11 ways to increase your coffee shop profits

The coffee shop industry is making billions dollars a year. Even though opening your own coffee shop looks like a piece of pie and definitely profitable enterprise, it is not exactly like this.
The value of a cup of coffee is around $0.50 and the retail price is between $2 and 3, depending on the market. It sounds like profitable margin. But you have to keep in mind that operational costs for a coffee shop are quite high. On top of this you have to add the fierce competition by well-established chain of coffee shops with strong marketing and huge advertising budgets.

That’s why we are sharing 11 ways to boost your coffee shop profits:

1. Understand what you are really selling. Too many businesses don’t completely know what, when and in which quantities they are selling. This leads to wrong focus. If you know what you are going to sell in upcoming days, weeks or months you will be able to optimize inventory, staff, etc. This way you`ll be prepared to deliver. Try our tool a4CoffeeShops for free and get your coffee shop sales forecast. This will also give you a peek to your best sellers, single sellers and sales trends.

2. Location, location, location. Those are among the most important factors for running any retail, especially coffee shop. You have to look for better place relentlessly, even you keep in mind the stellar costs and worries coming with moving on a new location.

3. Coffee quality consistency. Always serve your best coffee. Do not allow fluctuations in quality because this way you might not cover your returning customers’ expectations.

4. Loyalty cards. In fact they works pretty good in coffee shop industry and there is a good reason. We all love to be incentivized in one or another way when we consider purchase of any kind.

5. Promote product bundles. We know it’s exhausting, but your barista should suggest to customers any possible bundles the customer might create with already ordered product. Put an accent on the saving which this product bundle brings to the customer.

6. Handle samples. Open your doors wide, especially if your coffee shop is new in the neighborhood. Bring your shiny smile and give away samples to tease potential customers, this always pays off.

7. Allow staff occasionally to give away coffee to their beloved customers. Showing sympathy is powerful emotional trigger for everyone. If your barista would like to thank to some of your customers because of nice joke, shiny smile or whatever the reason is – allow them to say thank you with complimentary drink. This way you`ll have not just charmed customer, you`ll have ambassador who will share his story with his friends and mates.

8. Host events. Art works exhibition, music workshop or else – it is up to you. Such activity is one more option to increase your customer base.

9. Latte art is selling enormous amount of lattes. Invest barista time in creating latte art and let your customers to enjoy the result. Because we all love beautiful things in our daily life.

10. Refine your menu. Go back to No1 and focus on the most profitable products for your business. Menu engineering will help you with this. Stay tuned for something interesting in this direction!

11. Minimize waste. Eliminating any kind of waste is a profit booster par excellence. So you need to minimize waste by not allowing products go bad. Like croissants which are nice just couple of hours after they are baked. Or oranges and milk which is crucial to be fresh. Using sales forecasting app like a4CoffeeShops will let you know exactly how much you are going to sell. This way proper planning and waste elimination will be easy as 1-2-3. The benefits of proper demand prediction does not allow to miss sales opportunities because the coffee shop is out of stock or goods. This is key element in generating customer satisfaction and results in happy and returning clients.