds!
As a coffee shop owner, you know how much coffee grounds are left over every day, but the question is, what do you do with them? If you are just throwing them away, you might as well make them useful. Coffee grounds happen to be very acidic, so they are a great fertilizer for acid-loving plants. If you have plants such as roses or azaleas in or outside of your shop, coffee grounds will help your plants look better than ever!

Install Efficient Lighting!
Lighting your shop is just about the only source of energy that you cannot tone down, turn off or unplug while open for business. Your lights are always on, and constantly spinning your electric meter. Other than serving your customers in the dark, your next best alternative is utilizing energy efficient lighting. Compact florescent lights last up to 10 times longer than incandescent bulbs, and use around 70 percent less energy too. Having CFL bulbs installed in your shop will help to slow down that meter and significantly lower your power bill!

Going green not only helps make your community a better place, but it shows your customers you are being responsible. In today’s world customers notice qualities like that and in return, offer you their business.

For those who like the idea of going green, but also think it will require a lot of extra time, effort and money, think again! Going green is not only beneficial to the environment, but it can be done at little to no cost or extra effort to you. Here are some helpful tips on how to keep both the environment and your wallet green.

Offer “Sustainable Coffees”

These are Coffees that are certified or verified by an accredited third party as organic, fair trade, Rainforest Alliance, shade grown and more. There are single-origin varietals and blends with a variety of organic and fair trade certifications. A lack of preservatives is not only good for your coffee, but it is also good for the environment!

Switch to Paperless Invoices

It is convenient to offer  paperless invoicing  and it is a great way to cut down on extra paper use. We can send you a digital copy of your invoice to any preferred email with one click of the mouse, so if you are not already signed up to receive your invoices via email, be sure to ask your customer care representative the next time you place your order, and they will be happy to update your information.

Keep your Equipment Clean

So maybe it’s not in your budget to shell out the money for new, high-efficiency appliances, but there’s no reason you can’t make sure the appliances you have are operating at peak performance. Keeping your grinders, blenders, brewers etc. clean, is not only safer, but it will allow your equipment to run much more efficiently, as well as help to secure the longevity of your equipment and to cut down on your power bill each month.

Offer Recycling!

With the amount of plastic and glass that you and your customers go through, make sure there are designated recycling bins in your shop. If you only have trashcans, you haven’t allowed your customers an opportunity to separate their trash from recyclables.

These are just a few ways that you can make your café a little “greener”. To many people, a green business is a responsible business and those are often the establishments they choose to offer their business to. With little effort and cost, you can really make an impressive change that will allow you to feel better about making a positive impact on the environment and make your bottom line go up, whether it is cutting down on some of your normal costs, or by bringing new customers in the door!

The Specialty Coffee Association of America makes it easy to stay on top of things with a quarterly update of industry news and trends. At the beginning of each financial quarter, the “SCAA Quarterly Sector Report” is released, and valuable data is organized into one, easy to chew document. Information about sales trends, pricing trends and even a breakdown of drink popularity in the United States is included in this report. Coffeeshop Depot utilizes this report to keep our company current and to ensure that we are meeting the requirements that our customers set. We also have also been a proud member of the SCAA for many years.

“The SCAA is pleased to be partnering with Cleveland Research Company, an independent research firm specializing in proprietary channel research with a goal to identify trends and inflections that impact the financial performance and outlook across multiple companies and industries. This partnership has allowed us to deliver more timely information and a consistent stream of reports to our members and other industry professionals. The analysis is deeper and more specific, bringing you the essential data that you need to run a successful business in the specialty coffee industry. We offer this survey in quarterly installments, with an extensive overview published at the end of the year.”

To join the SCAA or to order the next the sector report, click here
For more resources and coffee related news, click here

Coffee is one of the most complex beverages that humans consume. A cup of coffee can contain thousands of different chemicals that we can smell, taste, feel or see. These chemicals are stored inside roasted coffee beans and grounds. It’s possible to pull almost 30% of the total weight a coffee bean out and into the cup. We call this process of pulling chemicals out of coffee grounds extraction. No good extraction is possible without great water filtration.

Water can be the diva that ruins your coffee production. Because brewed coffee is around 98.5% water, H₂O significantly affects taste. The chemistry of water is very complex and its makeup can change seasonally and because of other factors such as local construction, variable sources and water bureau treatments, etc. Most water has many gases and minerals dissolved in it, not to mention floating bacteria and dirt. A simple charcoal filter helps remove dirt and odor but is not much help when it comes to mineral content. When water moves through the ground or in pipes, it extracts minerals from them the same way it pulls flavors from coffee. Some minerals, like iron, can produce bad coffee tastes or colors. Also, coffee just doesn’t taste as good when brewed with water that doesn’t have a fair amount of calcium dissolved in it. One measurement the SCAA uses to count the number of minerals dissolved in water is by measuring the total dissolved solids (TDS). The total dissolved solids are measured in parts dissolved solids, per million parts water (ppm). A TDS reading is partially a measure of whether a water is soft or hard. Water with a very high TDS reading (hard water) extracts coffee flavor less readily. The ideal range for TDS is between 125 and 175 ppm. The ideal range for calcium hardness is between 17 to 120 ppm. Iron, chlorine and chlorinates should not be present in a reading.

