Specialty Coffee Retailer is a publication for owners, managers and employees of retail outlets that sell specialty coffee. Its scope includes best sales practices, supplies, business trends and anything else to assist the small coffee retailer.
Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/103518
WHO PAYS? Use of existing facilities, utilities and infrastructure is one of the biggest advantages of a dedicated space. But every situation varies in terms of what will be supplied, and what the coffee retailer will have to do him- or herself. Just as with a move into a private commercial space, these matters should be carefully monitored and negotiated beforehand. "An interesting aspect of the creation of such a business is, who is paying for what," Groot says. "There are some places where you might have...a company where it was their desire to do this, and ultimately they foot the bill to a great degree." However, there are potentially expensive downsides to inserting a coffee space into an existing operation, Milletto warns—especially if that operation has nothing to do with foodservice. "You're not going into a brand-new space where the people are saying, 'OK, nobody's run plumbing yet, nobody's run electricity, so where are you going to be?' You have to retrofit all that in," he says. Even the bathrooms need attention; what the local health department deemed acceptable for the host operation might not suffice for a coffee shop. Most of the time expenses will be shared, with the operator responsible for making any improvements that pertain solely to the coffee shop. Javier Rivas has owned Modern Times Coffeehouse, inside the separately owned Politics & Prose bookstore in Washington, D.C., for about five years. He and his fellow owners at that time started running it literally the day after the previous operator left, so they had to start with the existing amenities. But as the years passed, he gradually replaced and improved them. "I put in new counters, I put in new sinks, furniture and other things. [All those] have come from my pocket," Rivas says. MENU TWEAKING Another adjustment might have to be in the menu. Dedicated spaces often cater to clientele with particular needs or that fit a particular profile, and you might have to alter your menu accordingly. That's what Valente ended up doing at the Volusia Co. courthouse outlet for Boston Coffee. He cut the menu from his main outlet in half and added a lot of grab-and-go items like candy bars and potato chips, as well as premade sandwiches and salads. "Things I don't normally [sell], but you've got to kind of accept them because that's what people want in that sort of area—the employees at the courthouse," he says. Milletto recalls how a client once set up a coffee cart outside a home-improvement center in Eugene, Ore., which was such a hit that he ended up running a coffee operation inside. "It wasn't necessarily his audience for high-end espresso drinks," Milletto says; he ended up doing a lot of thermos-filling. But he built the operation around a $4 thermos fill and prospered, Milletto says: "It worked because he tweaked it." Heather Perry of Klatch Coffee holds son Cole in front of Klatch's new outlet in Los Angeles International Airport. Groot once operated a coffee kiosk that was located in the headquarters of an office-furniture manufacturer. It was somewhat unusual in that it was located in the middle of the office area instead of the lobby. The idea was that it would be a "modern-day water cooler," where workers could gather and exchange ideas, Groot says. "We had to tweak the menu down," he says. "Whatever we offer here at JPs [his main coffee shop], we trimmed back in the variety of options. Not as many syrups, not as many drink sizes. We tried to keep it as simple as possible because it was a one-person operation." Sometimes tweaking has to be done to operations instead of the menu. That happened when Klatch Coffee, based in the Los Angeles area, opened its fourth retail outlet in Los Angeles International Airport in December. Klatch won a 10-year lease with payments based on a percentage of sales. The menu at the airport outlet is almost identical to the other Klatch stores, but equipment and training were designed to accommodate the needs of airport passengers in a hurry, says Heather Perry, director of training and consulting. "For our LAX outlet we knew speed would be an issue, so we handled that by doing a few things," Perry wrote in an e-mail. "First of all, we doubled almost all the major equipment. We have two Fetco brewers, two GB5 espresso machines, and 3 POS [point of sale] stations. "We also spent a few months training the staff ahead of time. I personally did all of the staff training so there was emphasis on both quality first, but also speed. We also had many of the staff work our own stores to really solidify everything we did in training. And then we also lived there opening week so we could be adaptable and make any tweaks to the system we found necessary. In summary, it was a combination of both design and training." It's not always a question of paring down the menu or redesigning operations. There's no reason a new, dedicated space couldn't be used to try out a new item or technique. 11