When evaluating the quality of brewed coffee it’s important to remember that personal taste is always the most important factor. With that being said, using tools to help measure strength and extraction can allow for more control over taste. Also, water filtration systems have wearable parts that must be replaced on a regular basis to ensure optimum performance. In general, carbon filters for in-line water filtration systems should be replaced every three to six months. Filters and membranes for reverse osmosis systems (e.g. Cirqua) should be changed once every year. Should you notice any debris, odor or off-flavors, or if you notice scale appearing on your equipment, replace these elements immediately.

Evaluating the different components of coffee can be beneficial for a number of reasons. It can help you discover a preferred single origin, understand what you like and don’t like in terms of a coffee’s profile, and it can strengthen your palate. Evaluating coffee is done through a process of adding hot water into a cup or a glass of freshly ground coffee, known as a coffee cupping. In a traditional cupping, you will compare and contrast the qualities of different coffees from different countries or even different regions of the world. While cupping coffee, there are five key elements to consider in every brew, which affect the character of each specific coffee.

The best news about getting started is that account creation is very simple. On the Twitter homepage, click the ‘Sign up now’ button. You’ll want to use your business name as your username for the site, so direct access to your feed will be located at www.twitter.com/yourcafesname.

Once your account is set-up, you are ready to start tweeting. Tweets are 140 characters, including spaces, so it’s important to be concise, clear and on-message. Your first tweet might be, “Mike’s  Cafe is on Twitter!” Then, follow that up with, “Stay tuned for features and specials for our followers!”

Getting Followers

Now, how do you get followers? Immediately after you have created a Twitter account for your business and sent your first tweets, create one for yourself and follow your cafe. Also, immediately notify your staff and close friends to follow the business. Encourage them to join Twitter, if they aren’t a member already. Having these close contacts check out your cafe’s page gives you a solid baseline of  followers. Now you’re ready to use the site to gain new customers and build sales.

Chances are, in your city, many of the local businesses are on Twitter. You can search for them by clicking on the ‘Find People’ link at the top right-hand corner of your page. Look for every complimentary business you can think of and click to follow them. In many instances, the person/business you select to follow will also follow you in return, especially if you can offer them something. Car dealerships, hospitals, bakeries, banks, accounting offices, etc. make for good Twitter contacts. Organizations that might be looking for meeting spaces/catering are good targets, too.

Every time you get a new follower, it is important to contact them directly through Twitter. You can set your account up to receive an email notification that someone new is following.  Send the new follower a ‘Direct Message’ (which can only be seen by you and the recipient) with a greeting and a special offer, e.g. “Thanks for the follow! Please stop by for half-off a specialty drink of your choice. Mention “New Friend” 2 your Barista. See you soon!”

Now that you have a few followers, you are ready to put some signage up in your cafe promoting your social media to your current customers. As always, it’s important to give them a reason to follow you. Your counter cards could say something like, “Follow us on Twitter for EXCLUSIVE daily specials, features and updates from Mike’s Cafe!”  To initially encourage follows, promote a contest in which the person with the best tweet on why Your Cafe is the best coffee house in town gets free coffee for a month.

Sample Tweets

We’ve heard that some customers hesitate to tweet because they aren’t sure what to say. It can take time to get into a groove, so check out what other businesses are doing. Here are some examples of tweets to help drive traffic to your store:

- “It is Twitter Tuesday! All Mike’s Cafe tweeps receive a FREE flavor shot in their iced tea.”

- “We are hosting a coffee cupping on Sat. at noon. Come experience coffee in its purest form. Call to reserve a spot.”

- “Did you know we cater breakfast & lunch? Make your meeting! Check out our catering menu: (attach link using bit.ly, which shortens URLs.

- “Calling all local businesses! Enter the contest for FREE breakfast catering. Tweet “I LOVE MIKE’S CAFE” @MikesCafe b/t now and 3/15 to enter.”

- “Daily Lunch Features: Coconut-Crusted Shrimp Po Boy w/ Mango Remoulade & Cherry Tomato Soup w/ Black Pepper Crème Fraiche”

- “Barista Charlie just pulled out a batch of hot Decadent Double Dipped Fudge Rounds from the oven. You want one?” (include a picture usingTwitPic)

-”I am testing a new espresso blend this afternoon around 2. Help me decide if I should bring it in and we’ll taste together. Need your opinion!”

Some companies have  a few customers who have used Twitter as a way to take orders in advance. One person in particular created a new Twitter profile in addition to his main business feed, e.g. @MikesCafeOrders and made it private, request/invitation only. Applying Twitter in this fashion creates the appeal of exclusivity and can be a real convenience for busy customers.

It also would be remiss I didn’t direct you to Twitter 101 for Business, which is available on their website. Very useful information there as well.